Dreaming of France -- Nîmes

Please join this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it.

On Sunday, The Tour de France ended its stage in Nîmes, which is in the Languedoc-Roussillon department of France. To me though, it's in Provence. When my husband and I rode our bikes from Avignon to Aix en Provence, our first overnight stop was in Nîmes.
Since we rode our bicycles over the same roads that the riders from the Tour de France were riding, we were especially interested to watch.
The Tour stopped in front of the Roman coliseum, or amphitheater, that still remains in Nîmes. I don't know why we didn't get a good picture of it, but here is a post card we brought home.

We stayed in a hotel right across the street from the coliseum. It's called La Lisita and we loved looking out the window to see this amazing Roman structure. Here's a picture of me under an umbrella alongside the coliseum wall with our hotel in the background across the street. No comments on my fashion choices. Remember that it was a biking trip and we only had the clothes we could carry on our bikes.

And we went to see a number of Roman sights, including the Mason Carrée, which is a Roman temple. I think that's what this picture shows. The people in it are not us. They just got in the way of the shot.

The museums and the gardens included a lot of Roman ruins. If you get a chance, include it on your next trip.
Thanks for playing along today, and please visit each other's blogs so  you can get more snippets of France today.
I'm also joining in with Paris in July. Check it out for many good recommendations on French books, movies and lifestyle.

Party Perspectives

The graduation party is today, so, of course, I woke up at 4:07 a.m. with a litany of all the things I need to accomplish.
I lay in bed until 5 before I got up, only to find Tucker asleep on the couch in the living room. I don't know why, and won't know until he wakes up later, so I'm creeping around the house in the dark to let him get a little more sleep.
I wonder if sleeping on the couch has anything to do with the fact that he got hit by a car two days ago as he was riding his bike. He's okay, just skinned up and shaken up.
He called me right after it happened. It makes me feel thankful that his first reaction is still to call mom.
He wouldn't let me come get him, said he was walking the bike home, but we both were shaking when he came through the back door, his palms, elbows and knees bleeding.
The car just pulled out in front of him and hit his front tire throwing him off the bike. The car didn't even stop.
Other than asking me to put Bandaids smeared with antibiotic ointment onto his palms and explaining why he can't help with yardwork because of his wounds, he has acted like everything is fine.
I vented a bit on Facebook about the car that didn't stop, and an old high school classmate sent me a message, saying she knows how difficult this time of year is for our family.
Yes, that adds to the tension. A graduation on Memorial Day, just like my sister's graduation on the weekend she was killed.
A party planned.
We're so lucky that Tucker walked through the back door, and I guess that puts my worries about a party in better perspective.
This weekend, we'll celebrate and not worry about whether the house is clean enough or the lawn is perfect or the food will last through the crowd.

Loss of a Good Man

I received the most poignant email forwarded from my mom this morning. It came from some friends in New Zealand.

I am very sorry to tell you that Rex was knocked off his bike and has died.
Of course we are all devastated and find it hard to believe.
We are coping,somehow.
I'll be in contact again later.
Just wanted you to know.
Love,Joy.

Joy and Rex are in their 70s like my parents.
I met them a couple of times when they travelled here to the United States and my parents went to New Zealand to visit them once. If I had to describe Rex, I would say alive is the best word. He was always moving, always had a plan. He played every sport every invented, and if he hadn't yet, he would try it. He was very "fit," I think is the word the New Zealanders would use to describe him.
It seems appropriate that he didn't grow old sitting in a chair and losing his memory, yet no one was ready for him to go so unexpectedly.
My parents' friendship with Rex and Joy came about through me.
I met their son Mike when he was bicyling through the United States. He was staying with a couple in Middletown, Ohio and I was a reporter there. When the editor told me to interview this guy from New Zealand, I didn't know anything about the country.
"Do they speak English?" I asked.
I immediately fell under Mike's spell -- tall, blonde and athletic with the dulcet New Zealand accent. He tried to explain to me the difference between the Australian and the New Zealand accent, moving his tone up into his nose to talk like an Australian. We talked for hours: he was an accountant, he wanted to own race horses, he'd worked in Australia and they always wanted to fight. I returned to the newsroom to write my story and when I went home that night, I told my younger brother Kevin that I had met the man I was going to marry.

I misspelled his last name in the news article.
Still, when I called and asked if he wanted to go out to eat, he did. We shared some meals and time. He planned to continue biking and I asked if he wanted to go to my grandmother's house in Kentucky.
He did. We went boating with my cousin Mike, and Mike from New Zealand worried that we might run into alligators as we swam in the lake. I laughed at him because, obviously to me, no alligators live in Kentucky, and he kissed me that day for the first time.
I took Mike to a truck stop/bus station so he could hitch a ride or continue his bicycle journey. A few weeks later, he called and returned to Ohio on a plane. I met him at the airport. When he flew out again, we looked at the travel posters on the wall and talked about how we would love to visit Greece. I thought, "Who knows." But I was starting grad school that fall and he was off to New Zealand.
We stayed in touch for a long time, writing letters that probably sound overblown now.
A few months before Earl and I got married, I sent him a letter to let him know. Our letters must have crossed in the mail, because I received one from him about his new wife, Leigh. Leigh and Mike visited once with their girls and Leigh was here again a few years ago to stay with us.
Today, I sorted through photo albums to find a picture of Mike. I called Grace down to the basement to look at some old college pictures.
When I finally found the picture of Mike that the newspaper used, I pulled it from the sticky page.
"Who's this?" Grace asked.
"It's Mike. From New Zealand," I said.
"And you didn't follw him?" she asked.
She turned as Earl came down the stairs. "Can you believe she didn't follow him?"
"I don't think he's the one you want to ask that," I told Grace. "Besides, you wouldn't be here if I did."
Plus, life isn't like a romantic comedy movie, well, maybe the comedy part.
Funny, because I was never sure how much I meant to Mike, until his wife visited a few years ago and told me he thought very highly of me and felt strongly. Maybe if I'd known then...
But the reason I wrote about this lovely family today was to mourn a great man and to send sympathy to his family, who will always be looking out the window to see if he's returning from his latest run, his latest bike ride, his latest cricket match. The road will seem so empty without him there.

Coincidence?

I rode my bike to work again today. The temperature was in the 80s.
Earl had the day off, so he rode his bike to the Clippers baseball game. The game started at 11:35 and I finished working at 1. I began to pedal home, and as I turned a corner, I see my husband on his bicycle headed home too. What are the odds?
He's trying to cross a busy intersection and is headed against the traffic.
"Hey mister," I call. "You're going the wrong way."
He ignores me.
He crosses the street and I follow him without even looking for traffic. That's the kind of leader he is, but the light has changed and a car is coming. It stops for me.
"Hey mister, what are you trying to do? Get us killed?" I call again.
"Shut up," he yells back at me.
He still hasn't looked at me.
"Hey, did you just say shut up?" I ask. "Cause I'm your wife."
He looks back then and sees me.
Later he tells me he thought I was some crazy bicycle harrasser. Well, I could be. But I'm still his wife and he can't escape that fact.
Photo of Huntington Park by Columbus Underground.

Requiem for a Bike in Haiku

Pink, sleek and speedy
From the library taken
New light is now dark