Unified Field

Einstein spent his life trying to develop the unified field theory of disabled travel, and although he failed, we still have this: DT = CC / €1000 x 2. In this famous equation, however imperfect, disabled travel (DT) is represented as a function of the calorie constant (CC) in relation to the value of the euro squared. To demonstrate the underlying principles, the disabled Europe-bound traveler can perform several simple experiments at (or near) home. Such an exercise is essential, as well as illuminating.

Let's start at the end of the equation, because this is where the math is easiest. Think of the euro as a playground kid. In fact, he is the childhood chum at the end of the teeter totter, a.k.a., the seesaw. Yes, these once standard and timeless items of playground equipment have fallen out of favor. Allegedly too many kids have fallen out of seesaws. Nevermind. There is still a teeter totter around somewhere, and imagine it. Imagine you are on one end and the euro is on the other. Be sure to choose a moment when the financial markets enable the euro to go up and the dollar to go down. You love your descent. You laugh as the euro is flung upward and you and your currency drop downward. Ha ha.

In fact, to really revel in this experience and fully prepare yourself for European travel, do what I did. Go into downtown Menlo Park, take several thousand dollars out of your bank account, go into the park across the street from Peet's Coffee and pull out some matches. First, light a $50 bill. Everyone will marvel. Go across the street and have a latte, then return to the park and light a $100 bill. Your neighborly coffee drinkers will applaud. Ready for that $1000 bill? Go for it. Have a triple latte, whip out the matches and light up. You'll be glad you did it. Because lighting up lightens up the burden of turning on the nightly BBC Business Report and watching the value of American dollars plummet. After all, you're spending a lot of them every day, many more than you want to know. Thus, the euro part of the equation.

The Calorie Constant is much easier to understand. It's 3000. No matter what you do, no matter where you go, every day, everywhere, you will eat 3000 calories. You can talk about lightening up. You can gaze bewildered at those trousers you let out just before you set off in your travels. You can do anything, but the Calorie Constant is always just that: constant. 3000. It doesn't matter whether you are aboard the Queen Mary 2, or in Gloucestershire cheese country, London curry land or Provence. 3000.

Next, consider the unknowns. This part drove Einstein nuts. He tried pulling out his hair. Then he pulled out all the stops. Then he pulled out of a bridge tournament, his membership in the local Rotary Club and a course in do-it-yourself hairstyling. Nothing worked. There were still unknowns that could not be accounted for and, as a result, Einstein spent his last years wandering around Princeton wondering if he should take up golf. In the end, he settled on miniature golf. The course was easier to conceive of at once, there was a windmill moving at a constant speed and, if you missed a putt, gravity would take over. Gravity was very important to Einstein.

Chance, unknowns, uncertainties, random events, fortune, fate. Want to see these factors at work? Let's go back home, to Menlo Park, California, sit down in front of a computer screen and take a long, hard and, yes, virtual, look at Aix-en-Provence, France. Why are we looking? Because we have had this simple spatial problem staring us hard in the face. The marvel that is known as the TGV, the world's most stunning and more or less fastest train, requires extremely straight tracks, and there's no way a railway line of this speed and import is going to hang a sudden left just to stop at a has-been provincial capital. No way. Okay, it will stop, but on the outskirts of Aix-en-Provence. About five miles out of town. And the problem? There's a bus into town, but according to the website for the local transit agency, the Aix-en-Provence tourist information office and God himself, this bus doesn't take wheelchairs. Five miles is a long way from your hotel room on a cold November night, and a railway station -- even a high-speed one -- is no place to sleep. That's why you have wracked your brain, stayed up nights late, had your wife phone France several times and hired a chauffeur with a special lift-equipped van to transport you (and, as the driver bragged, up to four cripples total) to your hotel room.

Of course, our driver wasn't there -- but miraculously it was no big deal to rent a Renault Kangoo, a van favored by Provençal plumbers and, in the future, all California cripples. And as discussed earlier on this website, problem solved. Actually, the final, ultimate problem was solved the following morning at the French equivalent of Home Depot. There Marlou ordered the most helpful staff to cut a piece of authentic Provençal pine, grown in Norway, to a 5 foot length and 2 1/2 foot width, which cost us the modest sum of $90, approximately (see the above euro seesaw principle for a fuller explanation). This 'planche' (plank) serves quite nicely to get my electric wheelchair in and out of the high-ceilinged Kangoo van. As for our special chauffeur with his van for four cripples, forget it. We have sent him on his Provençal way.

What does this prove? It proves that now that the weather has turned nasty, balmy Mediterranean days over and the more sinister mistral now blowing its way from the Alps, we no longer have plans. Yes, we have a map. But so did Einstein. Did that help him? Don't bet on it. Bet on four-wheeling with Marlou around the town of Saint-Rémy.. Remember, this is where Vincent van Gogh was hospitalized. We are, for the usual perverse touristic reasons, going to see this site of his clinical trials.

But something has gotten into my wife. We are taking what might be euphemistically described as back roads. We are on the outskirts of the byways of the periphery of the unmarked portions of semi-abandoned tracks that are not designed for tourists and, in fact, not on any map, existing solely for goatherds, agricultural workers and small-time olive thieves. The roads are barely one-lane wide, deeply rutted, exceeding 45° in steepness and, at one desperate point, we find ourselves not only lost (Marlou has not mentioned the 'L' word, but we are) and actually slipping backwards down a hill, tires spinning gravel. While my wife burns rubber, engine revving, spirits soaring, because, fuck it, we are traveling. And we know it, both of us, and there's no destination and there is no purpose and, trust me, there's no deadline.

Which explains, without seeing the famous Roman aqueduct up the highway, we decided to park in the magical disabled space that appeared in the center of town. A sign warned nondisabled drivers to 'take my space if you want to take my disability.' We warmed to this sentiment. Marlou spotted a restaurant beside the parking space. That looks nice, she said. No it didn't, I said. I knew what was happening -- she was getting cold feet. And why not? It takes nerve to back the electric wheelchair down the planche, all on her own, while I, the disabled husband, look on.

But it also takes nerve to patch out and spin rubber in van Gogh's back streets. So, it didn't take much encouragement to get Marlou out of the car, the wheelchair on the ground, and the two of us wandering the magical lanes, alleys and streets barely wide enough for a car. A provincial French market town, but a rich one, full of specialty shops for olive oil, linens, spices and, naturally, artworks. Of course, we were having a minor fight within seconds. Marlou accused me of dinking around while the luncheon clock ticked away, and her blood sugar lowered. I counter accused.

Then we both saw it. La Maison Jaune. Any restaurant that can afford to have the entire downstairs of a 18th century townhouse devoted entirely to lobby space is making a bold statement, isn't it? Naturally, there was no way up the sidewalk, no way in the front door, and the eating area was only accessible via an enormous flight of stairs. A flight of fancy, lunch in such a place? Absolutely not. This is why God invented batteries. This is why God invented Marlou. With power, and faith and the kindness of Provençal strangers, we were over the door sill, rolling my wheelchair into the dark recesses of the coat room and ascending the steps to one of the most delightful -- and most expensive -- lunches I have ever had. How did it happen? Ask Einstein.