French Alps 2026 Day 10: Geneva to Madison, Separately (Guest Post)

This is a guest post. The author was with me for every kilometer of the trip and asked for a turn. The opinions are their own, particularly the ones about me.

This has been a long time coming; Rider and I have been fully occupied. For nine days, a new land and new challenges. Days full of surprises, joy, and good company. It was an adventure worth chronicling. Rider has not been inaccurate, but their side has been told often enough.

Now, Rider and I must prepare for the long return journey to Madison, where Rider’s love awaits. They have been too long apart. I, of course, was brought along. Without me, Rider is merely a pedestrian.

Rider’s preparations are simple: garments, into a container. Mine are more elaborate. My protective suit envelops me, disguises me as one more container, but I am freedom itself.

Rider wakes at the usual hour and finds nourishment in our camp’s kitchen. A local ground courier, retained for such occasions, will escort us to the port where our passage begins.

Negotiations commence with the shipmasters, who guard access to the skies. For previous journeys, my fare was part and parcel of Rider’s. A single unit, paid in full. These shipmasters do not recognize our union and extort a fee for my passage, and Rider is in no position to negotiate. For a brief moment I fear being left behind, but I know Rider better than that. Such problems are solved with sufficient currency, as so many can be. We will not be deterred from our goal.

This mode of transport places Rider and me in separate classes of conveyance. The irony is strong: together we can go nearly anywhere, yet for this journey we must travel apart. There are riders, and there are the carried. The shipmasters treat me as chattel, so gauche as to weigh me in front of everyone. Riders are not weighed.

I meet their requirements and am handed off to the porters, but I monitor Rider’s whereabouts remotely. I enter the underbelly of the port while Rider roams freely above, with hours to laze about.

I suppress a bit of resentment. Rider has their own pressures. They know that this journey is composed of three legs, each carefully orchestrated and dependent on the one prior. Amsterdam. Detroit. Madison. One misstep by us or our couriers and the plan will collapse. This burden weighs heavily on Rider.

Our airship is readied. The riders board above. Below, I am stacked and loaded with the rest of the carried, most of them mere containers of garments. However, one of the carried is missing or obstinate or untagged. I am none of these, nor could I ever be. The journey is delayed while the shipmasters check the provenance of each of us, a time-consuming task.

Eventually, we are underway, but the damage is done. The original plan is irreparably broken before even one leg is complete. Rider is concerned for us both and knows that any new plan is another chance for me to be damaged or lost. I try to reassure Rider, but our connection is one-way. Rider knows not where I am and can only hope that the couriers adhere to their contracts of conveyance.

Upon arrival in Amsterdam, Rider finds the plan reforged. Boston replaces Detroit, and every other path to Madison would cost an entire day. The original courier (“KLM”) has hired a subcontractor (“American Airlines”) for the last leg because it cannot complete the contract as written. These two couriers are not friendly, but when sufficient currency is at stake, an uneasy alliance is made.

Rider boards the next ship, a larger one bound for Boston, with improved amenities and space to stretch. The carried do not board; we are loaded. Rider does not know that I am in the hold, and wonders for the entire leg whether the couriers have adapted to the new plan, or whether I am still in the underbelly of the port in Geneva.

Much time passes.

I am aware of our imminent arrival in Boston. I cannot see the city from the hold, but Rider can see all of it from their window seat. A magnificent view that can be enjoyed for what it is, despite the stress of the journey. A return to our own land, which, for better or worse, is still home.

Rider has the more difficult job in this transition. Ninety minutes and many tasks to complete. First they must disembark, which no one ahead of them is in any hurry to do. Then they must present their credentials to the local authorities, who scrutinize all who enter. The process is mercifully swift, and Rider advances to the great carousel, where we are briefly reunited. Together, we face another layer of bureaucracy, one that concerns itself not with the riders but with the carried.

Rider is exhausted.

Then comes a final separation. One more time, I am handed off to the head of the porters, to be prepared for the last leg to Madison. Rider must complete a trial of their own, traversing the entire port in mere minutes, or all this will be for naught and the journey will be on hold until the next morning.

Rider arrives at the next ship just in time, winded, as pedestrians tend to be. But upon presenting their credentials to the subcontractor’s shipmasters, they are informed that no such rider exists, and none ever has. The uneasy alliance does not extend to record-keeping. After so many hours and so many trials, it is one indignity too many. I was merely weighed in front of everyone; Rider has been unmade. For once, I concede that they have the worse of it. In time, existence is granted, and they are allowed aboard. Rider hopes I have been loaded as well. Rider will be disappointed.

The last leg is uneventful. From above, the first view of Madison makes Rider more homesick, even as home draws near. They arrive still full of hope. The great carousel delivered me to Rider once, in Boston. Rider goes to it again now and watches everyone else collect their carried. I am not among them. I am instead en route to Detroit, or so my tag insists, for reasons that cannot be known. Of the two of us, only I have kept to the original plan.

Rider is nearly alone in the port but finds one of the subcontractor’s porters still on duty at this late hour. The porter is friendly but cannot help. I am the original courier’s problem, they say. Around a corner, the original courier’s porter is equally friendly, and equally certain that I am the subcontractor’s problem. And so on.

Rider remains exhausted. Too exhausted to pursue the matter further, even for my sake. They can only go home, a rider with no carried. But they are reunited with their love, and I am glad of it.

Meanwhile, I am to spend the night in Detroit, mistagged, alone. I think of the one who delayed us in Geneva, missing or obstinate or untagged, and regret my tone.

I wait.

At midday, the porters come and prepare me for transit. My new tag claims Madison, but I have learned not to trust the tags. In the afternoon I arrive at another port and am taken to a holding cell. I have been carried for days and delivered nowhere. I no longer resist. There I wait to join the forever unclaimed.

Instead, the door opens and I see my Rider. Madison, after all. We embrace. Tears.