I will ride a road bike through France and maybe into Spain. I will do this alone or with a lover or with a friend. I or we will begin each day holding shins and pulling at calves and then riding for two hours laughing and chatting or remembering and humming to the whir of bike wheels and breath.

I or we will stop beside streams covered with stone arch bridges.

Will pull cans of pamplemousse juice from canvas knapsacks and drink them standing, straddling, the bike’s wiry frame. Holding palms over eyes like skin-made sun visors in order to look off at mountains and fields.

Sometimes, in the late afternoons, I or we will pull into a road-side café and I will think I want a cup of coffee and it will sit in my gut all acrid and bitter until dinnertime comes with hunks of French bread to sop it all up.

If I am traveling with a lover I will often drink two glasses of red wine with dinner. And definitely cold beer at lunch.

If I am alone I will drink apple, orange, pamplemousse juice and either way I will pack fruit in my backpack and water in glass mason jars. 

One afternoon I or we may come upon a small quarry where mustard colored rock runs into warm green water. I or we may pull off willowy layers and cannonball in.

I will float on my back then with arms outstretched and think, I am in France! And ignore wholeheartedly things like schedules or the fact that the water has made transparent the thin cotton of my underwear.

Maybe then I or we will sit on the hot quarry rocks and lay out a picnic of olives and blood oranges and bread.

My hair will dry in frizzy coils in the sun and I’ll take my second water jar and drop in lavender leaves that the light will fall over and make into tea.

I or we will have been thrown off schedule by the afternoon swim and will arrive at the evening’s hostel after dark, smelling of fresh water and lavender for the sprigs I’ve tucked behind my ears.

There will be some town in which I or we spend the day, walking.

I will look down at my feet, curving over cobblestones in thinly soled shoes and think, I am in Estaing! Or Giorna! Or Lot!

One afternoon will dissolve into rain and I or we will ride through it, cold and miserable and later, warmed by bathwater made cloudy and white by French milled soap and Cote Bastide bath salts.

I or we will travel with one knapsack. Mine will be stuffed to near explosion with all the things I could possibly need though I will wear the same one dress or one pair of shorts for the entire trip.

I or we will wash underwear, socks, that one pair of shorts, in hostel sinks and restaurant salle de bains. Will lay them out to dry on handlebars, window sills, railings.

My or our hair will frizz in the heat and tangle in the wind and catch stray wisps of dandelion fluff or wheat fuzz. My long frizz will turn yellower each day I or we spend riding under rays of French sun and my skin will turn red and freckle but never tan.

If I am alone, I will start out taking photographs - fifty a day - and stop often for shots of old carts and road signs. By the end of my trip I will have allowed this action to wane. Will have settled into a contented acquaintance with moments minus the anxious will to hold them still.

If I am riding with a lover or a friend, we will start out undocumented and dissolve, halfway through, into gales of laughter, taking photographs of Together and everything we make uproarious along the way. 

When I leave France - or Spain perhaps - it will be happily. I will be ready to return. I will have peppered my legs with bruises and black bike-chain grease marks. I will want for car wheels and clean linen.

So I or we will turn in the cycles and zip wrinkled postcards into the front pockets of smelly backpacks. Will sip pamplemousse juice in the departure gate while flights are called in foreign tongues over echoing PA systems and sleep through an overnight flight in sweatshirts smelling of road dirt, Pre de Provence and lavender.