Shall I tell you how I had to burst into tears to get a tandem onto a bus in Luxembourg? Or about the Yugoslavian Customs Officer who wasn't going to let it into his country because there wasn't a maker's name on it to write on his form? (He eventually settled on "No nukes!" from the battered sticker on the head tube.)
The Yugoslavians were wonderful. They were happy because the crops were doing well, better than anybody could remember. More specifically, the ones that flourished in heavy rain were doing well. All over Europe dams were brimming over and mud slides were covering villages
Bang! Shhhh! Flapflapflapflap! We'd just left a chunk of tire lying in the road. The Captain couldn't fix it, thus destroying my profound trust in his infallibility. Time for the spare. "Oh, yes", said The Captain. "That was one of the things I left at home to save weight. Don't worry, we'll get one in the next village. It's only a few miles."
A footsore and rain-sodden three hours later we found that there were no stores in the village. But I was optimistic; standing in the tiny village square I knew that if there was a tire to be found, I would find it. And it was easy to recruit searchers:
"Hey, little boy, help! Yes, over here, look at this."
"Goomba!"
(Aha! So that's what it's called) "OK" (lots of sign language) "See this reward? First person to bring the right goomba for us gets the reward."
And not one of them fitted.
So I found myself limping through the pouring rain alongside a tandem with a perfect front tire and about three quarters of a back one. What else could we do? After standing in the gray square for a far too long, with water soaking through every fiber of my clothes, shouting "Goomba" ever more desperately, it came to me that I could either start walking or spend the rest of my life in a Yugoslavian village.
We started walking.
The night grew long and we kept walking because there wasn't anything else to do. A deeper shadow moved alongside us in the darkness. An old woman. She was talking to us, but we couldn't understand a word. Then she put her hands together and tilted her head to rest on them. Did we need somewhere to sleep? I could have hugged her.
She took me by the arm and led me into a shadow at the side of the road that turned into a small farmhouse. The Captain followed, still pushing the tandem. Inside there was a fire and food. The old woman looked at my shivering and took my hands between hers to warm them. She sat me by the fire and brought soup and potatoes. She dried my clothes and looked after me like a mother. We slept in the farmhouse with the old woman, and the chickens, and the pigs. It was like sleeping in granny's cottage in the woods.
The next morning dawned, wet and gray, and the old woman's son appeared. He and The Captain spent breakfast time looking at the tire and trying to understand each other. Eventually he showed us the timetable for a train which would take us to a town where they had every possible item anybody could want, and would certainly have a goomba. We said goodbye as if we were leaving our family, with hugs and tears and smiles all round. We walked to the station and the excitement only died when the train left without us because they wouldn't let us on board with the tandem.
We tried the café where the trucks stopped. I went inside and pleaded with the drivers while The Captain stood outside in the rain with his thumb pointing towards town. They all shrugged with that "I'd like to help, but..." look. I was insistent, and followed one outside. He opened the back of his truck and showed me how it was packed so tightly that it would have been hard to put in even our shredded goomba. The tandem was impossible. He pointed to all the other trucks, and to the wall of boxes in his. They were all the same, there was no fuel to drive part-loaded trucks in Yugoslavia.
There was no bus, and nobody owned a car. The village taxi didn't want to drive to town. If it took us, there would be no fuel for a month. Finally we paid him what he would earn in that month and, thinking guiltily of the people who wouldn't travel, we arrived in the big town where the goombas could be found.
For bicycle parts you go to a State department store, and the one in this town was big. A whole department stacked from floor to ceiling with goombas of every sort. The Captain handed over the remains of ours, and the clerk nodded. They had it! We laughed and smiled. He looked through the racks until he came to the place where the size we needed was kept. It was empty. "No problem,", his gestures said as he produced a piece of paper, a calendar. He pointed to it. "Plenty of goombas. Next Tuesday.
Postscript: The Captain says that it was all a mistake. They had the size, but marked differently.
Copyright © 2008 Giles Morris, All rights reserved