Daniel's Blog | www.foucachon.com | © 2009 Daniel Foucachon

Having been plunged straight back into school, it is only now that I can write something about our trip to France. We went there to clean out our house in Lyon, and move all our stuff (the remainder that we did not bring to Idaho) to our country house for storage. It was a packed, and quite exciting ten days! Here is a little exerpt from one of the days:

We pack the 2o ft. moving truck with our stuff, and are finished by mid-afternoon.
We leave for Lompnieu (our country house). I'm in the truck with my brother-in-law, and my parents and rest of the family and two nephews are in the van ahead of us.
20 min. outside Lyon, on the autoroute, the gears of start slipping: we have broken down!
on the side of the autoroute for 1.5 hours waiting for tow-truck.
Van with the rest of the family turn around to meet us on side of road. Meanwhile in van, one vomiting nephew.
Sun sets.
Tow-truck arrives and tries to lift truck onto it.
Front of tow-truck is lifted instead of truck. (apparently a first for the mechanic...)
Call new tow-truck.
towed to garage. 9 p.m. Crazy truck drive... almost takes roof off truck under a low bridge..
All of us (ten to a 9 passenger van) packed in van that still smells acutely of my adorable nephews vomit. 15 min. from home, Timothée vomits again. Finally home, hit the bed.
Next morning spent on phone (charged at international rate) trying to get the rental company to give us a new van (van stayed at garage, dead, with all our stuff in it). A whole morning, many phone calls, (Insurrance company and rental company throwing responsibility back and forth), we finally get them to send a new truck.
Alex, my brother-in-law, arrives with "truck" provided, which is actually a large moving van, but not near the size of other truck, which was full of our stuff!
More phone calls...
The "last" (yeah right..) available 20 ft. truck in the city of Lyon "becomes" available. Alex goes to get it downtown lyon, experiencing delays because of strikes (the current big strikes about the labor law).
Finally appropriate size truck arrives and we go to garage to transfer stuff from dead truck to new truck.
Mid-afternoon to about 7:30 we unload.
Drive back to Lyon. Arrive two hours late to family reunion in our honor. Meat family as they are leaving the house. Spend 15 minutes with them, eat with my grandparents, and go home and hit the pillow. It has been a long day!

Like I said, it was a busy week. But we did get one evening off on the Friday before we left, and we went downtown. We ate at a Créperie in the medival section of the city, and walked around after. We visited the restaurant where my dad was trained as a chef, and the current chef say us looking in the kitchen from outside, invited us all in, told my dad to give us a tour of the restaurant where he used to work, then served us Champagne. It was really neat to see the whole kitchen and restaurant! I had never been inside. He talked with us for a good hour, about how the restaurant is going, the old days under "La Mere Lea," and how things have changed (used to be a coal stove).

We were also able to see our adorable nephews a lot, and be with my sister Suzanne, and her husband Alex. It was great to see them again!

Here are a few pics:

This is on the way to the country house.

Trying to get the van up the drive way. It took quite a few tries!

My nephews, Matthieu and Timothée

This is is "Huguenot Heritage," our country house in Lompnieu, France

David, showing his support for St. Andy's Rugby team in France!

Alex Sarran, my brother-in-law. He was a GREAT help during the move!

The truck

Broken down on the autoroute!

Eh oui..

First tow-truck. He even asked us to push, which of course didn't help...

Yup, the tow-truck, not our truck was the one lifted!

New Tow-truck, bigger one

The sign on the truck (on the top) says, "this is the main difference between our trucks, and those of our competitors," well, we see the difference all right!!