Chapter 6

A word of advice about renting a car in Europe; should you be under the constraints of a mileage clause, before you leave the parking lot, make sure you know how to check the odometer.

On the morning of July 16, our last day in Avignon, in my impetuousness I made the decision for both of us that we were going to rent a car, despite the fact that the Bretster was not looking favorable upon the decision. “I just hate to be cooped up all day in a car,” he said.I imagine for Bret it is somewhat like purgatory. My reason for renting the carwas that we only had one day left so let’s see as much as we can in that amount of time. Granted, I ’shit the bed’ on this one as they say because we only had 100 kilometers to work with and no idea how to view the odometer. Compound that with the fact that I also forgot to ask what the penalty was for going over the allotted mileage. I was looking for a little help from Bret when renting the car but he couldn’t be bothered and said, “This is all you Timbo. This is your thing.” Being that he is the consummate professional traveler, when he puts big things like this in my lap I am bound to make rookie mistakes. I suppose that is the best way to learn, however.

We were going to hit the lavender fields of the Luberon region, but that would have eaten up most of our guess-stimated miles so wewent straightto the Colorado of Provence, a combination of the Bad Lands of South Dakota and Colorado’s Red Rocks. We walked around there for a few hours in a section known as the Sahara and it was just that hot. As always, did some filming and put the camera up on a little mini tripod to get us both in the picture. Next time of course we will have a camera man.

We cruised around more that day, traveling from one touristy hill town to the next. The Bretster said, “You see what happens when you rent a car? You fall into the circuit.” The towns we visited were laden with sun-burned tourist with multiple cameras around their necks and the streets were crowded with cars, bikes, and mopeds. In Roussillion, you would have thought were were in Paris with all the congestion and the languages that were being spoken around us. As always, however, very little English speakers or Americans. It was quite a different experience from the small, somewhat quiet (except when we were there) hill towns of the Valcluse.

You would think filling a gas tank would be a pretty universal experience but no, not in France. ‘Things are a little different around here,’ is what we always say. After a stressful experience of trying to fill the gas tank with about eight cars in line behind me, we returned the car with six extra miles to go. Score one for us.

The stage was set for a mellow evening that night. We went into town, had a small bite to eat, came back to the campsite and kicked it in our camping chairs. We split a bottle of Rosè and Bret read the the Herald Tribune while I listened to music and organized some of my notes and index cards. By this time the friends we had met at the campsite had moved on and it was basically us and some new people. One of the new men was a very drunk man about our age named Pavel from Chechnya. His effort to communicate with Bret fell somewhere between passion and desperation and Bret was kind enough to entertain him. Like a good wing man, I hit pause on my iPod to listen in, however, I didn’t take the earphones off so as to not be dragged into the conversation. Pavel was going off about this and that and after a long time, he moved on to me. I snubbed him a bit, leaning into my tent to get something while he was talking to me and he got the point and moved on. A new German couple with their motorcycle, roughly our age, was next to us and said, ‘Do you have any idea what he is saying?’’Not a fucking clue,’I replied.

“He is a wery, wery crazy man,” said the wiry, scraggly-hairedGerman. Wewere surprised to learn that he was a Police officer and he confirmed our suspicion that his commander didn’t approve of look. ‘But there is no rule against it,’ he added. When he heard that our Jack Will Travel European operation was based out of Amsterdam, he said, ‘I like Amsterdam. It is a wery nice.Clean city,’ he added.’But every one there smokes the shit.’ We concurred.

Darkness was fully upon us as we talked to this couple for a while and soon Pavel came back. We are not sure what he was saying but he was able to communicate with the German police officer’s girlfriend who was from Borat’s country ofKazakhstan. She was a little red-headed girl with a tight body but tried to convince us she was blond;she had vixen written all over her. Pavel realized he could communicate with her and was chatting awaywhich made the German police officer not too psyched so in an effort to mark his territory as a dog might pee on a fire hydrant, he put his arm around her and pulled her in tightly to his body.

Pavel was going on and on about this and that andmaking some very exaggerated motions as if he was firing a rifle. Pieces of the conversation moved from Al-Qaeda and Islam to Christians and Christ and there were even hints of communism and fascism as well. He was very interested in the two of us and our opinions because we were Americans, even though we could not communicate with each other. It is in these instancesinterpretation takes on its own momentum and being that you can’t understand the other person, you mold what they are trying to say into what you believe they might be trying to say. What we pieced together from all of these seemingly non sequitur comments Pavel was making is that the U.S. Navy is fighting Jesus Christ in Brooklyn. Damn - I want to stay out of that war zone.

Our German friend became very uneasy and again I snubbed Pavel. I tried to tell him to keep his voice down because people were sleeping but he took it the wrong way and stormed off in a self-deprecating manner, as if he was going to start lashing himself with a cat o’nine-tails. Again, our German friend took the opportunity to tell us Pavel was a wery, wery crazy man and that he was going into his tent to get and sleep with his can pepper spray. In the meantime, Pavel was just pacing around the campsite as if he was on speed or meth. Bret started to get rolling and say things like, ‘Hey Timbo, we don’t want to fuck with this guy. He may have fought in the Chechnyan war or something. He could be really crazy.’Thiscomes from the fact that Pavel, who was pacing the campsite as a spy or ascout might do, was communicating with his friend over by their campsite making clicking and whistling calls back and forth to each other as one in the military - or a militia - might do.Bret was having a more fun time with thisthan myself. I had my rain fly on but Bret was saying,’Man, I want to see what he is doing and if he is coming at me,’ soI took my rain fly offto keep an eye on him all night. I was imagining an ax or sledgehammer coming down through my tent and my obituary saying something to the effect that it was such a shame Tim didn’t make itto see the morning of his 33rd birthday. I was so riled up, the half a valium I took to make sure I got a good night’s sleep for once didn’t even work.

In what I now view as a bit of an over reaction, I slept with my hand grasped to aknife on my chest that night. When I awoke, I would search for the knife as a child might search for his security blanket.It was a very restless sleep and every time I woke up, Pavel was still pacing. When I finally got up that morning, Pavel and his friend were packed up and just pulling out of the campsite in their car. They gave us a big, warm smile and waved to us enthusiastically. I am almost certain they didn’t sleep that night.

God speed where ever you were sleeplessly off to Pavel, my crazy incommunicative Chechnyan rebel friend...

Chapter 7