June 2008

Photo of the Thousand Islands courtesy Ian Coristine

California dreaming

Every time we come home we ask each other if we are ready to reintroduce living in California into the mix of our lives. For the past 3 years, the answer has always been no as we felt that we could not get enough of the novelty in our lifestyle that retirement has provided us. This time we began to ponder the thought. No, we are ready to make the change yet but we are, for the first time, beginning to think of when. We are committed to renting our home out for 2 more years until Mandy finishes law school, and we figure it will take one more additional year of rental savings to make a dent in the expensive renovations that will then be required. After the past few years of minimal maintenance and the fact that the home is pushing 25 years it is going to be time for re-roofing (no mean feat on a geodesic dome), carpeting, re-tiling the kitchen, landscaping, repainting, yada, yada, yada.

Home in California just before we left on our big adventure

Every six months, as we transition from North America to Europe and back, we spend a week or so doing maintenance work on our home and 3 acre (1.2 ha) property trying to maintain it. At best, it is all we can do. While the interior of the house is in great shape, the property has never looked worse. I don’t mean 'bad' but just not anywhere near the level of care we had left it in. Our renters are 3 single guys who are rarely home. One is a model that does shoots all over the world, one lives with his girlfriend nearby but like to keep his own place as “back up” and the 3^rd is in and out a lot. But, they each have 2 cars, Jet Skis, surfboards, multiple trailers, a 6 person portable spa (in addition to our built in hot tub) and lots of construction tools and equipment as one guy is a contractor and all around pack rat. This does no harm to the house of course but makes the place look like a used car lot and outdoor storage facility.

We love that they are completely settling in, ensuring that we will have steady renters until we decide to pry them out with a crow bar. However, they don’t lift a finger to maintain the property in the manner that we do when we live in our home and it annoys me when we are there. I can’t help but feel like asking, “what are these people doing in our house?”

Anyways, we miss some of our old haunts. Just because California is on the bleeding edge of technology and societal evolution doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have some fascinating ties to Americas past. A short distance from the house lies the town of Pozo. Well, “town” is a rather generous description as the population is only 30 people.

Pozo saloon. The only changes are the paved road and cars

Established during the gold rush, its current claim to fame is it’s remaining saloon that caters mainly to motorcycle clubs and veeeeeeery lost tourists. The ceiling sports a few bullet holes and the “hanging tree” still stands at its entrance where justice was served to a horse thief during its colorful past. Within a short drive, we also have a few past stagecoach stops, which have been converted into restaurants.

Murder Inc.

No sooner had we landed in Seattle that my grandson Alex asked me if I would like to go a few rounds of paint ball with him and some of his buddies on a 5 acre vacant property. Never one to pass up an opportunity to try something new, I enthusiastically accepted. The guys soon got into it as to which team was going to get "stuck" with grandpa, who had no experience to boot. They joked about how he would be the first to be slaughtered.

Evidently, my 3 years as a military policeman including leading a military SWAT team attached to the secret service detail during a presidential visit to the refugee camp where I was assigned, or my 'expert' marksman ranking could not hold a candle to the tactical expertise of these trained killers and paint ball aficionados.

All of the players, except ... ahem, me, wore full camo uniforms. I was the funny looking old fart in jeans and a funky shirt who might as well have a red bullseye taped to his noggin. As we got underway, I low crawled my way to a dense brushed area and proceeded to make a poor mans ghillie suit by having twigs, leaves and foliage hang out of every area of my clothing and face shield that I could manage.

Now as close to invisible as I could make myself, I proceeded to stalk my prey. Since they all looked alike, I used the time honored principle of "kill them all and let God sort them out". The good news was that I managed to "kill" 4 out of the 7 players, suffering only a leg wound from a stray shot. None of the kids ever saw me coming, including the one I took out with a head shot from 8 feet away. The bad news was that I killed both my team mates. I guess I am better suited as a lone ranger....

The business end of things

Days before we pulled the plug and bailed outa-here at the Island last fall we went through our yearly ritual of having our “holding” tank pumped out. On any habited island that does not allow for a septic system and leach field (like ours), a composting toilet (which we chose not to have) or a holding tank stores the waste until it can be pumped out. Our tank is a 2000+ gallon (7500 liters) tank and with the addition of an ingenious gray water system it is sufficient for our needs for a whole season.

Phone company making a service call

It is amazing to me just how many services are available to the island community. Much like the phone company who shows up by boat for a service call, these guys just show up on a barge, snake a 4-inch line to the tank, fire up the pump and a half hour later are on their way. It is just like having our septic tank occasionally pumped out in California, only by boat instead of by truck. This pump out turned out to be particularly profitable for us.

As we spoke with the young business owner, our conversation turned to our ongoing search for a cheaper way to secure a shore boat slip for our regular trips to the mainland. Since we bought the property we have docked our boat and parked our car at two different marinas that are primarily intended for much larger boats and / or people who live on their yachts at the marina and use them as a floating cottage. Read “expensive”.

