Looking back: A France

(Ed. note: From time to time, I'll enter my memoirs of a trip to France I took from June 24 to July 4. It was the beginning of all the traveling I did this year and, I suspect, had a lot of influence in my decision to move to Alaska. Normal posts will come when they will; that's all I can say, since I'm in a bit of a writers funk. Oh, and this content comes to you without a second read, so please excuse any errors/faults in story structure.)

Prologue

The sun had just disappeared in Lyon and the dusk was too subtle for me to notice that night would soon fall. I soon was stumbling up and down the pint-sized mountain Fourviere without sunlight or my windbreaker, which was a godsend on these cool French nights. The Celsius was dipping, and I was in a pickle.

It was 10h45, and I needed a way back to the hostel fast. I ditched my plan to find an epicerie and some cheap wine. I could overpay for beer back at the auberge, warm up and make a friend or two.

I dipped through a path that led from Lyon’s Notre Dame to a street about halfway down Fourviere, taking leopardish strides that my lanky frame favors when on steep declines. The zig-zag path cut through a rose garden with no roses. It still smelled of roses though, which was kind of surreal. Two or three couples gave me nasty looks as I galloped past, briefly spoiling their romance. They must have been tourists; French couples would have just kept on kissing.

Thwomp. Thwomp. My 180 pounds were doing all they could to drag me to a tumbling grassy trip with a rocky finish at the bottom. Near Vieux Lyon at the end of the path, I caught the rolling eyes of a brunette on a cell phone. She hushed as I passed and waited until I was about 5 feet past her to continue blabbing in garbled French. She had a valley-girl accent, even though we were in the Rhone Valley and not San Fernandina.

Not much time to ponder that. I had a new shortcut to consider. The garden path exited to a road that took too gentile of a descent for my schedule allowed ... but on the right side there was a chance to make up some time. There was a field that seemed to head straight down the mountain. The gate leading to it was smashed open – never a good sign – and a step on the other side that led to another zig-zag path that countered Fourviere’s steepness. There was a step, although there apparently had been two more on the mini-staircase on the other side of the gate.

Once again, not a good sign. In America, this is a top candidate to place a "Trespassers will be disemboweled" sign. But the road seemed so ... long, especially to my burning thigh and gluteus muscles that were threatening to go on strike at any moment.

One hop down the step (gingerly, as it was made of thin plywood) and the first things that caught my attention were the other two steps, one bent in half inside the stair casing, the other a few feet down the decline. I realized that I had not been the first one to challenge these steps, and that others had not been as graceful (or lucky) as I. The steps were shoddy and homemade, and a slip in balance would have sent me tumbling with scraps of plywood in tow.

Undaunted, I surveyed the path and began to amble. But then, that itch. That gut reaction I have when I catch a new route in my peripheral vision. I stopped. There was one more option.
It wasn’t really a trail, just a discernible line of dead grass – maybe made by feet – that went straight down the hill. It took a sheer angle for a bout but leveled off in the places where the zig-zag path crossed it, kind of like the side of a ziggurat. It went all the way to ... well, I couldn’t see beyond the trees at what I supposed was the bottom.

My mind was on the fence.

It’s dangerous. I can do it. I could slip. Not a problem if I catch myself on one of the ziggurat levels. I’m alone thousands of miles from home. And I came here to take risks.

So my legs cast the deciding vote.

The plan was to use grips on the soles of my Converses to slow my descent on the dips and restore my balance on level ground. I’d done it plenty on the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains. No sweat.

Maybe my legs were too weak from averaging 10 miles a day. Maybe I was too top-heavy. Maybe I took the first step with too much confidence – because the second and the third followed too quickly.

The level ground did give me time to adjust, enough to fall backward instead of forward. Instinctively, my palms slapped the ground first, and the angle of the slope made it a short spill backward. But I was still heading down, planted on the soles of my shoes and palms of my hands like a bobsled.

One level of the ziggurat passed without impeding my progress. I just skidded right over it. Then a second, and a third. I was at the mercy of the hill, which was feeling more like a mountain by the second.

Injury never concerned me. Neither did the trees at the bottom or the stupid logic that sent me careening down a French mini-mount. My thoughts were of a single memory of when my voyage began, when I proclaimed:

"WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING?"

It was an honest question disguised as a giddy shriek. My dad had just driven me over the Howard-Franklin Bridge. The sun was directly overhead even though it was not yet noon, making every color seem more vivid. Even the dull brown of the I-275 pavement seemed cartoonishly bright, seeming to have a light of its own.

It was a perfect day to feel adventurous – everything seemed like a live-action comic book, not real at all – but at the moment, my anxiety was in command. After all, who sends a 22-year old who can’t balance a checkbook any more than he can charm an asp to Europe with your $600, your credit card and an itinerary as loose as "here’s a list of the hostels I’m probably staying at, and the days I’ll probably be there."

That weighed on me. I didn’t deserve it, having pilfered my parents’ bank account during my final semester in college – an eight-month whirlwind of parties, high-cost professional (resume materials, postage, software) and personal (drinking, gluttony) expenditures and little progress in becoming a journalist.

Ah, yes. Then there were my career worries. I had sent out no less than 15 resumes in the past two weeks, and anyone who wanted to call me would be greeted by a voicemail that deferred them to my e-mail address. It seemed like blowing an interview in advance.

But mostly, I was anxious because I am by no means a world-class traveler. I generally detest big cities and often become quiet and subdued when unacquainted with my surroundings. Would the jovial, outgoing Josh arrive in Paris, or would I become docile and return with only a few photos and souvenirs, bereft of any experiences worth telling?

But I didn’t have too much time to dwell on it, as the Murano was soon under the American Airlines sign at Tampa International Airport and my dad bounded out to the cargo hatch, grabbing my luggage. It was a hunter-green rolling suitcase with my backpack inside protected by cardboard. At Charles De Gaulle, I was to chuck the green case and the cardboard.

I gave my dad a quick hug and breathed deeply as I walked into the airport.