Le Franco Phoney

Yesterday was very newsworthy for lots of reasons. Here’s a run-down.

Good news: local freestyle champion Candide Thovex, who switched to freeride just this season, has won the Freeride World Tour! I bet all the other competitors wish he’d just go back to freestyle.

Bad news: the La Clusaz Free Sessions have been cancelled due to dangerous weather conditions. With avalanches happening all over the place, the organisers decided the risk was too high, and with lots of new snow due this weekend, the competition would be quite difficult to judge. I guess that means that the road jump they’ve been sculpting in town will also be demolished.

Good news: my Carte Vitale (French healthcare card) arrived in the mail yesterday! Just weeks away from a full year since I first applied, it’s a great relief. Without it, each visit to the doctor, pharmacy or dentist involves additional paperwork and more costs. I paid €3,000 for the privilege of not having one last year, and this year they want €4,500, so it’s great to be able to use the card instead of paying even more on top of what I’ve already paid. I first wrote about the nightmare here, if you’re interested (along with various other posts).

Bad news: Viva La Clusaz, the custom motorbike show which was mostly rained out last year, won’t be held this year in La Clusaz. It’s moved south and is now called Punta Bagna Bike Valfrejus. Thanks to Dawn for the information. For anyone planning on going there on a Harley, your motorbike will cut out just by the toll booth exit on the toll roads in France. You’ll need to roll your bike along a bit before restarting. It has something to do with the big aerials near the toll booths and the frequency of the Harley’s anti-theft device. Thanks again to Dawn and to Simon, who learnt the hard way.

Visit bungalographics.com for more cool stuff

Good news: local artist, Charlie Adam, seems to be doing quite well with his great artwork, available from his website or his shop in La Clusaz. I’ve got a lovely cow-boarding print on my wall, but perhaps I should have got the one pictured, as my old VW Golf cabriolet has experienced this cow stampede more than once.

Bad news: the second full-moon skiing session has been cancelled due to bad weather (same reason the first one was cancelled). During my first season in La Clusaz, I think there were three full-moon skis, where they simply run a few ski lifts and don’t turn on any lights. The novelty of skiing in the almost dark wears off very quickly when you realise just how easy it is for others to run into you, even with the small flashing light they give each person. It’s mainly an excuse to drink at each of the four bars down the Cret du Merle piste. And that’s the mixed bag for today!

Some friends asked me to look after their chalet last weekend so they could watch their son ski in a competition elsewhere. They only had two guests and they had cooked all the meals, so all I had to do was serve them, and drop the guests off in town. No worries, right? Maybe less worries if my VW Golf was reliable. It’s an old car, but I love it because I can pop the roof down in summer and really enjoy driving in such a beautiful place. There was no enjoyment last weekend. With a piece of corroded rubber preventing the accelerator cable from working, I hitched up to the chalet with a friend who, visiting for the weekend, had a hire car. The guests arrived before us, but luckily the chalet owners’ other son was there to greet them. The three of us fumbled through serving dinner despite the frozen salad and the absence of milk for coffee.

Breakfast the next morning was fun. I had driven the chalet van down to my place the night before so I could get back to the chalet, but with 15cm of snow on my steep driveway and no snow tyres, the van only made it half way up the hill before the wheels spun. I tried to reverse it but managed to stall it, then flood the engine. I rolled it down the driveway where it was avoidable to other cars but still in the way. It wouldn’t restart and I wondered if I’d killed the battery. I borrowed my friend’s hire car which apparently did have snow tyres, drove past the dumped van and my broken Golf and waited for the guests to wake up. They didn’t. The pressure was on to catch first lifts with my friend at 9am and it was now 8.15am. I knocked on the guests’ door and asked if they were coming down for breakfast. As I’d guessed, they had forgotten that the clocks went forward an hour the night before. Eggs poached, toast made, guests tired but full, I avoided explaining that there was no van to drop them off. Instead, I opted to yell out a farewell while they got changed into the ski clothes.

The chalet owners returned just before dessert that night, which was lucky because we couldn’t find it. Panic over and guests fed, I’d even managed to get the van back to the chalet. The problem? I hadn’t taken it out of gear when starting it. A chalet girl I am not.

The steering on my car felt funny this morning so I stopped and saw a flat front tyre. I was pretty sure driving on it would ruin the tyre and the wheel, but being impatient, I decided to drive in first gear to the close-by garage with an air pump. Within ten metres, the wheel started making loud noises, and the farmer from across the road looked over. He saw the tyre and said he had an air pump. Actually, I didn’t understand his French, but he motioned me to the next driveway where he pulled out an air pump to fill the tyre. Sadly, it stayed flat so I got out my spare tyre. Old VW Golfs have this ‘compact’ tyre-wheel combo that you fill up to a high pressure and drive at a moderate speed to the closest tyre shop. It saves room and weight, but this farmer and his mate who arrived were not convinced. They told me to get one of my winter tyres. I sprinted back up the road, then realised my keys were in the car. It was 25 degrees outside so I was baking. I walked back down, collected the keys, walked back up, collected the tyre, and walked back down with my hands  covered in grease from the tyre.

When I got back, two problems arose: firstly, the snow tyre had no wheel attached and the farmers had no tools to switch tyres; and secondly, the ratchet thingy that came with my car did not fit the wheel nuts, so the wheel was stuck on the car anyway. Eventually, one of the farmers realised that the nuts had plastic covers on them and that the ratchet thingy was indeed the right size. So, back to the emergency wheel/tyre. The two farmers popped it on, tightened it up and discovered it too was flat. They pumped in some air and the tyre inflated. Relief! The lovely farmers spent more than an hour sorting out a tyre for a girl they didn’t even know. Of course, this happened at midday, which meant I’d have to wait until 2pm before the shops re-opened from lunch. No worries: it was already after 1pm by the time the emergency wheel went on and I repacked my car’s boot to fit the flat tyre, then loaded the winter tyre in the back seat (that tyre was of no use to anyone, but it had a lovely day cruising Annecy with the roof down as my passenger).

The closest tyre shop is ten minutes away. I managed to take sixteen minutes on my emergency tyre, driving at a moderate speed and waving cars past, so I didn’t have long to wait until 2pm. A boy there told me I would have to buy two new front tyres (the law in France states that your front two tyres must be the same model and your back two tyres must be the same model, even if the two at the back are different from the two at the front). I asked him why they couldn’t just repair my existing tyre. He said that when tyres get “close” to not being road-worthy, the shop is legally bound to change them. When I told him they were only five months old, he backed down, and eventually, his boss fixed the problem (something to do with the seal between the tyre and the wheel) and charged me €15 which probably went straight into his pocket since no receipt was offered or given (or requested - I really didn’t care at this point). I chucked the ‘compact’ tyre back in the boot and decided close enough was good enough when trying to get the jack back in the tiny compartment with the spare.

The two farmers were so generous their precious time, yet these two blokes just saw a presumably clueless girl and tried to make a profit. Anyway, I now know how to change my (rather specific) spare wheel and that I can hold my ground against less generous French men. I might make the farmers a cake or something. Suggestions welcome!