thedailychannel.com — adventure

July 3, Monday 2001. Gordes, Provence.

Woke up late, first good sleep of the trip. Did I tell you about the cigale? Heard a real honker of a cicada and he/she evidently had turned up as our guest the night before. I woke up to a noise and hallucinated one of the goggles' eyepieces in the suitcase moving. Or maybe it moved. What to do about cicada fear? I turned off the light after keeping an eye on the goggle for a good long time and hoped the 6-inch long insecte wouldn't crawl on me as I slept.

After a v. late start, just getting p'tit dj., consisting of enough coffee to float a bateau-mouche, we headed off to the car dealer in Avignon to have the window repaired. "Pièces ce sont les pièces." Arriving an hour early for our 2 p.m. appointment we found the Citroen dealership shuttered for the customary 2-hour afternoon pause in work operations so with an hour to kill we hit the mall for supplies. Self-service shopping, now here was something I knew how to do

A vast reach of high shelves and wide aisles contained the offerings of 'Mistral F', a sort of french Target. Quickly I picked up a suitcase a trendy one-strapped 'sac urbain' with penholder and cellphone pocket. made in China, while the suitcase came from Vietnam.

Also got a vacation school workbook for Joe, and a ruled whiteboard and dry-erase markers, "Photoshop pour les Nuls" pour moi, and some envelopes to help organize the tickets to attractions piling up for Joe's scrapbook & my webpage. The suitcase would be just the thing, I reasoned, to wheel back the 8 kilos of ochre pigment, rather than carry them about on the train.

The car dealer was bustling at 2 p.m. and the repair took exactly the quoted one hour. Joe amused himself tremendously with the cars in the showroom; he and Irene were particularly partial to the blue 'Picasso' model mini-Citroen while I liked the 'Monsieur Bic' model Saxo, sans climatisation.

Next: returning to the medieval Abbey of Senaque...

July 1, 2001