Dreams of Paris-Brest-Paris

The other night I had a doozy of an anxiety dream that just might have had something to do with my upcoming Paris-Brest-Paris experience. It reminded me of dreams I had around finals time in college, you know the ones in which you realize you have a final exam in 15 minutes for a class that you never actually attended. And then as you’re running across campus to the exam you suddenly realize you’re naked…

So in this dream I’m riding on a bus—like a big tour bus—packed full of men in their 40s, 50s and 60s, most sporting gray beards and all wearing full-on randonneuring gear. And it’s not summertime gear they’re wearing; it’s long-sleeve wool jerseys, Showers Pass rain jackets, wool tights or rain pants and neoprene shoe covers as far as the eye can see. Everyone has big warm gloves. They all have helmets on too, with rear-view mirrors clipped on the side and tail lights blinking from the back. Some of them blind me with their helmet headlights when they look my way. I notice that everyone is dripping wet and the air in the bus is thick with the smell of wet wool, sweat and Gatorade. The windows of the bus are completely steamed up.

The bus stops and everyone stands up in the aisle waiting to get off. I’m one of the last in line to get off the bus. When I get off, I see that the bus is parked in a gravel parking lot in front of a very small and plain-looking convenience store. There’s no 7-Eleven or Circle K signage on the front, it’s just a white box looking more like a 1960s Russian grocery store than a modern U.S. convenience store. Inside the store, Randonneurs from the bus are milling around, looking for something to buy and some are already beginning to form a long line at the cash register. I walk up and down the two narrow aisles of the tiny store looking for something to buy, though I’m not hungry at all. There’s almost nothing at all on the dirty metal shelves. I finally grab one of two remaining Reese’s peanut butter cups and get in line. Once in line I notice that everyone around me is speaking a language that I don’t recognize at all and they are all handling some sort of money that I’ve never seen before. I have some of the money too. It has no numbers on it.

Next thing I know I’m outside sitting on the ground near the bus with a large three-ring binder in my lap. The binder is filled with forms that need to be filled out and it’s divided into numerous sections, presumably with one section for each control. The forms are long and tedious and require that I look up information on other forms in the back of the binder, and sometimes I have to find stickers on other pages in the binder and affix them to the correct places on the forms like the Publisher’s Clearinghouse sweepstakes entry forms that Ed McMahon and Dick Clark used to send to my house when I was a kid. Then I realize that some of the forms need to be signed by the clerk in the convenience store. I can’t bear the thought of going back in the store and revealing the fact that I’m the only person on the bus who doesn’t speak whatever language it is that the convenience store clerk and everyone else speak.

Now, I’m back on the bus and the bus is bouncing along down the road and it’s dark out. I’m still filling out the forms from the last control when the bus driver announces that we’ve arrived at the next control. Everyone is up again standing in the aisle waiting to head into the next convenience store. It’s then that I remember that my bike is still back at the last control and that I won’t get credit if my bike isn’t on the bus when I cross the finish line…