Our need is simply for a parking space for our car, boat trailer and 20 feet of dock on the mainland that we would use very little. To make a long story short, he ‘just happened’ to have a spot available at his family’s property that could not have been better located for us, at half the cost we had paid in 2007. This news became all the sweeter when a few days later we got an email from our now “ex” marina owner. He announced that due to improvements and upgrades that had been made to his marina, if we came back for the 2008 season, our fees would double. Talk to the hand…

Opening the cabin this year was no picnic. While everything in the house was basically OK, last year saw several new systems being added; Reverse Osmosis water filtration unit, an icemaker in the refrigerator, a dishwasher and a washing machine. This was in addition to the existing water pump, hot water tank, pressure tank, ultra violet filter, commercial sediment filter, shower, toilet, sinks and outdoor faucets. No big deal per se but in this environment …… a big deal. Since we do not heat the cabin in the winter and it freezes harder than a constipated Rhino, any water remaining in any machine will cause pipes, valves or pumps to burst. I have gone to great lengths to research just what I needed to do to protect the systems from freezing damage and it almost worked.

Technicians and manufacturers never expect their equipment to be in an unheated home so they are sometimes at a loss to know all the little nooks and crannies where water can hide and yes, they missed a spot. A few drops remained in the washing machine inlet valve and it ruptured. Of course we found this out when I turned the water on and it began gushing out of the machine all over the kitchen floor. That detail has been added to the checklist and hopefully won’t be an issue next year.

Then, just to keep things interesting, we picked up our boat from it's warehouse where I hitched the boat trailer to the car and drove the very short distance to the launch ramp. Unfortunately, I failed to notice that the boat trailer hitch was only resting on the top of the car trailer hitch receiver and was not properly seated on the ball.

My bad.

We got a few hundred yards down the road when we heard a 'clunk' as the trailer came off the car's half of the trailer hitch and began just sliding down the road behind the car. Of course the safety chains were attached (did you think I was completely dumb?) so the trailer just bounced off the back of the car trunk and bumper as I was trying to slow to a stop without dragging the trailer, yet without having the boat end up in the back seat. Yes there are a few minor dings and scratches but no worse than the scathing scowl I was met with from my co-pilot.

Thank you, Ian

Every month while we are in Europe I always use a photo of a local Chateau as part of my Epistle masthead. Then, when we are at the Bee I try to use photos that show off the area around the islands. Last year we became friends with a local photographer whose business is selling photos of the area, many of which were taken from his airplane. He has generously allowed me to reprint some of his photos in the Epistle and I will be using those during the summer months while we are here. They will be easy to spot. They are the professional looking ones that take your breath away and do the area justice. To see his whole collection, go to his web site: http://www.1000islandsphotoart.com

Whatcha doing?

Just because we don’t have any huge indoor projects left to do doesn’t mean we are sitting on our thumbs. After settling in, I set out to finish a bunch of loose ends such as window and door trim and laying acoustical insulation panels on the bedroom floors in preparation for the carpeting being laid. I also installed some architectural hand forged eye candy that I made this past winter in France and brought over. (and you wonder how we can have 200 lbs (92 kilos) of luggage!)

Widow trim and treatment that we finished upon our arrival after

cutting through the log wall and installing the view window last fall.

A lot of what we will do this summer will be getting rid of little piles. Piles of rock that I will use to close the space under the outer edge of the cabin walls. A little pile of insulation that I will use to finish insulating under the floor of the main cabin. A pile of logs that I cut out of a wall when I installed the dining room view window that will become the base to the outdoor kitchen prep area for the BBQ. A small pile of hardware cloth that I will wrap around more trees to protect them from the beavers. Each little pile that is used up makes the place tidier and finishes incomplete projects. But first, it is time for lemonade and to go ponder it all at the dock………..

May, 2008

Chateau Bonne Fontaine

Chateau Bonne Fontaine lies along the Couesnon River, at the frontier between Britanny and Normandy and is a fortified castle built by Duchess Anne de Bretagne's chancellor. It was erected around 1547 when King Henri II gave the authorization to Pierre de La Marzelière to build a fortification. I find it ironic that many of these castles seem to be situated out in the middle of nowhere. By today’s standards they are magnificent but not where you would necessarily want to live. Often, they are not near any big city, (but some are) beach (but some are) or any place where the neighborhood is such that you would want your castle near (although some are).

It is privately owned and this is as close as we could get. I had to climb over a fence and slither up to the tree line to get this picture. [Note to all the legal beagles in the family: this was not trespassing but merely exploring and recording France’s historical heritage so that I could share it with you…..]

On the road again….

As I signed off last month, I mentioned that we had just arrived in England for a 2 week break (from what?). Once again, we felt that we scored big time with a magnificent home exchange on the Ouse River in Bedford. You can take a sneak peek of the house at:

http://www.homeforexchange.com/England/Bedfordshire/1540-Riverside-town-house-and-narrow-boat-with-shared-island-Non-Simul-Exc-Poss.html (You can see the cantilevered deck with flowers off our bedroom above our canal boat in the photo).

Once settled, Janice and I first toured the Cathedral in Peterborough. Built in 665, this is where two Queens were buried: Katherine of Aragon and Mary Queen of Scots. Then, we caught up with 2 of my coolest aunts and uncles (Pierre and Kimberly) who had arrived from Arizona to join us.

