31st of July during breakfast Marie-Hélène planned the day with us. At first we had to find out if we could get our bikes fixed. She drove us to the biggest bike shop in Chateauroux called “Cycl’one” and people were standing in line for their bikes to be repaired like at the bakery.
As it was our turn we explained to Leo what had happened and that we needed their help. Problem number one: The size of the tire was quite big and he had to find one which worked with this model but at the end he found one. The next problem was the missing piece which I had lost yesterday and it was a clip especially made for this kind of axis on our bikes. They proposed to us to drive back to Saint Valentin with strong magnets and attract the little metal out of the gravel.
Third problem my broken: mud guard was also of a special size and they thought about how they could stabilize the broken one instead of the provisional duck-tape fixing.
As the bikes were already in good hands we let our brakes pads being exchanged too. The boss himself Julien took care of the reparation and promised to keep us updated about the progress during the afternoon. We were just back in time at home to have lunch together with Michel when they sent us a message that they found a clip in their repair shop.
So we didn’t need to make the detour anymore to Saint Valentin. That gave us the opportunity to visit the village of Sainte-Sévère-sur-Indre where Jacques Tat had filmed his movie “Jour de Fête”.
As I am a big fan of Jacques Tati during the whole French part of our trip the movie soundtrack lasted as a catchy tune in my head. Now we were at the famous movie set itself and we were so lucky to be the only guests in the museum. It is a one-hour show taking place in two different settings.
At first you enter into a cinema tent, which is also part of the original movie, and behind the screen a model of the village can be seen with the famous bike in front. Tati is playing the postman who discovers in the cinema that the American post works much faster and tries to catch up with his bike to be more efficient. So always in a rush he even loses his bike and has to run behind it. They showed takeouts from the production how they made the bike roll alone and Tati running behind it. It was a world full of lovely details and the perfection Jacques Tati had put into it. The second part was a studio of the inside of the bar where one of the co-workers explained the way they had figured out the tricks to make Tati look like he was biking. But in reality a second wheel was added to the bike to make it appear like it was moving. Often they had to do the takes again and again. Especially in a time when people were not used to being filmed and Jacques had to animate them repeatedly to move in the scene.
We had so much to discover and appreciated the love which was put into this masterpiece of cinematic history. At the end we took a photo of Robert and me as two times Tati together with Marie-Hélène as the old lady of the village beside the goat in only one single take. It was meant to be that our bikes were just in repair for that special day and location.
When we picked up our bikes they had even found a single mud guard for my front wheel.
The bikes looked perfect. We were so happy and celebrated our success together with Michel and Marie-Hélène in the Pizzeria “Il giardino” where I had my first coal doug pizza in my life.
We had so much to eat that our digesting walk through town needed to be extended more and more. Michel came at the end of the day to the conclusion: “There are no problems – only solutions!”
