Le Franco Phoney

I think the picture says it all, but in case you don’t see it, there are some parking bay lines painted over a new walkway and garden. Was the painter annoyed at the loss of some car parks to this nicer-looking layout? Did common sense really not prevail when the painter had to step up onto the walkway to continue the line? Meanwhile, at the entrance to the right, the painter must have had an attack of the smarts and realised that painting the line parallel to the other bays would leave no room for cars to drive into the lot, so the line remains faded and old. It didn’t stop him/her from marking the white line at the top of the parking bay, so what we have on the right is some sort of diagonal parking, blocking both a pedestrian walkway and the car park entrance. Parking bay painting fail.

I remember when I first moved to France that mechanics had a pretty bad reputation for being slow. Indeed, one of my friends had terrible problems with her Volkswagen bus: they changed all sorts of things at two different mechanics but it still ran slowly. When she got it back to England, her mechanic saw straight away that the choke cable was stuck on. She had gone through so much fuel and had paid so much money to have things fixed that weren’t broken!

Thankfully, I found a great mechanic just outside of Annecy (Troc Auto at Grand Epagny if you need one and you’re nearby), and for years, my car and I have been looked after well. That all changed when my fuel pump stopped working on my old Golf. Unable to drive it more than twenty metres before it would just stop, I asked a mechanic just up the road to fix it. That was on a Monday morning just over two weeks ago and my car still isn’t fixed. Somehow, it took him until the following Thursday (eleven days later) to sprout some story about how his mechanic was going on holiday so he didn’t think he’d have time to fix it. It took him ELEVEN DAYS to tell me he didn’t have time! I called almost every day and he kept saying he still didn’t know when the part could be delivered and that he’d call me the next day. He didn’t call once.

I limped my car to a different local mechanic where it’s been ever since. They tell me they’ve replaced the fuel pump, but now they’re waiting on the related burnt-out fuse. We can only be grateful these mechanics aren’t paramedics!

No, you are not imagining things. This really is a photo of a cow in a car — a Renault 5 to be exact. This is a car with only three doors, so there’s not that much space between the driver and the cow. My friend Penny snapped this photo on the way back from Annecy last week. At first, she presumed the brown and white thing was a boxer dog. She then realised it was a cow.

I guess this particular farmer found it more cost effective than getting out the cow transport truck, but I’m not sure how the cow feels about it. Is that a line of wee coming from the cow? And if so, is it really that cost effective? The farmer has to clean up the the mess left behind by the cow.

I reckon this one beats the dog on a bike and the snowman on a car hands down.

I’m sorry about yelling that, but last week, St Jean de Sixt was covered in posters advertising a monster truck extravaganza, and we all know that a monster truck means a crushed car or two. Brilliant! Bring it on. Some friends and I meandered across the road and paid the €12 for a standing spot (it was €3 more to sit on some raised planks of wood which we decided wasn’t necessary).

After stalling for about ten minutes (probably so they could tell late-comers that they hadn’t missed anything yet and get a few more people in), the show commenced. But before we saw the crushing of cars, we had to watch a pre-teen kid on a quad bike, a relative of his do handbrake turns too many times, and a variety of dangerous-looking things involving kids and audience members that would have health and safety officials in shock in some other countries. Here’s a quick photo gallery.

Did we come here for the kid on a quad bike (they start young in this family)? NO.

Did we come to see the kid’s brother hold on to a car while another family member (dad/brother? who can tell) did handbrake turns? NO.

Did we come here to stick our kids in a truck that raises off the ground, with no seat belts on and the window low enough for them to fall out? NO! (But well done to those kids for performing the most dangerous stunt of the day.)

Did we come here to watch fellow audience members sit in the passenger seat of a Renault Twingo, unseatbelted, while the driver does yet more handbrake turns? NO. (I did that as a teenager in my brother’s car, and again in his mates’ cars, and more recently in a car owned by that passenger pictured in various snow-covered car parks.)

Well well well, January is over. Where did it go? To match the speed of the month, I’m speed writing this entry as I have lots of observations to tell you about. So, first up, the Christmas tree. Not only did I kill it as I mentioned a few days ago, but then the snow dumped overnight (see photo) just to add insult to injury. It’s as if the mountains are laughing at it, rejecting it from the outside after I rejected it from indoors. I still feel a bit guilty.

Next up: today’s not-normal-ness. Today, I saw:

• not one, but two cars parked across different roads, blocking all traffic
• two women with prams walking side-by-side on a road with no footpath — and on the side where cars approached them closest from behind
• a man in a bright, almost neon purple one-piece who was not skiing and two monoskiers
• a Swiss-registered car going down a hill with its front wheels locked

Drivers, would you park across a busy street in your own city? No? Then don’t do it in mine! Parents, would you turn your back on traffic when in charge of a baby? No? Then don’t do it on slippery, snowy roads! Men in bright purple one-pieces, and monoskiers, just….why would you? Man in Swiss car, pump the brakes rather than keeping your foot on them, or better still, if you want to drive out of a ski resort when the roads are covered in snow, either have snow chains or snow tyres, or wait until the sun has melted the snow: it’s only a few hours!

