Uncle J wanted to visit the “Jewish Holocaust Museum“. He’d been banging on about it for a while so we decided to take him on a flying trip to visit. The 1 hour flight was cancelled so we drove for 6 hours instead. Sydney was pushy; dirty; noisy and full of impatient crowds, shopping. A shit of a journey but a decent nights sleep in Ultimo.

A more realistic Monopoly set found at the Jewish War Museum

The next morning after a seafood breakfast J and I headed to the museum. Groups of school children were being shown around by the volunteers. The volunteers told stories of the atrocities along with video and audio recordings. It was fascinating and terrible and hard to tear ourselves away.

I took a photo of one of the exhibits. A hand-drawn ‘Ghetto’ Monopoly board. I would have been fascinated to learn more about who made it and what might have been written on the Chance and Community Chest cards.

R had been messaging, asking when we could meet for lunch. She had taken H to the Aquarium and had things she wanted to do with us. Sometimes I could do without a mobile phone. On the way out we briefly spoke with a delightful chap, Peter Nash who signed his book for us, before we reluctantly left.

Some excellent graffiti found in one of the many gay bars J introduced me to

Uncle J had other plans. He wandered into the first pub we saw. It was apparently a main-stay of his youth. It was decorated with rainbows throughout. We had a beer and made our way across the square. I was thinking to book an Uber to get us back across the city but when I looked up J had popped into another pub, another favourite of yester-year.

Four or possibly five pubs later I had been propositioned and subsequently disappointed a young man; we had some homophobic insults hurled at us; threats of violence from a chap who said he’d been in the foriegn legion; we admired the graffiti on the bog walls and enjoyed some circular conversations. A result of the beer I suspect. We finally found our way back to R. It was a trip down memory lane for J.

That night I remembered a day in 1991 when I visited the Chamber of the Holocaust (מרתף השואה) in Jerusalem. Before that time I had not imagined the horrific things ordinary people could do to one another.

After Krok, I flew from Moscow to Paris via Helsinki. My destination was this conference in the Loire Valley.

My cheap Paris hotel was near this cemetery.

I stayed in Paris just long enough to meet sister radical feminist Cecilia for lunch at a crêperie near Gare Montparnasse.

Leaving Paris on a TGV. France has excellent trains that put the US to shame.

A double rainbow as seen from the train. A trainbow?

Changing trains in Tours.

French trains have dedicated bicycle areas, while in the US, I can’t even take my folded Brompton on a bus between Champaign and Indianapolis without the driver yelling at me.

From the taxi from in Saumur to l’Abbaye Royale de Fontevraud, I saw yet another rainbow.

The “royale” part of l’Abbaye Royale de Fontevraud, the “palais” where artists-in-residence are housed.

Residents eat, chat, and do laundry in this common area. I was not a resident, just visiting to speak at the annual animation conference. But I had to do laundry after 10 days in Russia, so I used their washing machine.

A fresh batch of international animation residents had just arrived, and I joined them on this tour of l’Abbaye.

Cloisters galore.

The magnificent late-Romanesque cathedral.

More cloisters and animators.

The view from my window in the morning.

It looks so peaceful, doesn’t it? But they were doing construction most of the time, and the drone of power tools and compressors was nearly constant on weekdays.

The architecturally magnificent chimney towers of the ancient kitchen were under scaffolding and submitting to power tools as well. They say they’ll be done in 2021. I may apply to be a resident then so I can come back and see them in their full glory.

The conference opened with displays and presentations from the animators-in-residence. I didn’t take many pictures of the conference itself, and I have no photo from my own talk, with Jayne Piling, but it was apparently well received. I think my take on copyright abolition made some heads explode.

I got to eat breakfast at the swanky hotel, where they had this over-designed tableware. Instead of having a ridge like a normal saucer, this one had a curved cone protruding from its center, on which nestled the reciprocal inverted cone of the teacup.

It was design-for-design’s-sake, serving no purpose but to remind diners they were somewhere expensive, which was probably the point.

