Photo Essay - Spring Sprung

This time of year bees, butterflies, (chocking hazards on the bike - haha!) and beetles are buzzing around everywhere to announce the arrival of Spring.  These two cities (Tours and Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire) are in full bloom right now.  This photo essay represents the best I could do at capturing this seasonal beauty.  The pictures come from my backyard, the flower market, and random walks and rides around town.  Highlights include poppies growing out of stony roadside walls, a sunset behind the gym, and a twenty foot guard dog.  Haha - Enjoy!

Photo Essay - Rue de l'Hermitage

 

It's the Little Things

Thanks to my sister Sarah, we are staying a week in Paris before Billy returns to the United States.  Paris is amazing.  We're doing all the things I've always dreamed of doing here with Billy.  The view from the top of the Eiffel Tower??  Take it or leave it!  But waking up to this:

Being together again is just the best!

Castle Country

First things first!  The bike shop in Tours had a whole range of contraptions with two wheels.  After we wiped our drool off of the race bikes and asked about their rentals, they rolled out this lime green dream.  I couldn't stop laughing at the thought of Billy riding with upright handlebars and pedals with no clips...  Haha!  Seeing this clunker, at least, gave me hope that I might in a million years be able to keep up with him.  We laughed all the way home.  It was so good to be back on bikes with Billy.  I've seriously missed riding with him so much.

As soon as we got home we started planning day trips to the nearest castles to our east and west.  We spent the next three weeks exploring castle country on a beautiful bike route that spans from Nevers to Nantes.  The well-marked La Loire à Vêlo signs kept us pedaling in the correct general direction AND on the right route (for the most part - ha!).

Chenonceau is the one in the bottom right.

We narrowed our desired destinations down to lunch in Montlouis (round trip 30km/20mi), crepes and castle tour in Amboise (30km there only), Valentine's day lunch in Villandry (20km/13mi there only), and a half day to check out Chateau Chenonceau (heeding warnings about the hilliness of the route to Chenonceau we opted for the train).  Actually, Montlouis turned out to be the only place close enough to do a there-and-back (the only restraint being how long we could stay in the saddle if you know what I mean...).

Don't those seats look comfortable?!

Thankfully, all of these locations were conveniently served by the SNCF (a local train which is a cross between Amtrak and BART).  I was really amazed to discover that, apart from Villandry, train lines picked up five minutes walking from most of these castles and stopped service smack dab in the middle of beautiful downtown Tours.

Even though we took the train to Chenonceau, we still took our bikes with us that day and it's a good thing we did because our train back was delayed.  So, that evening, instead of freezing our butts off at the (outdoor) station, we made our way east past Chateau Chissay and went all the way to Mont Richard and back (another 20km/13mi).  So, just as a side note, yeah...  No banks in these parts.  Not even an ATM.  Do all those people bank in Tours?  Off shore accounts?  Shoe box under their bed?  We may never know.

Almost as awesome as being back on the bikes and taking trains through the scenic Loire River Valley were the looks we got when we told people that we have been riding our bikes to these places.  Haha!  Priceless.

Standing On The Shore

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you."  So, I thought of this, but then I googled it to make sure no one else had thought of it first and sure enough...  Dracula beat me to it!

Billy and I at the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris

Being here in France to play volleyball has been a wonderful experience, but being away from Billy has been a practically unbearable sacrifice, making the last six months of my life so bittersweet...  

It has been exactly 180 days since I last saw Billy.  I'm excited to share everything about this place with the part of me that has been missing for so long.

January: American Film Appreciation Month

This month I was holed up at home in bed nursing two sprained ankles and a terrible cold that wouldn't quit.  On top of that, when I wasn't looking at my watch and calculating exactly how much time it was before Billy got here, I was trying to not go crazy by consciously distracting myself from how much time it was before Billy got here.  Oy!

Now, if you don't know me that well, this may come as news to you, but I am, admittedly, somewhat of a nitwit when it comes to common knowledge.  For example, I have been the butt of many a joke when conversations turn toward the cultural canon.  Vocabulary, books, band names, TV shows, actors, and movies that are considered common knowledge by my peers evidently inhabit a black hole in my brain.  References to media from my generation mostly go over my head.  And while my anti-climactic-explanation-eliciting blank stares were coquettish in my twenties, in my thirties, it turns out it's just embarrassing.

So, in January, I made a pact with myself.  I, Amy Moor, will use this month of forced rest and relaxation wisely and educate myself in the American entertainment industry.

