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Journal of Vietnam Bicycle Tour

Vietnam, winter 2000 [I]

Agelasto
2004-05-20 20:32:38

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Viet Nam, bicycle and Proust

(Day 1, 30 November 2000) I`m back in Viet Nam for my
second tour, picking up where I ran out of time, if not
steam, this past May, on the same bike with a replacement
part, this time a `sealed` bottom bracket -- sealed
against outside elements but I hope not sealing in selfcontained
problems -- hoping to accomplish the rest of
the best cycling this country has to offer and, if you
haven`t already guessed, going through my next author,
bringing with me his hefty (1 kg.) second volume (of six)
titled Within a Budding Grove, part of the In Search of
Lost Time saga, in which he, the author, whose style
influences this first and you might by now figure, indeed
desperately long against, never-to-end sentence, but you
would be wrong, for even Proustian, or pale imitation
Proustian, sentences must die, just as all living
creatures great and small (and a sentence in one ray of
light can be seen as vibrant, full of life force, and if
M Proust has his way, convoluted if not altogether so
meanderingly meaningful as to become meaningless in the
full light of day) pass away, and give birth to new life,
new sentences, but smaller, juvenile, more manageable
sentences, so you, the reader who may choose not to
commit your mind, or be committed in mind, to M Proust,
can survive the rest of my essay.

A creature of habit, I get to Viet Nam just as last time
-- bike to Shenzhen airport, fly to Ha Noi via Nanning
and am in bed by 10 pm, bike reassembled, pleasantly
surprised I have been well fed a real meal on a Chinese
airline! Since I had a few minutes to kill at airports
and on planes, I devoured my requisite 20 pages of M
Proust -- at this daily pace I can finish the volume
within my planned 30-day trip, time set both by visa and
cheap air ticket.

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