Day 91. Gradignon Nov 5 2001

The cold has hit us like a physical blow, sapping energy and shattering morale like brittle ice. We knew that winter was coming but we'd expected a gradual easing into frigid weather, so that we could prepare and plan to deal with it. Today that illusion was destroyed.

Yesterday had been warm enough for us to cycle in shirt and shorts. Today I wear a shirt, a sweater and a jacket and I am still cold. My hands are like blocks of ice and I can fell my joints ache like ancient pulleys. Every thought, every motion, is dictated by the cold.

We were extremely reluctant to pull our heads from beneath our covers today. Like turtles assaulted from all sides we pulled our heads beneath the lip of the sleeping bags and basked in the warmth generated by exhaled breath and body heat. The inside of a sleeping bag, with the covers pulled over your head, can be one of the most comfortable places in the world. When Melville wrote of the comfort of a warm bed while the world outside is freezing he could have been describing the sensation beneath the covers of our sleeping bags. I am only glad I have Heather instead of Queequeg as a bed companion.

Eventually the need for food drove us from the warmth. By the time we were dressed we were well and truly frozen so we climbed onto our bikes to see how much more punishment we could take. I'd asked the owner of the campground where the nearest supermarket was and promptly failed to understand the least of her directions. I was made to understand that there was a small supermarket in the centre of the suburb but we never found it. instead we cycled for what seemed like an eternity until we found a massive sign pointing to a supermarket off in the distance. As always we forgot that road signs cater to cars and what is nearby to a car is very distant to those on bikes.

We left Gradignan for the next suburb of Pessac before we found the place. it was a mall, a mall in the Canadian and American sense of the word, a large building dedicated entirely to shops. the warmth within thawed us too quickly and our skin tingled with a thousand pinpricks as blood flowed once more to flesh our bodies had written off as dead.

We were determined to get wine for our dinner tonight. It felt wrong being in the land of wines where one in three people was employed by the wine trade and only drink pop. But finding a wine was a challenge of its own. There were plenty of bottles but how do you find a wine not too cheap but certainly not too expensive that will taste good? After a long search we finally found what we were looking for.

We bought our groceries and then hung around the purchasing counters, unsure what to do. We didn't want to return to the frozen outdoors, but neither were we really keen on pretending to be mallrats. Mallrats won out and we stayed inside the mall for the great majority of the day.

I can only hope that the weather will pick up or we will be forced to get on a train and find a warmer climate. Whether it is so cold because we are close to the ocean or simply because it is winter and it will be cold no matter where we travel in this hemisphere of the planet I don't know. The state of things tomorrow will greatly influence the rest of this trip.

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