Beginner style: both hands on handle.

More advanced: feet used for braking, steer with one hand, other hand out for balance.

It can hurt if you fall the wrong way...

In January, La Clusaz opens a piste by the ice rink on Thursday nights for night skiing. They switch on the flood lights and you can borrow a local sledge called a paret (pronounced “paa-ray in French”) as long as you have some identification. I’ve added some photos showing how it’s done. With friends visiting this week, we decided to have a go. We got to the ice rink but the flood lights weren’t on. The paret man wasn’t there, but plenty of people with their home-made parets were.
Eventually, we heard that the event had been cancelled “because of the storm”. As you can see from the photos, the few snowflakes that were falling were tiny. There was no wind. What storm? Well, apparently, the same storm that stopped La Clusaz from hosting moonlit skiing last night. If there are clouds hiding the moon, there’s no light, so that’s fair enough. I heard there wes going to be floodlit night skiing instead. So how can a storm stop the regular night skiing and not Saturday night skiing? My friends had unfortunately gone by Saturday night, so they didn’t have the chance to try a paret for themselves, but part of me wonders if the cancellation of the Thursday night skiing session had anything to do with the tourist office not wanting to run the same event twice in one week. Obviously, Saturday night is more profitable.

Finally, the snow. It snowed lots this week and I decided to head up for first lifts this morning with my snowboard. It was -15, not including the wind chill. Despite the snow being fluffy and powdery — and almost as knee-deep as it was yesterday, the extra-cold snow on my boots made my toes numb, and my nose was also numb, being the only exposed part of my body. I chickened out after one run and waited for a few hours at home before returning with the telemarks. Still cold, but not like 9am with its long shadows.

As I type this, I’m hearing cars toot their horns at midday on New Year’s Day. I guess they’re excited about 2010 because they’re tooting familiar chants. Perhaps they’re just on their way home from their night out, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they were drunk. Like anywhere in the world, the French Alps has its fair share of idiot drivers who take to the roads and put other people’s lives at risk. When I lived in the Meribel valley many years ago, the local police would stop suspicious cars and tell the driver to get out and leave their car there. I never heard of anyone charged with drinking and driving, but I did hear of the ‘second gear’ rule, where, if drunk, you simply stay in second gear, which slows the car down to be a bit more in sync with the drunk driver’s reflexes and according to those drivers, will prevent an accident or at least minimise any damage.

Meanwhile, in La Clusaz, word gets around in the pubs if the police are stopping cars leaving town. Those who have lost their license can still buy a little two-stroke car that sounds like a lawn mover and goes at about the same speed. These cars, an old but popular model here pictured, need no license to drive! When you see these cars on the road, you know you want to be as far away from the driver as possible. The drivers could be drunk and may have bought the car because they lost their license for that reason. On top of that, they’re likely to cause accidents when they’re pushing their car to the limit of 45km/h in a 90 zone. They certainly cause traffic build-ups. But I digress. Last winter, a drunk driver in La Clusaz stopped to pick up three hitchhikers. Hitching is common in all age groups here because the buses seem to stop as soon as the sun goes down. And so, these three hitchhikers were school kids. The guy driving didn’t notice a huge bend in the road and drove straight into a tree down an embankment at high speed. He survived. The three kids did not. The loss of three local kids spun the locals into action. There was talk of some sort of car pooling last summer, but I don’t know if that ever took off. I did notice, however, that St Jean De Sixt declared ‘Operation Red Nose’ on New Year’s Eve, offering a lift home to anyone who called the central number. Volunteers drove (hopefully not in the lawnmower cars), and hopefully made the roads a bit safer for everyone.

Happy New Year. May it safer than some of the roads around here.

Reputations. England has the reputation of simply closing down when snow settles on the roads. France somehow manages to keep on going. Certainly, here in the Alps, a typical local driver tackles snow as just another winter obstacle on the roads filled with the slow cars of tourists (why not overtake on a corner?), speed humps (who bothers slowing down?), late-night drunks (what alcohol limit?) and iced up windows (why drive with a fully defrosted windscreen when you can have the novelty of a peephole instead?). However, the Alps are equipped for snow: local council tractors and trucks scrape the snow off the road regularly; cars are required by law to be equipped with snow tyres and/or chains in many areas; the locals have lots of experience in driving in the snow, and the tow trucks are on standby for any accidents.

Meanwhile, in England, train networks, major roads and airports have closed for days because they can’t deal with the snow. Actually, the snow seems to turn to ice faster and for longer in England. Tragically, a bus hit some ice in the South of England and at least two people died and many more were injured. When the first emergency services car arrived, it too hit the ice and crashed into the overturned bus. While the European Alps benefit from all those services mentioned above, the average Brit is left skating on thin ice, literally. And even with all these services, I’ve seen some extremely bad driving in the past few days. I’ve lost count of the cars with snow chains on even though the roads are now totally clear of snow. A day earlier when the roads were snowy, a man shook his fist at me (leaving me bemused and amused rather than angry) after I didn’t just stop my car while he and his family walked up my side of the road (I drove beside them while no cars came from the other direction). Hello: when you’re driving up a hill on slippery snow and you stop, chances are you might not get going again. It’s a road: walk on the side of it and not in the middle, especially when the roads are slippery. I should have shaken my fist back at him. That same day, I drove along a road and there was a tow-truck winching up a smashed car. It had smashed into the side of the road. Three hours later,  the tow-truck was still there — winching a different car which had smashed into another car which was waiting for a tow truck.

