We ended up out near the train station, a kilometer or so from the center of Perigueux. This keeps happening to us because many of the downtown hotels seemed to be closed for the off season.

We took a day off there because it was raining when we woke up in the morning. Perigueux was worth staying in. It's an old city with ruins built on ruins, including a rather large excavation of the old roman town currently underway.

A tall, fat round tower, like a Roman version of a cooling tower, still stands near the excavation site. (It's called Tour de Vesone.) We saw it moments before sunset, just after the rain stopped and the sky cleared. The brilliant sunlight hit it almost exactly horizontally. I was thinking that, from our vantage point, it looked like a half moon. Then I noticed that just beside the tower there really was a half moon.

If I had lived in Perigueux 1,500 years ago and therefore didn't already know, I could have seen the exact same sight and it might have occurred to me at that moment that the moon really was a sphere instead of the pancake they all thought it was.

Perigueux's cathedral reminded me of three religions. First it was obviously Catholic. Second it has many Islamic-looking domes. Third, each dome is covered with small symmetrically placed little cones that reminded me of the hair on Buddha's head in many statues in Thailand.

Inside was silent and impressive like the other cathedrals, though this one was stark. It had fewer ornaments like wooden pulpits, large paintings, etc. It was cold like a cave and smelled like wet cement.

Later, somewhere in town, I bought the famous French children's book, "Le Petit Prince" in French for the practice.

At Monoprix (a department/grocery store, sort of like Safeway, or Giant in the U.S.) we bought some food. An odd episode there: The grocery store is on the second floor with a big elevator to carry shopping carts up and down from the parking garage. We checked out then realized we forgot something so I waited by the elevator while Joan went back.

Two teenage girls in four-inch platform shoes giggled into the elevator. At the same time an old man pulling an old style upright cart and shuffling along exactly like a comedian imitating an old man shuffling along except way slower, approached the elevator from the other way. The man meekly said, "Attendez, Attendez" ("wait, wait"). But the girls ignored him.

He sped up to double-shuffle speed but the door started closing. It was a wide, slow door so it took a relatively long time to close. I was starting to feel frantic for the poor old guy. His effort seemed so desperate. His pitifully slow double-shuffle speed seemed 110% of his capacity. He had time to repeat "Attendez" but the door kept closing.

It was just inches from being closed when I noticed the "down" button was next to me, strangely several feet from the door. I pushed it. The door stopped immediately, shuddered for a second, then gradually started opening again, as if unsure. The girls stared at the old man. The old man stared at the girls. None of them understood why the door had changed its mind.

Back in December we had had a great experience at an Irish pub in Tours. So when we saw one in Perigueux we decided to check it out. It was smoky, the music not very good and too loud and the Guinness tap wasn't working. It's hard to find a good bar. (JOAN: we have learned, when in France, do as the French. That is, drink Wine!)

The next day, we rode to Montpon. We planned to stop there only because it lie halfway between Perigueux and Bordeaux. The morning was a real rollercoaster ride up and down among the deep valleys. It was cold and sunny. We chose some excellent back roads with very little traffic so we rode side-by-side.

We saw lots of gorgeous horses. They seemed so large after all the small horses we saw in Nepal and Tibet. We often saw one peculiar looking variety with long hair and short stubby legs.

The farms had old equipment laying around, falling down sheds (made of stone) here and there, chicken coops, and barking dogs. No dogs chased us though. Now and then we waved to farmers plowing their fields or fixing fences. Most waved back but some seemed confused by us and just stared.

We sat on the sidewalk in Neuvic and made sandwiches. The main street of this small town was torn up for construction. It seemed like no one was alive there as if an apocalypse had occurred earlier that morning. Of course, we arrived in the middle of siesta. As I've heard in Mexico, a lot of businesses, except restaurants, close between noon and 2pm. We constantly had trouble with this. We're so used to things being open all the time.

The rest of the day was pleasant and uneventful. Montpon didn't turn out to be much. The unfortunate little town has a major highway running through the middle of it. The old buildings hug the road so there's not much sidewalk and huge trucks come rushing by as fast as they can all day and all night. We got an overpriced room on a side street up on the fourth floor and still heard the roar of the trucks rumble through the town, sometimes they even made the windows tremble.

We watched some French TV that night - parts of the TV shows "Friends" and "90210" as well as a few other American shows dubbed into French. We both figured there must be a lot of jobs for dubbers somewhere in France. I understood almost none of the French, despite my recent efforts to learn. Joan was frustrated she didn't understand more. They talk very fast on TV.

The entire next day we were in Bordeaux wine country. The character of the land changed completely. The hills were not as steep, the ravines not as deep. Everything was more rounded. We passes a lot of Medieval castles their character was very different from the ones before. These ones were more like story book castles - square with parapets on all four corners.

Unfortunately we were also fighting strong winds and rain. In good conditions the ride would have been fabulous. In these conditions it was just drudgery. But we really couldn't complain, having had so many good days in January.

Not complaining doesn't mean not suffering. I didn't mind the rain but the headwind hurt. I've never understood why headwinds seem to make my saddle harder. My butt always hurts on windy days. And after a couple hours of headwind my whole body hurts. I just can't wait for the next break.

We stopped in a little town for croissants. In about 15 minutes I felt great again and ready for the next leg. Five minutes on the road and my body hurt again.

There was a surprising amount of activity among the grape vines. Lots of people were out grooming them, clearing out dead parts. All the groomers wore big green raincoats.

When we arrived in Libourne, about 25 km from Bordeaux, we both decided to stop there for the night. We couldn't find a low priced hotel but we quickly found a great looking restaurant. After a fantastic five course meal, our first since Laqueuille, we felt that false sense of rejuvenation and decided to push on.

This was a mistake. If we've learned anything about bicycle touring, it's this: never arrive in a big city late in the day when it's getting dark and you are tired and hungry.

The first 10km we encountered lots of traffic, construction and mud. Then we fought the winds and rain on a pretty nice but increasingly busy back road. Finally we reached the suburbs. Most medium- and large western cities have a suburban ring around them that is very difficult to penetrate on bicycles. It's sort of like an asteroid belt surrounding a planet.

In the country, the signs were simple: "Bordeaux ->" But as we closed in, the signs had pictures of super highways and arrows. We didn't want to ride on super highways. Other signs referred to this suburb or that suburb. Few of those names existed on my map regional map and we weren't yet close enough to find ourselves on the Bordeaux map.

The traffic on the suburban roads was also fast moving and impatient. The drivers were mostly on their way home from work. They probably passed through these intersections everyday and knew exactly where they were going and had little patience for those of us who didn't (I know this from commuter experience; I'd always groan when a mobile home pulled in front of me at the Golden Gate Bridge Toll Plaza, and then took several minutes asking for directions). In the middle of all that, a convoy of four trucks each pulling double wide prefab homes had to pass us!

It was even difficult to ask directions. Imagine being in the Bronx and asking which way to New York. All you would hear would be "Yeah, you's in New York."

Once we reached the downtown city streets, we were fine. But we had a lot of hassle penetrating the confusing asteroid belt on the way in.

We were lucky in the end. We quickly found our first choice hotel (from the guide book), they had rooms available, the room was nice, the people were nice, and the room was cheap. We ended up staying nine days.

Next: Party in Bordeaux

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