Windsor castle

Together, we visited The Royal Air Forces Memorial at Runnymede (where the Magna Carta was signed). Here, 20,000 names of lost air crews from WWII whose remains were never found are inscribed. An uncle whose name I was given, was presumed to have been shot down off the coast of Spain after failing to return from a mission in WWII, is memorialized there. Being only a few miles outside of Windsor we decided to tour the Castle and see if perhaps her Majesty would care to join us for lunch. (She had a prior engagement)

As part of the home exchange, we also had a 30 foot (10 meter) canal narrow boat available to us so we took a daylong cruise downriver through the countryside traversing a number of locks. There is no staff to control these locks so you are entirely on your own. It is a very different kind of boating for us as this bad boy had a top speed of 4 MPH (6 km/ Hour)

Warwick Castle grounds

Deciding that we needed to pick up the pace, we took the train to London for the day. We visited Churchill’s underground bunker war room where he directed his forces during WWII, had dinner and took in an evening theatre show.

Shakespeare's house

Throughout the week, we visited Cambridge, a water mill in Stotfold, Warwick Castle (one of the best collections of medieval weapons in Europe), Stratford-upon-avon (Shakespeare’s birthplace), Ely and the 5000 year old Neolithic flint mine at Grimes Graves (flint from this mine was used in the flint lock rifles in the US revolutionary war).

We may have been having a blast but time was up for the working stiffs so we ran them out of town on a rail (they took the train back to the airport). While we missed them dearly we managed to raise our spirits by visiting the ruins of a roman villa in North Leigh and spending the day in Oxford. Rounding off our visit of the “Midlands” we toured the Bronze age museum and ongoing dig at Flag Fen, visited Nottingham castle on the edge of the Sherwood forest and the Canterbury cathedral.

Warwick Castle's collection of medieval weapons

Every trip has many positive aspects but there are bound to be a few less positive observations to be made also. On the minus side, I have 3. I have always known that England has a plethora of CCTV cameras but we don’t recall seeing nearly as many when we last visited some 14 years ago. This time I was dumbstruck by the sheer number of them and how “watched” I felt everywhere. It should not matter, I suppose, since I was not doing anything wrong but somehow it did. It is 1984 in 2008.

The second is my ongoing whine about the cost of living here. I had been warned by our Brit friends that the UK is very expensive, and shezam!, were they ever right. At first blush it seemed expensive but not horrible. A $6.00 glass of wine in a restaurant, $15.00 to $18.00 entrance fee to many castles and museums, $4.00 / hour parking in public lots,$5.00 a gallon for gas, even a $7.00 hamburger at McDonalds. Then it hit me. I was not paying in dollars but in Pounds. Double all the above figures.

Finally on a related topic, was parking. I have never seen such a fanatical emphasis placed on the subject. It soon became obvious that this is a big deal here, as we often could not find an available space in public parking lots (parking on the street is all but out of the question) and even residential areas are metered. Generally, people pay for the time they want to park in advance and place the receipt on the dash so it can be seen. You cannot “add” time to it later without buying a new ticket so you need to be precise in knowing how long you will be gone or pay extra for time you won’t use. Even restaurants and department stores charge for parking in their own lots. The kicker is that the parking enforcement police hover like vultures, going through one ticket book after another as fast as they can write.

We discovered this when upon our return from visiting Windsor Castle we found that our car had a metal “boot” clamped onto the front tire as we were 6 minutes over the grace period for our prepaid parking allotment.

Did I mention it was only 6 minutes……?

The fine? $250 (£120 or 158 €). Cash only, please.

Leaving England, we ferried back to the continent and took a little detour home by driving to Mastricht in the Netherlands to spend a week with Mandy before leaving for the season. Ferry rides can be pretty boring but ours was thrilling, to say the least. As we approached the French coast on a clear sunny day our ferry veered suddenly to starboard (right side), listing at an angle sufficient to send every glass, wine bottle and stack of dishes on the bar nearby crashing to the floor. I immediately told Janice to brace herself for the collision that I believed would surely follow when the boat veered as much to Port (left side). Mentally I began to plan for our exit strategy from a boat laying on its side but there did not appear to be any good options. Passengers began to point outside and when I looked I could see the wake from our boat with a large 10 foot (3 meter) steel oceangoing buoy right smack dab in the middle of the wake. We had run over a buoy and there was not even an announcement made.

Staying at---where else--- yet another home exchange at a large farmhouse just outside of town, we had a chance to see Mandy’s room, her University and her town.

3 borders meet: Mandy is standing in Germany,

Markus in Belgium, Janice in the Netherlands

Mandy’s beau (Markus) accompanied us to Aachen to visit the throne in the Dom (where Charlemagne’s coronation was held in 800) as well as the museum in the basement vault that contains gold encased relics that we saw including - it is said - Christ’s belt from his robe.

A particularly thrilling experience for me was when Markus took me to his glider club on base at the Geilenkirchen air base, home to NATO’s AWAC planes in Germany. His instructor strapped a parachute on me (reminded me of my college skydiving days) and took me up. They use a winch with a 4500 foot cable (1500 meters) and pull the glider from a dead stop to 100km / hr (60 mph) in 3 seconds. Not quite the jolt of an aircraft carrier launch but similar to a Formula 1 racecar. Additional excitement was provided when the cable broke mid takeoff. Unusual but not unheard off, it caused my flight to be cut short while the pilot bled off altitude by spiraling into tight turns (we were at about 900 feet [290 meters]) taking us back for final approach. Wow, dude! What a kick.

