Comme le chien de Jacques

Occasionally one will meander a little too close to the line that separates perseverance and stupidity. Those in favour of a charitable euphemism often call it stubbornness.

I crossed right over that line today. The route I took turned out to have a road that was private land with 5 fallen trees within a few feet of each other and 3 signs indicating “privée, interdit to passée” on top of said trees, in case the signs alone weren’t forceful enough. So I ad lib’ed and took a new route instead of retracing my steps and starting on a long 35 kilometer detour. I wanted to get to my destination tonight, and felt this was the most efficient route. Unfortunately the path deteriorated quickly, and stupidly I just kept going. It was a straight line south to cut off probably 15 kilometres off the detour so I was determined to save time by sacrificing a bit more energy.

Was I passing through several increasingly worse muddy washed out paths every 20 metres? Yes.

Was the earth slopping gently downwards as far as the eye could see? Yes. 

Did the map show two ponds up ahead? Yes. 

Did I continue? Naturally.

Of course we know how this ends. I definitely should have listened to the first alarm bells to turn around, but I was “stubborn”, I’d come this far and didn’t want to lose ground. I hauled my bike over enormous fallen trees, through shoulder high grasses, arguably carivorous tall weeds that scrapped layers of skins off me, and mid calf mud pits. When I was literally crotch high in swamp water, I gave up. So soon, you ask? This was ridiculous! I am ridiculous. I had been going so slow that I easily added two hours to the whole ordeal of a detour. If I had turned around when it originally became clear that the path was impassable, I could have actually gotten to my destination as planned. And with all of my beloved epithelium to boot.

It would have been comical to take the photo at the turning point, but I was pretty busy throwing out a few Tabarnak’s to have photography on the mind. Another failed opportunity were the ENORMOUS moose tracks I saw. Also spotted, some other large pawed animals, yet to be determined. I have been made all too aware that I am in fact a relatively small mammal with a oversized brain, as far as making good use of real estate goes.

Oddly enough this has been my favourite day so far and I can’t exactly pinpoint why. A running hypothesis is that I am often under the impression that I am a reasonable person. Perhaps it is somewhat amusing to notice evidence to the contrary. Or maybe I just like a good plot twist. In any case it’s supposed to rain for the next 24 hours so I’m guaranteed to have a nice moist chamois to remember this nouvelle révélation for the next couple days.

After this mishap I was quite cut up, itchy, “burn-y” and exhausted. And then I made a friend, Christian, in the campground, who was delightfully free spirited, kind, and hilarious and I perked right up. He taught me a few French expressions, and I devote this blog post and its title to him.