Work and Fun

Every year, for a few years now, the church hosts 150 or so bicyclists that are a part of "L'Ardeshoise" which is like a mini tour de france race that last 4 days through the central mountains of France. There are usually somewhere between 12,000 and 15,000 participants each year so I guess people really like to ride bikes in France. I feel like I could probably still smoke most of them in a wheelie contest though.

So we left Thursday (7/19) evening for a 3.5 hour drive to the camp. The next morning was spent cleaning and making 150 beds.  Riders started getting in around 3:00 and would trickle in for the next 6 hours.
The crazy part about all this was the meal we served them.  These riders pay about $40 and get a dinner, a room, and breakfast.
Here was dinner:

-Start off with some baguette, taboule, and some rose wine.
-Then you have the main course of some beef in a really good sauce, green beans, and pasta. With the main course comes some read wine.
-Next is a some salad and more bread
-Next is a cheese plate with 5 options. And obviously more bread
-Finally, some desert. Chocolate covered ice cream.

I waited tables at fine establishments like Copper Creek and Cypress Street in Abilene TX and never once worked as hard as I did that night. We had 14 people in all helping with the cooking and serving. All in all, it went very well and the riders were very nice and thankful. From the comments made, sounded like the church was a big step up from the last place the riders were at.
I think our group of 14 was at least half American so a lot of riders would stop me and ask why there were so many Americans and what we were doing here.

Here is a picture of the camp. The church bought this place a little over ten years ago. Back in the day, it was a retreat/vacation destination the french government owned for their postal workers. Political stuff happened in France and the country stopped spending so much on their employees so they got rid of the property. No one wanted it in got purchased by another group, they took terrible care of it, wanted to get rid of it, so the church got a great deal for it. The church had to work on it for a few years to get it summer camp ready.

The camp is about 5000 feet above sea level so its a big cooler than Marseille which I was pretty pumped about. I ended up actually using my blanket while here.

This was the main dining hall that had probably 75% of the cyclists.

Gentry and her choppin skills.

The church soccer team had its last game this week.  The FCA type league they are in ends their season with a mini round robin tourny.  Our team did make it the match to see who would get 3rd place.....as I write this I realize that I'm not sure if we won or not. Our game ended before the final whistle when a little brewhaha happened between a guy on our team and a guy on his. The guy on our team ended that ordeal by walking away with the game ball and punting it 50 yards over the fence.  Pretty classy move.

All was made well pretty quickly as the league setup some post game snacks for us. Pretty typical options.

-Bread
-Couple different cheeses
-Some saucisson (picture below just to make sure everyone knows what this is)

-and some coke

That was it. No Gatorades, Bananas, Orange Slices, or even Capri Suns. I wasn't complaining.


Yesterday we had the pleasure of having a couple great friends from across the pond join us for a night during their summer euro trip. David and Jade Wilkins spent a half day with us on their way to Italy from Spain. Marseille was the perfect halfway point and we were pumped it worked out for them to come.

They got into Marseille at 2:30 on Thursday and were heading out the next morning so Gentry and I offered our limited Marseille experience.

First thing we did was go to View Port and take the ferry to Chateau D'If.  We got on the correct ferry but did notice that the ferry only stops at the old prison up until about 5:00pm. We were on the 6:10 ride and so we cruised right by the little island and were a little confused thinking we may have been wrong all along on where Chateau D'If really was. Anyway, we got a couple pictures of it on the way by and the boat instead stopped at a slightly bigger island.

We walked around the island for about 45 minutes and headed back to get some dinner. Here are some pics from that eventful 45 minutes of tourism. About as much as Gentry and I can handle at once. Which is funny because Gentry's mom is about to be here for 4 weeks where we will do more touristy things in that time then I have the rest of my life combined ha.  Its going to be some real tourism. I'm pretty excited and pretty scared.

On our way out of vieux port


Some old church


Marseille from the sea



Chateau D'if (see the movie Count of Monte Cristo)


Gentry creeped and got a picture of Dave and Jade

As you can see, I'm the only veteran selfie taker

The island had some beaches. Below is a calanque on the island.

Potential Choco Sandal marketing material I think

Got D'if one more time in this one the way back

On the boat ride back, we asked the people across from us for a good restaurant close by. After about 5 minutes of some hard thinking, they pointed us to an Italian place that was really good. I think Dave and Jade liked it too.  The only bad part of the dinner was that we had an accordion player, two guitar players, and a hat salesman come right in front of the restaurant. Each separately. They would play for a few minutes, then come around asking for money. If one of them would have played the theme to The Godfather, I would have given them something.....but they didn't.

 Hoping for more visitors like Dave and Jade. So ya, buy a plane ticket and enjoy the spare bunkbeds we have in the apartment.

Two pretty great weekends. I am writing this as we prepare to have 4 people stay with us for a week during "CEM ete". Its a pretty big week for the church where they have a retreat type week that is meant to be a glimpse of what their year long missionary training program is all about. The church is expecting 50+ people and they stuff these people in every spare bed/couch/cot available among the church members. Its going to be a tight fit at our place but should be a good time.

I have to go help Gentry finish up some Taboule so I will end this post and of course, not proof read any of it.  So....sorry for the grammar and spelling.