I took more photos around the ever-photogenic Abbey my last morning.

The French famously respect comics as an art form. In a bookshop in Saumur I came across this large hardbound graphic biography of George Orwell, among many other handsome and diverse comics.

After a few more French train rides I checked into this Ibis hotel at the Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport.

It had a pretty good view, considering.

The next morning I took my cattle-class seat on the plane to Chicago, and now I’m back in Urbana, IL, which feels even less glamorous than it did before (which was not at all). Au revoir, France! Das vedanya, Russia!

A bicycle ride back in 2006 with my boys

The brain-cinema has been showing bicycles for most of my life. In my former desk jockey days I would while away the ennui geeking out over bicycle ephemera such as Cycle Chic (Thank you Copenhagenize); Rohloff Hubs; the writings of Sheldon Brown; Rivendell Bikes and a thousand and one bike nerd blogs. I never liked the lycra clad racing bicycle culture. I had always been a ‘ride-as-traffic’ city cyclist. Drivers must have hated me. The feeling was absolutely mutual. Most drivers seemed to be in their own little dream world ignoring bicycles until they suddenly found one in their way. Couriering in London in the early nineties I would aggressively assert my right to the road. Prior to that I’d spent much of my life pedalling along leafy lanes in Cornwall. Daydreaming amongst foxgloves, campions and sycamores. To me cycling has always boiled down to getting to the pub/school/work/beach often with a streak of mud up my arse.

I went on a cycle ride with some friends a few weeks ago which got me admiring their Thorn touring bikes. These are the SUV’s of the bike world. I expect they could tow a sizeable caravan. They are appealing to the long distant, long time tourer because they will probably rarely break or require much complex maintenance. I would of course love one but being a perpetual skinflint I may never own one. If I did I would have to renounce my comfortable life and justify my Thorn ownership by pedalling off to be a Bicycle Hobo. This would fulfill a life long dream but I would probably get lonely after a few months.

Tim Stredwick is a framebuilder down in Tasmania. The Jota is a fine looking bit of work. I saw a little video of Tim at work in his shed and found it quite inspiring. I would like to build myself a little shed for (at the least) fixing or (preferably) building bicycles. For years I have been interested in Tassies Wooden Boat Festival, although the video on the website puts me off. I think I would love to take my bicycle down to Tassie (or even the Melbourne handmade bike show) for a visit.

Nice Bikes

• Thorn (UK)
• St John Street Cycles (UK)
• Rivendell, BLUG, Blahg (US)
• Tim Stredwick’s Velosmith (AU)
• My Oppy by Malvern Star named after the legend HF Opperman

Not Necessarily Folding Bikes:

• Harry Bickerton who inspired me as a kid
• Alex Moulton (who does not actually make folding bikes) who also inspired me as a kid
• Andrew Ritchie who now leads the pack with the Bromptons (UK)
• Dahon (US) is winning the numbers game.
• it is also worth mentioning #rinkobikes
• and the occaisonally odd dopplegangers
• I also obsess over bicycle lights.

Where in the world am I?

Our flight from London has been a bit special. We flew north over Copenhagen. The sun dropped low and the clouds cleared revealing the Baltic islands rimmed in golden sunlight.

On we flew over the snow covered fields of Estonia and night fell. I dozed with my forehead against the glass. I wondered at my own sanity and sense when I cried at the in-flight movie, Crazy Rich Asians. The moon glinted on the tiny Aral
sea below. The scattered ground lights coalesced into arcing constellations of Kabul and what I took to be a huge military base. It seemed everytime I looked out into the darkness we were flying over another storybook city Lahore,
Delhi and Lucknow all drifted beneath us.

So many humans and so many cities

A constellation of city lights below

The in-flight map said we were over Kabul. I have wanted to travel in this region since I was a young teenager naively reading books like Gurdjieff’s ‘Meetings with Remarkable Men’ and Matthiessen’s, ‘The Snow Leopard’.

The world appears so small and so full of human life from economy class.