Unexcused Absences

Let me digress from our adventures and musings for a moment …

Last week I visited my foot doctor. I had been experiencing some discomfort in my foot for several months, and  while running through the leafy hills near our home at Lake Barcroft my foot began to hurt – a lot. I quit running after 3 miles and limped home. I didn’t run again for a week, and the pain subsided to the ‘mildly annoying’ category. However, it didn’t get better. After a week staying off my foot almost entirely proved ineffective, I went to the doctor.

Dr. Cannon’s diagnosis took about 30 seconds. I described my pain, he gently probed the bottom my foot (here? YES!) and promptly ordered an Xray. Once the film came back from the lab it was obvious that my foot was broken – one of the sesamoid bones on my right foot was fractured. He immediately strapped me into a walking boot and explained that I would need to wear this contraption for the next four months.

Knowing that I like to be active, Dr. Cannon prescribed an ultrasonic bone stimulator to speed my recovery. He passed my name along to the folks selling the Exogen 4000 which I believe is the only ultrasonic stimulator currently on the market. This is where it gets interesting.

We have a high-deductible health insurance plan. For those of you blissfully unaware of what that means, we pay nearly $500 a month for the privilege of paying the first $10,000 of our own medical expenses each year. Oh, and because we are so ‘unheathy’ we are actually lucky to purchase insurance at all. We’ve been rejected in the past – and we’re (relatively) young and healthy! Our insurance company touts their prowess at negotiating excellent prices from doctors and hospitals. So, even if our bills never mount to over $10,000 per year, our insurance supposedly still saves us money.

Once the folks at Smith and Nephew (the manufacturer) talked with my insurance company, they contacted me and told me that the insurance company’s negotiated rate for the unit was $4,500. But, the company would be willing to offer me a discount based on my financial situation since they are sympathetic to folks with high-deductible plans. After running through a quick analysis of our finances, the company offered me the bone stimulator for $3,825. However, if I simply purchased the bone stimulator directly from them and didn’t ask them to do any paperwork for my insurance company, the price was $675.

Seriously folks, who negotiates for my insurance company? I spent 5 minutes talking to a really nice woman from Smith and Nephew and without even trying was offered a price 85% less than the price negotiated by my insurer! I can’t adequately express my frustration at the status quo, but I won’t go into a diatribe on the state of American health care. This is a happy blog.

Here is where the story ends – Ebay. There are hundreds of bone stimulators for sale on Ebay! I purchased a used bone stimulator for $100. That is 97.7% less than the price originally negotiated by my insurance company. Insanity.

…. so I digress. Nuff said.

I imagine canal cruising is like travel before the advent of planes, train and automobiles. In one day on Après Ski, we cover roughly the same distance that a person could cover on horseback at an easy pace. It’s faster than walking – but not by much. This slow travel reveals the French countryside at its historically experienced pace. Small villages are about a meal apart in the most rural areas (eat breakfast here, stop for lunch there, spend the night at the next village). The food, architecture and local accent can vary greatly in a few 10’s of kilometers. We sample local products such as fresh mussels, green plums, duck confit, or pastries made with lavender (tastes like dish soap) once or twice before moving onto a region of new tastes like black olive paste, delicate melons, or spiced sausage. We cruisers journey through this landscape of sights, tastes and sounds, enjoying a nibble, visiting an ancient church, or wandering through a market.

Port de Plaisance, Carcassonne

Cruisers are their own floating tribe traveling across this stage. These nomads periodically gather at the Ports de Plaissance, small to medium sized ports that can accommodate several dozen boats, as a respite from their travels. The local chief of this watery village is the Capitaine de Port. She or he tells you where you can moor your boat, knows all the local stores for both provisioning and boat supplies, knows the local events, the market days, the best boulangerie and also acts as local council, boat broker, and travel agent. Cruisers stay for an undetermined length of time in this village, setting off again once they have re-provisioned, done a bit of maintenance, and anticipate good weather.