We wrapped up our visit with Mandy by visiting the caves in Remouchamps

http://www.mondesauvage.be/grottes/fr/point.htm

Safe to say we have seen our share of caves over the years and have seen some bigger (Carlsbad caverns in New Mexico) and longer (Mammoth caves in Kentucky is the longest in the world at a staggering 365 miles [587 kilometers]). Like Chateaus and Castles, they are all different and each has it’s own special little something. This one was no exception with -according to their web site- the longest subterranean boat trip in the world. It was a very impressive way to visit a cave.

Finally we spent the day in Wuppertal Germany with our friends and Mandy’s former high school host family Ulrich and Annegrette. One big last goodbye to Mandy and we drove back home to France.

We now have a half dozen home exchanges under our belt and have absolutely loved them. We have much better and larger accommodations than we would have had if we stayed in a hotel, at no cost. Since we have our own car here, that’s pretty much of a wash also. This is our 4^th winter here and we have put 70,000 km (44,000 miles) crisscrossing the continent. It has done exactly what we wanted when we bought a home here, a chance to travel all over Europe and get our yearly fix of culture, travel and history in manageable doses, returning to our maison-away-from-home for periods and catch our breath.

The home exchanges however, have gone wild. We have exchanges lined up in Maine before we leave the East Coast in the fall, a stunning Chalet in the Swiss mountains as well as a wonderful place in Bordeaux in the South of France next Spring to share with family and friends. An exchange for an absolutely spectacular home in Helsinki (Finland) had to be put on hold due to projected inescapable liquidity constraints, demanding wholesale fiscal discipline, necessitated by the aeronautical savings kitty. In other words, we’ll go broke and won’t have anything saved for an airplane. We get an average of two exchange requests per week for Australia and regularly get some from Brazil to Hawaii (We had to turn down Maui ….grrrr!) It is a good thing we started this retirement gig early as we have a lot of ground to cover.

The Memphis Belle

Recently, Janice and I re- watched the movie “Memphis Belle”. It was interesting to us because we have visited her in Memphis a few years ago. If you are not familiar with the Belle, she became a famous bomber in WWII because during the war, the air force had set 25 missions as an incentive for air crews to go home. Morale was extremely low because 80% of the bombers were shot down during the first three months of America's combat flights over Europe. The Belle was the most famous because she was the first heavy bomber in Hitler's European war theatre to complete 25 combat missions and keep her entire crew alive without a single major injury.

No major injuries to the crew maybe, but that didn’t mean to the bomber. In that time span she was bullet-ridden, flak damaged and had 9 engines replaced, both wings, two tails, and both main landing gears.

The BELLE shot down eight enemy fighters, is believed to have destroyed five others, and damaged at least a dozen more. She dropped more than 60 tons of bombs over Germany, France and Belgium. During her 25 missions she flew 149 hours and covered more than 20,000 combat miles. She is the only B-17 to have her own file in the Air Force Film Depository.

The movie caught our attention because of the number of bombing runs made in our neck of the woods here in Brittany. She laid waste to several cities including that of Brest, which was and remains to this day a large naval and submarine base. During the war, the infamous U boats sailed out of there.

Boneheads

Janice and I like to think that we are a couple of smarty pants, having made some good decisions that have paid off. Sometimes though even the best of us seem to be vying for the dumb and dumber award.

We take our airline flight times very seriously and make a practice of showing up quite early, but this time we cut it a little close to catch our flight from Paris to Seattle. Ehhh…actually a little too close as we arrived 10 minutes after they “closed” the check-in counter even though our flight was not departing for 1 hour. They were quite understanding, rescheduling us for a flight 24 hours later (US Air only has one flight per day out of Paris). We were forced to schlep our 200 pounds (92 kilos) of luggage to an airport hotel and cool our heels. Airline fees, fines and hotel: $650. Lesson learned: Priceless.

This being 6 and 10 minutes late business is getting a little pricey so we are going to have to straighten up and fly right. I just wish there was someone we could blame, other than ourselves ……

God Bless America!

As we go to press, we have pulled the plug for another season and have just flown to Seattle Washington. We had a blast in Europe, but God is it good to be back home in America. At some point you just have to get real and take a break from ‘adjusting’ to everything all the time. Occasionally we would see TV documentaries of San Francisco, Monterey, Carmel, Big Sur or some other place in California that is the center of the Universe and I must admit I would feel a little homesick and long to drive the PCH (Highway 1 in California is called the Pacific Coast Highway) to Santa Barbara or Ventura. It is not to be - yet- but it will come. It is hard to describe but here everything feels so….. “je ne sait quoi”……normal ! After making the rounds to see all the kidlets and their hatchlings, we will be back at Honey Bee on June 1^st. Yahooooooooooo!!!!

Meanwhile, we were introduced to our newest granddaughter Megan Grace, a real doll.

April 2008

Is this cool , or what?

