Le "Très Grand Vitesse", vraiment!

"Very Big Speed", indeed!

I am on board the TGV, on my way from Paris to Sete. It is a nice smooth ride, except for when we pass a train heading the opposite direction. Then there is a half-second or so of rumbling, and we are pushed to the side about a centimeter or two by the rush of air. (I assume from Newton that the other train is similarly affected.) It's only a half a second because we are going really fucking fast. For the first five or ten minutes I was not impressed, but then I guess they turned the boosters on, and since then we've been zooming. And I'm glad for that — the French countryside is nice and all, but, at least so far, it's not much to look at. Every once in a while there is a little town where all the buildings appear older than anything in the United States, but they might as well be Hollywood backdrops. There are also sheep, and trees, and cows. All the cows are white, which now leads me to believe that maybe the sheep I saw were cows, too, because since I realized that there were cows, I have not seen any sheep. They also look smaller and fitter than American cows; I guess it's not just us humans. And we must be in Dijon now, because there are a lot mustard fields. The yellow is actually very nice. It does a good job of breaking up the green. But if one color doesn't do it, how much better are two? I suppose if you count the soft blue of the sky we've got three, plus the white of the clouds and contrails, and the royal blue of the interrupting trains, and the mottled gray of the old stone walls buildings, and the rich brownish-red of the church roofs, and the light tan of the exposed dirt and gravel by the tracks. That's about it.

P.S. My seat is facing the rear of the train, so unless I crane my neck, I can only see what we are passing or have already passed. I'd rather sit facing the other direction, but I guess that's the way life is, isn't it?