un californien à paris

bikin' is better than bloggin'

no, lately, i haven't been reading or writing blogs. i haven't even been thinking about them. good blogging demands time and effort, especially if you want it to seem effortless... a blog has to be maintained like a friendship or exercise. But blogging is not as important (to me) as friendship or exercise. no, i'm not abandoning the jmf blog... i'm just spending more time on the mountain bike and less in front of the 'puter.

le sanglier

A mad pack of yelping dogs side swiped me as I road my mountain bike through la Forêt régionale de Ferrière. They were chasing a wildly frightened boar that had crossed my path just seconds before. One of the dogs squealed helplessly as it slid under my front wheel. The contact made a hollow, chest-cavity thud. My bike’s Rock-shox were not specifically designed to overcome dogs, boars, or any other living creature as obstacles, but they worked well enough. No bites or bruises to mention and I did manage to land on two wheels. Stunned a little, I road a few hundred meters down the trail trying to understand what had just happened when I came upon some ruddy, muddy, shot-gun toting hunters; a clan of Elmer Fudds that looked as though they stepped out of an earlier century.

When I finally saw the above warning sign I understood that I had unwittingly bumped and jumped my way into a hunting zone. Although I have followed this same trail hundreds if not thousands of times, this was my first time to traverse la Forêt de Ferrière in February when every Monday is apparently boar hunting day.

Afterward, I thought to myself, “Dude, what a cool blog story! That’s some really intense living to tell about.” Too bad I didn’t have the instinct to take a digital photo with my cell-phone just as I was bunny-hopping the mangy canine that almost cost me, litterally, la peau des fesses. Soooo… As a sad consolation, here are a few unusual vélo angles that I snapped after the excitement…

I’m just happy to have lived to testify to the fact that so far in my life no French hunter has ever mistaken me for un sanglier…