Le Chateau de Fougeres

As you know, for the past few winters, every month ‘The Epistle’ has featured a local castle or fort that we have visited. This month’s choice is reportedly the largest Medieval Castle in Europe, the Castle of Fougeres. I say ‘reportedly’ because a quick Google search lists a half dozen other castles making the same claim, and we here at ‘The Epistle’ don’t play fast and loose with the facts. Recently we spent a warm sunny day there where we had a superb picnic lunch. [Note to family and friends in Canada: warm and sunny days are what you saw last August, remember? :) ]

Built in 1000, is has seen its share of sieges, fires, pillaging, plundering, destruction, repairs and rebuilds. Visiting it would be any little boy’s dream, not to mention the budding princesses amongst us. The town is one of the prettiest we have seen anywhere, with charm and postcard type beauty rarely found. A creek runs through the medieval section of town, snaking through people’s back yards and the business district. Another unique feature is the numerous “trompe oeuil’s” throughout the town. Some are several stories tall covering the entire side of a building and are as convincing as any Hollywood backdrop I have seen.

Busy as beavers

Realizing that the clock is ticking and that we are running out of time, this month saw us moving ahead on this year’s planned projects. We finished laying the sound insulation barrier and tile in our Master bedroom, bathroom / dressing room. This entire project was no mean feat as it enlarges the usable footprint of the house by 25%. The area encompasses the entire 3^rd floor of the house and is larger than all 3 of our guest bedrooms combined.

Knarly, twisted, warped beams

testify to the age of the house

Wood pegs hold mortise and tendon jointery

Having heard that a local had their hot water heater replaced and then presented with a $1,600. bill, I decided that a smart boy would do a little preventative maintenance and replace ours before we left. As things always take longer than expected, I allowed several days to get it done. Good thing too. Predictably, everything that could have gone wrong did. I have been blessed with three homes that have impossibly confined mechanical closets. I appreciate the extra space for years, then curse my decision when it comes time to service anything. I'm getting in the zone though as I will be replacing the hot water heater next month in California also.

Next, we tackled building Janice a ‘Breton’ bookcase. We found the face of an old Breton bed enclosure at a salvage yard and built a bookcase into it, mounting it in the living room. If it appears small for a bed, it is because it is. Historically, the Breton’s were very short people to start with and believed that only the dead laid down, so they would sit up to sleep. They built an enclosure with sliding doors or curtains that would close the front so they would be warmer inside as the homes were not well heated.

I got the finishing touches done on all the bits and pieces I have forged over the winter to take back to the Bee. Our village blacksmith who has been my 'instructor' for the past few winters mentioned that I have made a lot of progress this year. He said that I used to be a danger to have around but now I was just useless to have around. He said that if I made as much progress next year he would get me a 'junior blacksmith' medal. I will miss him too.

Installing Satellite dishes: Yet another

occupation I don't want to do for a living

To wrap things up we got rid of our poorly installed, useless French satellite and replaced it with a proper English system. This allows us to see UK satellite TV, some of which is US programming sold to the UK for re-broadcasting.

Our friends Carl & Jacqui have installed so many of these that they were almost able to point directly at the satellite and had us up and running in no time.

We also decided that in spite of our best intentions, the kitchen remodel was not going to happen this winter. Too much play, not enough work. That’s OK, we will have that much more to look forward to when we do get around to it.

Did you know…..

Many people don’t realize that when you board an airplane to any foreign destination, from virtually any location, during your flight your passport number and personal identification information is forwarded to a modern 5 story building in Lyon, here in France. There, the information is checked against the database for stolen passports, known terrorists and other wanted persons lists at Interpol’s global headquarters.

Currently headed by the first non European, is American Secretary General R. Noble, former undersecretary for enforcement at the US Treasury- who oversaw the Secret Service and ATF, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms. Because of their efforts, bad guys are routinely met worldwide and arrested at their gate upon arrival.

We don’t live in Paris!

Occasionally, I still have friends in America ask me “So, how’s Paris?” It’s understandable, I guess, when they are so far away and they know that we are in France. But it is a little bit like someone asking you “So, how’s Kansas city?” Other than what you hear in the news, how on earth would you know?

People often assume that if you are staying in some little hole in the wall in France it could only be in Paris. It is probably for the same reason that any first time visitor from America to France would be unlikely to visit anyplace in the country before going to Paris. Ditto for Rome in Italy, London in England, etc.

The average French man (French person) typically thinks of ‘travel’ as going somewhere within their own country. When they do travel to foreign destinations, North America is not usually their first choice. A real revelation to me was that even when they do venture there they often choose to go to Quebec City in Canada.

Quebec City?

Quebec City gives them a feeling that they have gone “all the way over there” but in a familiar setting (old town Quebec looks a lot like parts of France) and being the only part of North America that predominantly speaks French. They then return and tell all their friends that they too have seen and visited ‘America’. The really bold and adventurous types fly to NYC as it holds the same magical fantasy lifestyle images in their minds as Paris does to ours.

What’s a Langoat?

It’s not a what, it’s a where, and it’s here where we have our little hole in the wall in France. It is not pronounced LAN –GOAT but rather Lan-go-at. I have not done a good job of describing the location in my monthly ramblings in the past so I will attempt to do better here.

