We miss our girls

We must because we keep seeing things that remind us of them. This is a town not terribly far from the US air base at Chièvres.

Things that have changed in 35 years

Mobylettes. They're almost all gone. You see the classic version every now and then, and you see some Vespa-like scooters, but the old 20-inch bike with a weed whacker engine mounted on the front wheel has gone the way of the 5¢ stamp. And all the scooters and bicycles combined are nothing like the fleets of two-wheelers that clogged the streets of Montpellier in the afternoon when university and lycée classes let out. You don't see people on bikes getting a free ride by holding onto the shoulder of a powered friend. You don't see gaggles of high school girls or gangs of teenaged tough guy wannabes on them. You don't see old ladies going shopping or old guys going to the pétanque game on them. You pretty much don't see anybody, in fact, because they wear helmets now. And most of them are in cars. No wonder we got global warming.

Mother's Day

A rose we bought at the Mons flower market today. And it smells great, too. The market was packed with Mother's Day shoppers. We went to Le Pain quotidien for lunch. Regular readers will remember this as our favorite little whole foods bakery/sandwich shop. When we commented on how empty the place was, they explained that they had had a big rush for breakfast but that people tend to go to fancy restaurants for Mother's Day lunch. I told them we were there precisely because it was Mother's Day. The guy who works there said ,"Enfin quelqu'un a compris!"At last someone understands!

David gets the night shift

Actually, he volunteered for it, the 4:30 AM shift for the Make-a-Wish 24-hourathon at SHAPE. It's a huge deal, with various departments and organizations at SHAPE putting teams together to keep at least one person on the track the whole 24 hours. We're not sure exactly how it works but it's a fundraiser, and the winning team seems to be the one that does the most laps.

Each group pitches a tent, some larger than others, for those spending the night or just chilling. Most notable of the tents: the Brits' fish and chips concession, the Germans' Bitburger on draft (gotta carb load, you know), and the Canadians' moose milk - along with their about 6-foot high ginormous statue of a moose. Folks - including kids and dogs - turn out in droves to walk or run, despite the on-again, off-again rain. It is Belgium, you know. To finish things off tonight, we have Gary Sinese and his Lt Dan band playing live.

Oh, I signed up for the more civilized hour of 6:30 AM!

Champagne

The morning after our wine-buying binge in Mons we got up and left for Champagne. If you read really fast, some of you may have seen that we were going...before we decided to take it down off the web site in case someone was waiting for us to be away so that they could come steal all the worthless junk you taxpayers shipped to Europe for us. (Thanks, by the way.) Of course we've bought more worthless junk since we got here, too.

But I digress. As always. We went to Épernay and visited three different champagne houses. We went from the humongous (Mercier) to the miniscule (Pierre Gobillard) to the merely small (J-M Gobillard). The lady at Pierre Gobillard explained that the two Gobillard houses were unrelated. Her outfit was so small that she had to unlock the door to the tasting room for us, and we had a private session. The other Gobillard house is across from the church where Dom Perignon is buried. Or where his tombstone is. There seems to be some confusion. If the guide book writers were tasting as much of the local product as we were, it's no danged wonder. Anyways, we bought some more wine.

This is the little village outside Épernay where we stayed, in what was essentially a French Motel 6. We took the picture because the town name reminded us of one of our daughters. Can you guess which one? From here we could look across the vineyards and up the hill and see the luxury hotel where we stayed during our 20th anniversary trip to the same region.

Here is it, off in the hazy distance. If you click on the photo and make it huge, you can maybe see it up near the brow of the hill. Oh, and that hill is the Montagne de Reims. And yes, all the green stuff on the slopes is vineyards.

David gets even for the jewelry show

Last night we went to the 19th Mons Wine Expo. While not quite reaching the level of our officemate who spent €2,000 one year, we did our bit to keep the French economy afloat. And yes, they were almost all French vendors, with one Romanian and a couple of South American countries also represented. But the poor Chileans were getting pretty much ignored in favor of the Burgundians and the Bordelais. It was a surprisingly small event--maybe three or four dozen vendors--and very uncrowded at first because we deliberately went early. But the smallness made it more manageable, unlike those monster jewelry shows where women just freeze in the entranceway as soon as they see all the sparkly things, with their hearts racing, unable to even breathe.

We both relived bits of our youth by loading up on wines from the Loire Valley (Rita) and Languedoc-Roussillon (David). Robin, Bob, Lynn, Thom, if you're reading, I got me some Corbières, which is now an appellation controlée! I had fun chatting with the vintner; I told him I hadn't had any in 35 years. Then there was the olive girl from Bandol, which is right next door to Toulon, where I spent the school year 77-78. We walked away with a few months worth of olives, dried tomatoes, and what she termed "Provençal candy": pickled garlic cloves. Putain! Elles sont bonnes!

Mosquito netting

Rachel is nagging us to offer you something new, so I'll tell you about the most exciting thing going these days: mosquito netting. With our four weeks of absolutely gorgeous weather have come the buzzing insects, so much so that we've opted to sleep with our portes-fenetres (French doors) and all the other windows closed the last couple nights. We managed to get to a hardware store this afternoon to buy screening and velcro; now we just have to figure out how to put it up and still get the windows and doors open. (All the windows and doors open in, and some of the windows swivel, so it's not just a matter of putting the screening on the outside).

Last Saturday we felt like real grownups: we took the train up to Brussels in the late afternoon to meet up with the younger brother of one of Becky's former soccer teammates, who was on a study trip to Brussels. I took advantage of the opportunty to go to the FNAC (bookstore) and buy a bunch of polars (mysteries) while David enjoyed a few beers down on the Grand' Place. Having gotten used to Mons, I was a little overwhelmed by the crowds on the rue Neuve (the main pedestrian shopping street in Brussels) - and by the price of beer on the Grand' Place. Made little ole Mons look good. We took a 10:00 PM train home and were exhausted the next day from staying out so late. We are old.