360 Degrees Longitude by John Higham Read Free Book Online Page B

opportunity, would present itself. It hasn’t. The best idea we have come up with so far is to send the kids to the shower to get ready for bed and then quickly move the tent before they get back. We haven’t resorted to that — yet. But it is starting to look like our best option .
    Most people go to Paris to see the Louvre or the Eiffel Tower, or to people watch at trendy streetside cafes. We were off to Paris to pick up our mail; the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower were mere perks.
    In the months prior to leaving California, using our general route as a guide, September researched the places we were going to visit and had amassed a mound of books about two feet high and three feet in diameter. These books were age-appropriate reading material about the places we were to visit, and formed part of the kids’ homeschool plan. September’s mother agreed to send us a package of books and fresh math homework every month so long as we supplied an address. We took care of the first shipment ourselves. The day before we left California, we had placed our first installment into the U.S. mail bound for Paris and now we were going to pick it up.
    Katrina and Jordan had already polished off all the books we had brought with us, as well as an extra infusion we had picked up in the U.K. September, tired of the preteen genre, bought a copy of The Da Vinci Code , and then placed it in my front right pannier.
    We had been advised that Versailles was a better base than Paris proper, as it was easier to approach and maneuver by bicycle. We planned to stay in Versailles to be tourists for a few days, leaving our bikes locked up at the campground and traveling into Paris using the Metro.
    We settled into a five-star campground near the Palais de Versailles that soon enough would be seared into our memory as the Campground of Shame: the worst of the worst and the one by which to judge all others.
    The morning following our arrival we made preparations to go into Paris. September returned to our tent from the shower. “How was it?” I asked.
    â€œAwful. It’s the insult-to-injury type. And in a five-star campground, no less.” The Campground of Shame still had more to offer, but we wouldn’t discover that until later. With no real agenda except to spend the day in Paris, we soon found ourselves sitting on a bench along the Champs-Elysées.
    In our party of four we were rarely more than an arm’s length from another and the kids wanted to be part of everything. As a consequence, no conversation was too trivial or too private to interrupt. We ate our lunch (yet another ham sandwich!) and watched a mind-boggling number of people rush past us. “Six billion is a really big number,” I muttered to myself more than to anyone else. It seemed a planet’s worth of people was pushing past us at that very moment.
    â€œWhat!?” the children demanded. “What are you guys talking about!?” It was as though the fate of the world hinged on every syllable we spoke; everything became a four-way conversation. We did find a solution for about an hour when we got to the Eiffel Tower.
    â€œRace you to the top!”
    I gave it my all for about two flights of stairs, then happily abandoned the lead to Katrina and Jordan. We paid about thirty dollars for the privilege of climbing halfway up the Eiffel Tower, only to find that it cost another thirty dollars to complete the journey by elevator to the top. In the interest of sticking to our budget we sent Katrina and Jordan into a hopelessly long queue to wait to go up to the top by themselves. They felt very grown up, and we were free to enjoy a conversation without its being punctuated by “Huh? What did you say?” If only they’d had a room for rent on the first deck.
    â€¢ • •
    When we’d first arrived at the Campground of Shame, we had the place virtually to ourselves. We set up our tent and had a nice chat with a