If you look at the map of France you can see where we are situated relative to Paris. Brittany is due west of Paris on a spit of land that juts out into the English Channel. The Normandy beaches would lie between us and Paris. We are right on the Atlantic coast, only a hundred or so miles from England. We are 6 hours from Paris by car or about 3 ½ hours by high speed train with the station being about 25 minutes from the house. We have an airport nearby but the daily flight departs and arrives at times that make it impractical to fly to and from Paris when we come and go.

Historical photo of our village shows very tip of our
chimney. Other than the paved street and the cafe
now being a private residence, it’s exactly the same.

Our village is on the banks of the tidal river “Jaudy”. When the tide is in, it fills the river bank to bank but when it is out, it leaves only a muddy river bottom. It is as if someone pulled the bathtub plug. We have the remains of a Roman path at both ends of the village. Our coastal area is full of diverse beaches; some are sandy like our beach at home in California, some have house sized pink granite boulders, some look like the beaches of Monterey, others are beaches where the tide can recede as much as 3 miles. We have never seen such a wide variety of beaches so close together anywhere in the world. It is here that we have found our winter maison-away-from-home.

Our village only has a thousand people in it, and that includes all the farmers within a 1 mile radius. We live in the very heart of the village, ground zero on the main street. Langoat only has 8 businesses: a grocer (about the size of a ‘stop-n-rob’), a physical therapist, a hairdresser, a bar, (more like a newspaper, tobacco and coffee shop combo), a blacksmith, 2 mechanics and the can’t-live-without-them bakery / patisserie. Otherwise, there is the mayor’s office, a tiny library, the church, 2 chapels (closed) and two primary schools.

Photo taken a few feet from our front door. Again,
other than the paved street, time has stood still

Within spitting distance, we have 3 “Petite Cite de Charactere” [Little cities of Character]. These are villages that have received this designation from The French government as a result of their ‘displaying characteristics of a historic town and an urban heritage which reflects their history and once prestigious role, including a minimum of one listed or classified monument and a collection of interesting and homogeneous old buildings’. They are amongst the classiest villages and there are only 21 of them in all of Brittany.

Our home, “Le Coq Noir” ["The Black Rooster"], so named because of the large forged sculpture featured by the front door, is a maison, or town house, while a manoir, is a larger house sometimes with a tower. Our attic is made from wooden beams that are numbered and notched. Our home has a nice terrace, framed by a stone wall, providing privacy, quiet, and the perfect place to read or listen to the church bells that chime each hour, as they have for centuries.

Our friends Lucy and Sophie occasionally drop
by after school to do crafts and 'help' us make pizza

While we are here, we try our best to fit in to the local scene and lifestyle. We have adapted to many local traditions, including some of which seem odd but are always cute. We furnished our home with several pieces of traditional ‘Breton’ furniture. Stuff I wouldn’t be caught dead with owning at home, but very appropriate here.

We eat dinner European style at 7:30-8:30PM (time here is spoken of based on the 24 hour clock so Janice, never quite having caught on, calls it "21,300 o'clock!"), and then revert to the earlier meal when we go back for the summer and fall. Speaking of dinner, here Janice makes her salads the “French” way, that is, salad with lettuce leaves only, which is served at the end of the meal. This is followed by the obligatory cheese platter. Cheese is great but with every meal? Its ok I guess, if you are a cheese freak but with well over 200 types available, it’s hard not to be one.

Again, a few feet from our front door, Gen. Patton's
US Army freeing our village from German occupation

While here, we even set the table the traditional ‘Breton’ style, with the forks laid backwards. The tradition came about when people had their family crest stamped on the back of the utensils and this was the way to display it. We have no such crest of course, but it is a tradition we follow regardless.

We were invited to neighbors for lunch recently, and we sat at the table for 5 ½ hours, eating , talking, eating, visiting, and eating some more. After 4 ½ hours I cracked a joke about “when was dinner going to be served”? When they did not seem to find it funny, I upped the ante by saying that if we stayed any longer we would have to spend the night. Clearly not amused, they looked at me as thought I was being rude and in some kind of hurry. I tried to play it off but the damage was done so I vowed to sit there all night long if necessary but I was not going to be the first one to get up. When we did, my butt was numb from having sat so long. Here, you have to stay long to get along.

Newspaper article regarding our participation in local
beach cleanup after huge storm. Just typical non Kyoto
signing Americans single handedly cleaning up the planet!

Predictably, eating in a foreign country can expose you to some interesting dishes. Some very good, some…..well, not so very wonderful. One host served us Tripe soup, which consists of the lining from the first three of a cow’s four stomachs, the fourth being used for making dog food. It was unquestionably the second most revolting thing I have ever put in my mouth, topped only by a plate of octopus suction cups I was once served in Mexico. It tasted like a cross between a bowl of pus and vomit. Try that and remaining diplomatic….

Real resistance

I have written before about the number of older French men who “remember” just how heroic they were in resisting the German occupation during WWII. I always listen to such stories with a huge grain of salt because time has a way of embellishing the events for dramatic effect. Recently though I did hear of an event that has weathered the withering scrutiny that we subject it to before sharing it with you.

It seems that in July of 1944, German troops in our area were alerted to a cache of weapons being stored for the resistance at a local farm called Covenant Pennec. Descending upon it, they searched the house from top to bottom and then began searching the barn, sheds and all of the outbuildings. Standing by in the adjacent field was an artillery piece, ready to level the house if anything was found. The execution of all of the family members would have surely followed.