After seeing all this, I can’t help but wonder if England has the right idea.

Driving along a back road toward Thônes one day, I discovered a roadside statue of Mary, protected by some lions and surrounded by candles, flowers (both real and plastic) rosary beads, statuettes and water features. Here’s a close-up of one of the two protective lions. It features a scary eye and an even scarier missing eye, some cob webs, and a rather big snarl.

Meanwhile, below is a photo showing just how close to the road this monument is (you can see a close-up of Mary and the trinkets that surround her in the top right corner, or click on the image to zoom in further). Yes, that’s a grotto on the left and Italian-style lions at the man-made gate right by the roadside.

The soft trickle of the water feature in front of Mary is drowned out every time a car zooms by on the country road, but it carries on regardless. Wax from melted candles forms stalactites near the statue of Mary alongside plaques draped with rosary beads. There is no graffiti and no signs of security against theft or vandalism. The marks on the grass by the roadside opposite suggest that many stop at the monument, but I’m unsure whether they’re here for religious reasons or, like me, out of curiosity. So many religious monuments exist by road sides here in France, but they’re normally much smaller and more secure from vandals.

Why is it here, right next to a road? When was it created? Who commissioned it? Who goes there? So many questions, and no answers at all. The only clue: some Latin inscribed below one of the lions with a passage from the bible, but I’ve no idea what it means, nor which part of the bible it’s from. I waited for a local to appear, but nobody arrived in the half an hour that I explored. It remains a mystery.

On my last road trip, I came across this signpost in a lovely little village called Aignay-le-Duc. As you can see from the big photo, that’s actually three layers of sign posts, plus a couple facing a different direction. Want to get to Echalot? If you’re approaching from the road in front of these signs, you’re going to struggle: the close-up, side-on photo below shows how well it’s hidden in the main photo. The village has, perhaps, decided that placing directions to their own local shop signs might distract tourists. I can see it now:

Driver: “Hmm, which way to Echalot?”

Passenger: “Oh who knows, but look, there’s a patisserie to the left!”

…and then they’d be heading in the wrong direction. But at least they’d have happy bellies and the locals would be a bit richer.

Something else you might notice in the close-up photo is that one place is listed twice, but written differently. Not only is there an accent on the newer sign for Etalente, but an ‘e’ has been replaced with an ‘a’, making the place Étalante.

As for those villages listed below Etalante and Echalot on the old sign (somewhere ending in ‘Les Juifs’ and somewhere else on the Seine), I can only presume that at least some tourists have put their faith in the ‘Autres Directions’ (other directions) sign pointing left — and ended up in entirely the wrong place. Not to worry: they can always find the patisserie and stop in for a snack while they try to figure out where they are.

The off-season in the Alps means the road workers are busy resurfacing roads before winter hits. For the past four off-seasons here (that’s two years), the road workers have been changing the layout of the roads and car parks and updating the drains underneath at the same time. It’s involved a lot of work, so I’m not surprised it’s taken this long.

However, there’s a road that joins Thônes, ten minutes from here, to Annecy-le-Vieux which has not been so lucky. When I first moved to La Clusaz exactly three years ago, this road was only open on one side, forcing traffic through single file. Then winter came and the roadwork signs and lower speed limits stayed in force but the workers were never there. Finally, by June 2007, the road was fixed! It was lovely to drive on, and cyclists were happy that they had a bike lane.

Then disaster struck in August 2007 — just two months after the road was finished. A dam on the hill above burst and caused a flash flood on the road. People had to dump their sodden cars and save themselves from the flow of water, but no lives were lost. The road was, of course, closed. Within a few days, it was re-opened, but roadwork signs reappeared and the cyclists’ lane was once again closed. The road workers never appeared, but the lower speed limit — to protect the absent workers — is still in place to this day. This week, the workers turned up! In three years, the road has been fully functioning for two months, yet trucks use it every day.

Meanwhile, the private driveway to my apartment was also fixed up this week. There had been huge pot-holes at the bottom of the driveway, plus a concrete drain with pointy corners that jutted out about 20cm near my garage. The entire driveway has a kind of wave system in its unevenness which acts as a rollercoaster ride. So, the lovely owners of the apartments resurfaced the driveway, but I think they must have run out of money. The potholes at the bottom are gone, but the drain is still jutting out, with the roadwork only covering the first half of the driveway. In addition, they’ve left the stones loose, so the sun warms the tar underneath each day, leaving splattered tar marks on the side of cars driving on the driveway, along with chip marks from the stones. The loose stones have started to diminish and the waves are coming back. Before,  I just avoided the potholes. Now I can’t avoid the stones or the tar, while most other obstacles remain. Still, it could be worse. I could have had roadwork signs and speed limit restrictions for the past three years.