R.I.P? No, wait...

Wow. Some realness went down this week… Well not this first part, so feel free to skip the next bit if you’re not feelin’ it. But later.

First off, we had a game in St. Raphael on the Med coast and it was maybe the single most ridiculous volleyball game I have ever been a part of. I don’t even want to revisit the sad event but suffice it to say that good competition doesn’t take place when both teams are trying to lose. To get all poetic on y’all, the essence of sport is lost. So why were we wanting to lose?

Well there are 2 major leagues/competitions here, the French Championship and the Coupe de France. If you finish in the top 4-5 places in the Championship, your team earns a bid for the following season in the Champion’s League or one of the 2 European cups. For example, we finished 3rd last year in the Championship, hence the journeyings to Romania, Italy, etc. this year. Anyway, this is all pretty important and prestigious and basically everyone competes in their country’s leagues for this chance.

Anyway, since you don’t earn a berth by winning the Coupe - and since Cannes, the top team in the French league has won every year since about 1904 - everyone figures there’s no point in spending more precious club bills to make the trip to wherever each round is played. So somehow this works out to, “let’s go to the first round and hopefully lose so we don’t have to advance” or something of the sort. We went with 5 players and a player with a torn ab, so we were fit to put up a good fight. We played the drawers off that game and (successfully?) lost. That’s about all the reminiscing I need to do about that. Not too sure why I wrote all that out now. Apologies.

Anyway I was less than pleased with the whole experience but when we got home Saturday afternoon, I realized that other than Christmas break, for the first time since September we had a Saturday evening off. The American and I located some tickets to the local pro rugby game and went in for round 2 of spectating. For the record, I still only understand approximately 50% of what’s going on.

I was late to the game but apparently before it got underway, the locals had a minute of silence for an older gentleman that used to play for the team and was a member of the club (or something like that) who had passed away. Please just take a sec to picture the scene with me y’all – some club official gets on the mic, gives some sort of tribute, and fond memories are quietly recalled during the minute of silence while the crowd of 10,000 strong remembers a lost friend… People are sad. Some people are also pretty shocked for reasons to become apparent.

Now fast forward to Monday - it comes out that this guy is not in fact, dead... Yeeeah.

Dude was ON VACATION.

Oh. Snap.

So ya screwed up...

Yeah I know y’all are sittin there, minds blown like, Say whaaaaaaat. Bahaha. And please believe, I couldn’t, heck, I wouldn’t make that up. Word on the street is there was an apology to the family in the local paper and such but ya can’t really take that one back too easily… Either way, that’s the way to get a warm welcome home after a nice holiday. On the bad side, the day this guy’s time actually comes, nobody’s gonna know to believe it or not. Took me a sec to process all that ridiculousness in one sitting, but try as I might I can’t even really begin to figure how someone just jumped to the conclusion they did. He missed the local bridge club meeting last week so he couldn’t be anything but automatically just dead, straight up…? And then they go ahead and even organize some public tribute without, I dunno, checking with the wife and kids? Pretty funny. More unbelievable.

Cheating Death

So this has been an interesting week. A collection of recent happenings...

First off, I had the rare opportunity to eat with wooden utensils at a post-game meal Tuesday. You read that right. A game on a Tuesday. It's unprecedented. Just kidding. But yes, wooden silverware, circa 300 B.C. I suppose silverware isn't really an accurate name at this point... But take a moment to appreciate how much more exciting a meal gets when you're eating off uncoated wood. A fool's just beggin' for a splinter. Lip splinter... now that's something you just don't get to say everyday.

Livin' on the edge

The highlight of the evening came when I showed the above "tools" to Matt & The German upon returning home (you better believe the American & I kept those. Collector's items, no doubt), whose first comment was "Hey, this is balsa wood.". Balsa you say... That was definitely my first thought when I saw those and put the first death-cheating forkful of eats in my mouth. Luckily my lips survived unscathed and will live to see another day.

Second, in keeping with the death-defying theme of the week, it snowed quite a bit ("quite a bit" in France means literally about 2 cm) and the country was in a panic. We decided it would be an opportune time to head to Carcasssonne, a sweet medieval city supposedly about an hour and a half away. The way there was an adventure since the GPS took us the back route through some sort of mini mountain range and it got down to a record -9 degrees Celsius which just blew the American's mind. Since I talked to my moms last week and she reported it was -31 out, I celebrated by pullin' out the flip flops and rolling all the windows down.

Family picture in the mountains

Unfortunately upon descending from the mountains, we discovered that not only had it had snowed at lower altitudes as well (and this was accompanied by a biting easterly wind) but the trip taken more like 2 hours. Lucky for us, this means we arrived in Carcassonne at exactly 5:03 PM, aka 3 minutes past closing time for EVERY shop, cathedral and restaurant in the city... Of course we did.

We did a quick once over of the ville, which was a crazy deja vu for me since the last time I was there was as a spry young 6-year old, navigatin' the cobblestone streets on one rollerblade while my brother was rockin' the other boot... Ah yes, 1992 was a good year and back in those days, a pair of rollerblades went far in the Meek household.

Anyway, we saw the outside castle-y bits and after finding that though every sign of human existence had vanished, the main cathedral was unlocked. If you've ever been inside a pitch black, empty, 400 year old building, you know how creepy it can be. The wind picked up at a key moment, knocking the half-open door about, which made us think they were lockin' up the place and we'd get stuck inside for the night. But we made it out alive and I cheated death for the 2nd time this week.


On the way home, it was sheer chaos. Apparently 2 cm of snow is cause for mass hysteria in France and people were driving at approximately 20 km/h (aka walking speed for the Americans out there), hazard lights a-flashin'. We saw one guy going maybe 40, but he was leading one of the convoys of cars we saw travelling in packs and so was just takin' one for the team to chart a course in the treacherous conditions.

Being that I've seen my fair share of winter driving conditions that put this "storm" to shame, it was time to show I had the skills to pay the bills. I was going a reasonable yet cautious 80 km/h and I think I gave more than a few monsieurs cause for concern. Plus it only took us 2.5 hrs to get home so we drove for 5.5 hours to spend 1.5 hours in Carcassone. A successful trip by all accounts.

By the way, to show that I wasn't just tryin' to be a rebel without a cause, all the snow melted the very next day... there was kind of a lot.
'

By the way, I neglected to mention we finally got new cars a few weeks ago.
It is now much more difficult to break traffic laws on the DL.

Finally, this has nothing to do with anything but it was my Frenchest moment so far so I feel the need to share with the class... My teammates were trying on each other's berets before practice yesterday. That's some realness. Who, under 50 or otherwise, owns a beret, let alone wears it, let alone compares it to someone else's and has beret envy? Only. In. France.

P.S. Today I learned that the French do not, in fact, call the delicious breakfast staple below "french toast" but pain perdu aka lost bread. Free lesson for the kids.