When the searching troops got to the pig barn, one of the sows felt quite threatened over all the excitement and began taking an aggressive defensive stand to protect her young. Deciding that they had had enough, the soldiers determined that having found nothing, this was going to be ‘good enough’ and left. All of the pistols, ammunition and machine guns stored in the rafters above their heads were never found. The house has been renovated and is now owned by our friends John and Claire who are currently converting the old pig barn into a playhouse for their 4 children.

On the road again...

As we go to press we have just arrived for a 2 week vacation in England followed by a week in the Netherlands. We drove up the French coast yesterday, stopping in Avranche to visit another WWII Normandy invasion museum and then had a picnic lunch at the harbor in Le Havre (A UNESCO World Heritage Site). We crossed the 20 mile channel by ferry and drove to Bedford, just outside of London. [Full disclosure: Our Brit friends go postal when I describe distances like this. They consider a mere 56 miles wayyyyy out of London. To put this in perspective, consider that all of England would fit in Southern California.]

It sure seemed odd to have a couple of Americans driving their French car in England at night in the pouring rain....on the 'wrong' side of the road. We are joined by my aunt and uncle from Arizona who will be staying with us at a home exchange we had arranged. All the gory details and a full report on whether we are still family to follow next month.

The Epistle, March 2008

Chateau Coat-an-Noz

Psssst!

Hey buddy, wanna buy a Castle?

OK, I’ll admit it. Yes, I have fantasized about buying and ‘fixing up’ an old abandoned castle or two and over the years during our travels here we have seen plenty of them available. We crawl all through the ruins and layout all our plans regarding what we would do first and just how incredibly cool it would all look when we would be finished. They come in all sizes and conditions with some actually for sale and some well….who knows? Some seem to have been abandoned for so long no one has any idea who owns them or if they would have any interest in considering a sale. We found one a few weeks ago that is a perfect example.

Chateau Coat-an-Noz is about 20 minutes from the current ‘Chateau Laprade’, located in a forest bearing its namesake. Built in the mid 1800’s by the countess of Sesmaisons, it is not particularly old by European standards. It was purchased by Sir Robert Mond (nickel magnate) in 1929 but he shortly went bust. A succession of owners followed, none of whom managed to get their act together sufficiently to bring it back to its former glory. There is conflicting information as to whether the place was used by the resistance or occupied by the Germans during WWII. Either way this bad boy is ready for picking.

The exterior structure is all but pristine as there is very little stone work that would need repair. Sure the roof would need to be re-slated but that is to be expected. The place has been vacant and abandoned forever so the interior would need to be gutted. Rampant vandalism is evident with graffiti everywhere, and everything that wasn’t nailed down has been stolen. In fact, even the grand staircase that was nailed down is gone. Moldy mattresses and empty beer bottles witness to the hookers, drug addicts and partying teenagers who have made it home.

And what a home it was! At just under 20,000 square feet over 4 floors, it has 4 corner towers plus an arched stone vaulted basement. With15 foot high ceilings it could have a dozen bedrooms, a humongous dining room, grand staircase entryway, wine cellar, library and a living room to die for. Heck, as long as you are dreaming, you would have space for a ball room and servants quarters too!

OK, so it’s a little rough, but at $270,000. it’s yours! Not exactly chump change but just think of the potential!!! Your very own Chateau in France. How cool is that? Talk about bragging rights.

So why don’t these places get snapped up and made grander than ever? There you go asking the tough questions. To start with, re-slating the roof would cost an arm and a leg. Make that 2 arms and two legs. Windows alone are estimated at well over a quarter million dollars. All of the interior walls and ceilings would need to be redone at a cost that would exceed that if you were starting from scratch. All plumbing and electrical would be a re-do and at the cost of heating the place would take your breath away so some serious and costly insulation would be called for. It would be worth millions but would cost millions to do. And, we haven’t even touched the subject that a little period furniture would be needed also.

Of course all of this is obvious. What is less so is that the government here often requires that these places be renovated by ‘licensed historically experienced builders’, so you can just add lots of dollar signs to any reasonable estimate. Property taxes would get your undivided attention but if you are still counting the pennies in your piggy bank, I am about to rain on your parade. This particular castle has a fatal structural defect as the towers stand on inadequate foundations and are slowly tearing away from the building and heading for eventual collapse. The fix? Simple. Bulldoze it to the ground and rebuild.

Property prices in general here have risen quite rapidly over the last decade. These Castles were considerably cheaper (even relatively speaking) 10-15 years ago. The sad fact is that if one were GIVEN to you, you could not afford it. Whenever I see an abandoned property (Castle or regular house) I always wonder why on the last day the owner walked away for whatever reason he did not simply sell it, even if it was not for a good price. Was it better to simply let it go to ruin and get nothing rather than to sell it and get something? I can never figure it out.

