it

BY TRENT BONSALL

here are many _ways to
Texperience a foreign coun-
9 try and culture. Organized
bus tours are a popular option;
so is renting a car or buying a
train ticket and striking out on
your own. Touring on a bike,
h"owever, offers many rewards
thatjust can’t be found in motor-
ized vehicles.

I left my job with an intema-
tional organization last year to
pursue two passions — foreign
travel and biking. The months I
spent leading luxury bicycle
tours in France and Scotland and
observing the guests and their
individual experiences led me to
some conclusions.

When you are biking, all of
your senses are activated and
tantalized. You are not enclosed
in a climate-controlled glass
shell, but rather thrust out into
this new world with senses stim-
ulated and mind awakened. The
Provencal wind blowing over
the fields of lavender delight the
nose and eyes. The light mist of
Scotland delicately moistens
your face. The Highlands are
punctuated with the smell of fer-
tile earth and the roar of the
Spey river supplying water to
the whiskey distilleries. The dis-
tilleries themselves demand
your senses’ attention, emitting a
distinctive odor as peat fires
roast barley to make the Scottish
spirit. And atthe end of the day,
the culinary delights of a partic-
ular region are a welcoming
sight, and a tasty reward for an
active day spent in the fresh air.

Unlike sedentary bus tours,
bike touring is good for your
health. Even though bike tours,
especially luxurious ones, often
ignore calorie totals during
gourmet evening meals, indul-
gences are easily counteracted
by six hours of biking the next
day. Better still, those six hours
of exercise won’t feel like six
hours of exercise, what with all
the beautiful scenery, the
sounds, the smell of fresh bread
and pastries.

Bike touring encourages, if
not requires, interaction with the
locals. Too often, tourists buzz
through a town without once
interacting with a “real local,”
only to leave these folks in the
dust as the diesel bus roars out of
town.

But on bike tours, guests very
often come face to face with the
people ofthe area. Perhaps it is
just a friendly exchange in the
morning at the bakery while
buying a baguette for lunch.
Sometimes it is for more urgent

  

www.alysonadventures.com

reasons, like finding a bathroom

that doesn’t require a funny-
looking coin no guest seems to
have (French public bathrooms
do not take traveler’s checks).
Or perhaps it is asking directions
from a farmer upon realizing
that it is 30 minutes to dinner
time and there hasn’t been a
hotel, let alone a town, for three
hours. An amazing amount of
information can be exchanged
when. neither party speaks the
other’s language. The guest
comes away fi'om the situation
infinitely grateful to the fanner
for helping her find her next
meal, and the farmer has a good
story to tell that evening at the
cafe over a glass of pastis.
Guests on my tours have
been invited in for coffeetby a
Scottish couple up in the

Highlands. Another really lucky

couple took an interest in grape
pickers, -and”"was promptly
offered a basket of freshly har-
vested French wine grapes.
These experiences will be talked
about for years, and sure beat
postcards and lectures by tour
guides.

In all these situations, guests
experience the culture firsthand,
often with no intervention by a
guide. They learn a lot, become
more confident of their ability to
navigate in a foreign land, and
begin to break down stereotypes
they may have previously had
about the culture. Gone are the
phrases “French people are just
rude, they never smile, they
don’t like Americans...” They
are replaced by little stories
about the guest’s interaction
with a local, whether it was the
baker, the farmer in the field, the
grape harvester, or simply the
waiter at the restaurant.

Overcoming cultural preju-
dices can be accomplished in
much the same way as we coun-

teract homophobia. We break
the larger community or culture
into individual units someone
can meet and talk with.
Suddenly stereotypes do not
apply, and the other person
seems almost (gasp!) normal.
Sure, there may continue to be
large political or ideological dif-
ferences which separate the two
people. But the more I travel, the
more I realizejust how common
we all really are. The sooner we
realize that it is not our differ-
ences which keep us apart, but
rather our ignorance of just how
similar we really are, the better
off we all will be.V

Trent Bonsall is a graduate of
Middlebury College who has
worked and traveled abroad
extensively. He is currently liv-
ing in Grenoble, France, with
his boyfriend, learning a lot
about French immigration law.

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