Welcome to a perfumer's blog on perfumery

- Arrived again after a rather heavy ride for some 85 km. Contrary to my last post there are less life threatening things to tell you… except for the fact that the heat around here is somewhat threatening, too. We arrived this afternoon in Sarlat, a beautiful medieval town and lucky as we are we even managed to get a hotel room. Kind of the best place in town….
- The French make wonderful bread that we love to eat, especially over lunch when we take a rest, if possible close to our final destination. It is amazing how hungry you get on the bike and how greedy we eat… Bread, cheese, fruits. The French also make great croissant, baked to perfection. But I cannot fight the impression that after their baking, the French forgot to turn the oven off. It is so hot…. and after 3 pm you definetively do not want to ride on the bike anymore. Thus, we see that we leave as early as possible to get to our destination before the afternoon waves of heat. On the road, it feels a little bit like being a water evaporating machine. You drink and immediately the water comes out of all body pores. I imagine how I get rid of all the old toxins with the sweat and make room for fresh toxins later in the evening when eating duck liver and drinking wine.
- Yesterday, we were in Bergerac, again a medieval town, on the banks of the Dordogne. On our way there from St. Emilion the landscape changed and the endless rows of wine plantations changed to corn and kiwi, lots of kiwis, indeed. We rode a while following the Dordogne which was wonderful….cool, with the water to the left, wonderful scents of green water, and a little bit of road kill from time to time.
- As we are not that fast….today we made on average 18 km per hour….there is plenty of time to think…in the morning, I usually think about usefull things, such as perfumes and packaging. Later the day, I stop thinking about scents as the heat kind of eats up the fragrance of the landscape, and the brain starts to wander around. Today I thought a lot about Jon Wayne, the big American rider on his horse. We passed by so many beautiful chateaux and villages and rarely stopped… So I figured out that Jon Wayne probably wouldn t stop either just because he sees a nice cactus somewhere. He moves on, riding his horse… You see…not much happening in the perfumer brain while being on the bike.
- Then I also thought about ducks. Because around every corner here you can buy fois gras and in the evening eat duck breast. We did so in a little restaurant yesterday in Bergerac. Wow…that was one of the best ducks I have ever met and it was just perfect, with the red wine from the region, the fois gras before with white wine from the region and a little goat cheese before desert. Amazingly enough I have not seen one duck so far. May be they are somewhere hidden, in a cooled room…or they are hiding… trying to safe their life.
- Tomorrow it is going to get tougher even… the temperatures will not drop and we have a trip of close to 100 km with a big hill in the middle. Time to do some Jon Wayne thinking again. Greetings from Sarlat.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 26th, 2006 at 4:47 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. Your comment is highly welcome, please join the discussion!