The day dawns grey like it'll soon be raining. And I remember Ian the dour Scot staying in the hostel when I's here a year ago. Surely that guy is the same person, still here. Browner skin now than a year ago. The pale Scotch skin having tanned. The likeness is uncanny. Ian having filled his tray at the breakfast counter, is now coming out to the courtyard to my table.
He recognises me, perhaps. It isn't Ian. Ian wouldn't ask. He would sit down without saying a word. He tells me he started in Barcelona and is working his way north. Wants to visit Amsterdam because the Dutch girls are beautiful. I tell him I'm cycling. I tell him five times I've cycled about eight-thousand kilometres. He keeps replying eight-hundred, in a way thinking he's misunderstood; and surely, eight-hundred is a realistic distance.
But eight-thousand? Then having understood he asks the usual questions I get asked. I answer mechanically, being tire of listening to my own voice like an old record say, "I ride eighty to ninety kilometres a day. I camp. And, haven't had problems with my bike yet, touch wood.
But Martin is a nice guy. Once I've finished, he says looking firmly ahead "You have now put an idea in my head" then looks at me and adds "I am going to do this myself, next time. When I return to Argentina, I will buy a bike and start training.
Where I live is very flat: a thousand kilometres from the Andes to the west. Santa Fe. The Auberge de Jeunesses in Carcassonne is a laidback place: check-out is eleven, so I waste an hour on the internet, eventually leaving just before ten.