I watched all the Star Wars, all the Die Hards, all the Lethal Weapons, all the Godfathers, and uhhh, every Johnny Depp movie from blockbuster to cult classic.  I watched Platoon, Stir Crazy, Blazing Saddles, Annie Hall, When Harry Met Sally, Man on the Moon, Magnolia, Steel Magnolias, Boogie Nights, Saturday Night Fever, Pulp Fiction, From Dusk Til Dawn, Natural Born Killers, An Officer and a Gentlemen...  It did not take me long to start forming strong opinions about these films and the Hollywood professionals that inhabit them.  The big picture though is:  WOW!  The American film industry is awesome!  The rest of my revelations are blips on the radar compared to this one, but here is a small sample anyway:

1. I don't like Johnny Depp's work as much as I thought.
2. A New Hope is the best Star Wars.
3. Die Hard is way better than Lethal Weapon.
4. Uh...  the Godfather - who needs him??
5. Gene Wilder is my favorite actor of all time.
6. I need someone to expose me to the work of Richard Pryor because I still don't get why every contemporary comedian says he's the greatest.

Well, that's about it!  Just wanted to let you all know that I found a way to thrive in the midst of ankle-breaking pain, mind-blowing boredom, and soul-squashing sickness.  Thanks to my new friends in the tele.

The Incredible Story of One Lucky Mitten

After the farmer's market this morning, I headed north on my bike to stock up on staples that don't grow from the ground here like maple syrup, muesli, and oat milk.  Once inside Auchan (European Walmart equivalent that normally makes me think deeply about the Russian anarchist group Voina, but that's a different talk show...) I noticed that one of my new gloves was missing!  I immediately retraced my steps back to the bike rack, but turned up nothing.

After coffee and shopping I retraced my bike route home scouring the ground for one bright green mitten.  Turning around the second time, I started hearing my boss at SweetWARE in the back of my head quoting Einstein "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."  I'm having visions of Tom Robbins' Skinny Legs and All, my bright green mitten bravely striking out on it's own and making it's way in the world with other escaped inanimate objects.  This was craziness, and I loved these gloves so much...  I was determined to reunite this perfect pair.

Flash forward three hours, I'm walking and looking.  After no more than fifteen minutes of walking up the street like a crazy person with one glove on (which apparently is the international sign language for "I've lost a glove")  I hear a woman from across the street yell "Madame!"  Yeah?  She's sitting at the bus stop about to catch a bus going the opposite direction.  You will not believe this.  She goes, "Have you lost a glove?"  I reply, "Why yes, I have!"  What a coincidence!  I cross the street and she explains that she picked up my other glove on the bike path a few hours ago and took it home.  She happens to live nearby and can get it for me and it will only take a second...  We walk together for a minute (I'm feeling much less crazy by now) and I agree to wait on a bench outside the entryway to her building.

A few minutes later, an old woman wearing kinda outlandish jewelry and a disheveled hair cut cops a squat next to me and almost sets her scarf on fire lighting her cigarette.  She asks me if I'm visiting someone here.  I tell her I'm waiting for someone.  Not much time passes before I see two people in scrubs leaving the building, which is when I ask the woman next to me if this is a hospital.  She says, "YES, this is a psychiatric hospital."  Uhhh...  The crazy is starting to creep back.  Haha!  Now, I'm sitting here wondering if this lady is going to come back with a rubber ducky declaring "Here's your glove back!" ...or just forget about me entirely.  Wrong on both counts.  Wonderful woman #1 restores peace to my universe and I walk home (so overjoyed) with two warm hands.

A Very Very Un-Scarey Halloween

Halloween came and went here without much excitement at all.  Our practice was cancelled that night, so I went to the gym to workout and on my way back home I spotted one trick-or-treater who, from what I could gather, was being asked by a kind old lady to wait on the sidewalk while she searched in her house for a piece of candy.  I just kept riding, laughing to myself a little, imagining her dumping out her purse on her kitchen table, turning wool sweater pockets inside out, eventually getting out a flashlight, and finding a year old candy bar in her basement.  Poor kid.

The remaining bike ride home from the gym also produced one haunted house sighting.  A neighbor decorated inside and out for what looked like a Halloween party with a mostly invisible attendance (but that could've just been my mind playing tricks on me).  Haha!  All in all, it was a most uneventful evening: no costumes, no gunshots, no stabbings, no drunk adults roaming the streets in ripped stockings, no zombies, no screaming until 3am, no sirens...  Why is this list making me miss home???  :)

With Halloween grossly overlooked, I thought November would come equally quietly, but I was wrong.  Overnight, the cemetery around the corner from where I live turned into a botanical garden of chrysanthemums.  It was a Halloween miracle!  I wish I could've taken before and after photos because it was such a beautiful thing to see almost every grave come to life with bright autumn hues - magenta, pink, yellow, orange, and purple - leaving this previously gray and gloomy plot of land just bursting with color.

After asking around and a little googling, I found out that in France Friday, November 1st is All Saints Day (Toussaint) and Saturday, November 2nd is the Day of the Dead (Jour des Morts).  These holidays are marked by the distinct ritual of honoring the graves of deceased family members.  Apparently on this day more than 22 million chrysanthemums (94% of total annual sales) are sold in France alone.  What a beautiful tradition!