The other significant thing I have noticed is that most of all of the really magnificent buildings you see here are hundreds of years old. The spectacular Cathedrals, the ornate artistic stone carvings, the architecture to die for, it’s all very, very old. Most ‘new’ buildings are quite boring and in my view on the simple economical side. Wood frame construction is rare here and many Europeans are genuinely surprised that we use it at home. Although stone homes are found everywhere in Brittany, virtually no new ones are built as they are too labor intensive and therefore expensive. Instead, they are now built of variations of cement or clay blocks and covered in stucco or plaster. Some add stone 'features' to try to stay in character.

I am not saying all are boring or cheap as there are obviously incredible digs here but am saying most of what is new is boring to my eye. I have not seen any "WOW!" modern gated communities here like in Malibu, mansions like in Florida, Beverly Hills or Newport in Rhode Island among many others. Many of the most beautiful homes here are modern renovations done in very old buildings, chateaux’s or forts. People say “no one can afford to build those kinds of buildings at today’s costs” but those places were quite expensive in those days also and they seem to have managed. Heck, they can’t even afford to remodel many of them today.

Christopher

Our grandson took a turn for the worse recently. His last surgery was not the success it was hoped for and he soon needed to be put on a ventilator. He now requires 24 hour in home nursing care and it’s expected to go on for about 6 months. The only good news is that, unbelievably, he is expected to outgrow all of this at some point.

Big Find

Here is a little something unlikely to happen at home! France's biggest trove of Gaulish coins -525 of them superbly preserved, dating from 75-50 BC, were recently found close to here during the construction of a highway bypass. The antiquities teams that examine building sites during construction in promising historical locations occasionally hits the mother lode as they obviously did here. As most people bartered for goods and services, people with currency usually meant they were not only well healed but often traveling some distance with their wealth. There were no clues as to who the owners were or why the treasure trove was buried.

I will have mine well done, please.

I am always amused at how the typical French choose to eat their meat. [Factoid: The average European only eats 40lbs (18 kilos) of meat per year. This represents 42% of the average Americans yearly meat consumption of 95lbs (43 kilos). The trend doesn't appear to be likely to change anytime soon as the French meat market is declining. ]

The average Frenchman will eat meat that to my trained culinary eye appears to be all but jumping-in-the-plate raw. I know my taste run a little on the well done side but personally I am put off by meat that is still cool in the center. I have learned that to order meat in restaurants here I must not be casual about it. First, I get the waitperson's undivided attention and say “I would like my meat very, very, VERY well done, please”. They usually roll their eyes and give me that look of disdain. Then, as they begin to turn away snickering, heading for the kitchen, I gently nudge their arm and say “…and when you are done cooking it,……cook it again”. It usually comes medium-well.

The ongoing saga

I have not written anything about our projects here since we arrived in France. The reason is quite simply because we had not hardly worked on any. Other than building a closet for our current bedroom, we had Mandy visit in December, we were traveling for 3 weeks in January and shortly before leaving I injured a tendon in my shoulder. That created a perfect excuse to spend a lot of time on the computer doing some projects that have been in my “one of these days” file for years. Well, my bride finally said that I should quit whining and get my lazy rear end up to the loft and finish our Master bedroom and bathroom.

For the past few winters I have written about having done ‘some’ of the framing, ‘some’ of the electrical and insulating, ‘some’ of the vapor barrier, drywall and taping and ‘some’ of the painting and texturing. I can now report that by the time the ink on this dries, we will be finished with all of it. Whew! Next will be laying some tile and installing the toilet and sink. A sound insulating barrier on the floor and generally preparing the area for carpeting will follow. Unfortunately, we will not be able to carpet or have our fireplace connected before we leave, due to heartbreaking, unemployment induced fiscal sadness.....

3 down, 1 to go

Our village blacksmith surprised us by finishing yet another piece of our fireplace set, this time finishingour forged wood rack. It is a stunning beast of a piece that is a perfect match for the rest of the set and only the fireplace tools remain. It will be a long time before we see those, I am sure. Meanwhile, I have started spending a few hours a day with him, several days a week, to make odds and ends that we wanted forged for the Bee.

People often think that we will have problems when we bring these items back and forth to and / or from America and Europe. "they will detect them in the airport Xray machine" they tell me. They don't realize that you can bring darn near anything on board an airplane, as long as its in the luggage hold. Over the years, I have brought a 4 foot sword (1.3 meters), a 50 pound slab of steel [fireplace sacrificial iron] (23 kilos), a suitcase full of metal hardware for shutters, a kitchen sink, a framing nail gun, a large oil painting and even an 8 foot blow gun (2.5 meters) from the Amazon in Peru in the cargo hold. Yes, the Xray machines 'detect' it all, but if its not explosive, corrosive, toxic or outright illegal, its pretty much OK. On the other hand, I have had the metal point of a tracing compass that was in my briefcase taken away from me in more hysterical times.

The Epistle has a hiccup

A few days after posting last month’s Epistle I was looking something up when I noticed a part of the newsletter was missing. Resisting my inclination to call Homeland Security, I opened a new browser to try again but it was simply not there. This blog format has been quite reliable but in spite of my double checking everything before I hit the “send” button, much like its author the blog ‘disremembered’ a portion. I have since fixed it, but just know that you have missed all that was written below the picture of the tower of Belam (the group of 3 pictures near the end of last month’s newsletter). You can scroll down below to it now if you like, but be careful not to go too far or you will be reading 12 month old news!

Have a great month.