Fellow Americans and tribe members Jack and Susan

When members of the floating tribe gather, they find a common language or two and tell stories of the canals ahead and behind. Information on lock conditions, mooring opportunities, good restaurants, interesting sights, or helpful repairmen is exchanged and updated daily. You won’t find what you need to know about the next day’s journey in a guide book or on the internet. Conditions change daily, and the best source of information is a tribe member traveling in the opposite direction. Cruisers see old friends, new friends, make introductions and deliver messages of greetings around the port from cruisers in other locations. As new boats pull into port, dogs recognize old doggy friends and bark joyously, anxious to run and play together along the canal’s grassy banks as folks pop up out of their boats to lend a hand with the mooring lines.

Heather’s banana-bread-as-universal-greeting-card

Cruisers are travelers, not tourists. They may stay in a town for an afternoon, a few days, a week, or even months. Their rhythms are dictated by whether the locks are working, if the éclusiers (lock keepers) are on strike, if some boat project or repair is completed, the weather, or their own whim. They shop locally (almost daily since most boats don’t have much storage space), and interact with local professionals, shop owners and craftspeople. Their life is not the industrialized, modern way of trains, planes, hotels, reservations, itineraries, schedules and plans. Traveling once meant going on a journey, and canal cruisers keep this way of life alive. They simply know about when they need to be about where, and deal with the chaos, beauty and rain as they come.

The friendly port of Moissac

And so the members of this floating village set out and journey seasonally, migrating around France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Holland and beyond. Some of their boats are sea-worthy and will head out into the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, or across the Channel. But no matter where they travel on their journeys they follow the unspoken creed of the floating tribe and of all ancient travelers; they readily assist one another and openly share information on the journey ahead.

Tea with Jana

“I was involved,” Jana demurs, when I ask her about the Velvet Revolution. We are enjoying a slice of Medovník, traditional Czech honey cake, in a cafe in the Malá Strana neighborhood near Prague castle. And although we are old friends, it suddenly strikes me that this elegant woman, who looks like a European aristocrat rather than Che Guevara, is a real, live revolutionary.

I met this gifted mathematician in Moscow back in the early 1990’s while my father was working with a number of Eastern Bloc mathematicians. She was involved in the Velvet Revolution as the official spokesperson for Václav Havel’s group, Civic Forum. When Havel became president immediately after the revolution, Jana remained part of the inner-circle of intellectuals of that era. She later ran for office and served in Parliament, helping craft legislation for the new country.

How did she become a revolutionary? Jana grew up under communism, and yes please imagine all the stereotypical things you’ve heard about that. Although the Communists nearly killed the tradition, Czech students have a long history of studying in France. Jana was one of 12 students in the entire nation chosen to go to France and study. Jana left home as a teenager and studied for three years at a French boarding high school. After completing her studies and returning to Czechoslovakia, she was told she could not travel to the West again, visit her friends or host family, or experience any of the Western freedoms she had known while in France.

Malá Strana Neighborhood

After completing University in Prague and a PhD in the USSR (yes, educated in three different languages) Jana became a mathematics professor, but who could have guessed the changes in store for her and her country? Although she worked as a mathematician, she was one of the few Czechs who had actually lived in a democratic society and seen capitalism up close. I imagine her fellow citizens had a few questions for her when it came time to kick out the Communists! And so, Jana became a revolutionary.

Can you imagine what it must have been like for an entire country to change its political and economic system? Those who have lost jobs in this recession know something about how difficult it is to re-invent yourself, learn new skills, and put those into practice. Now imagine an entire country having to go through this process while trying to protect its culture, national treasures, and invent a better way of life for all its citizens.

So, Jana gave up mathematics and started crafting her new country, eventually starting a business school in Prague, the US Business School, Praha. From mathematician to revolutionary, dissident to MP, to founding a school and educating students once again, Jana’s life has taken quite a wide circle against the backdrop of the fall of Communism and the opening of the Eastern Bloc.

Astronomical Tower

The Czech Republic successfully emerged from Communism due to the enormous effort made by her citizens. And there’s no doubt that the Czech’s did it right. The Velvet Revolution must be one of the very few bloodless revolutions in history. When Slovakia split off in the 1990’s, the Czech’s approached the Velvet Divorce with the same decorum. There are probably even fewer bloodless civil wars in history. And although freedom and capitalism are not without issues, the Czech Republic’s citizens stood up and did as Jana did, overcoming huge challenges in order to earn long-awaited freedom.

So if you visit Prague, you won’t see obvious signs of revolutionary struggle but you will see thousands of success stories in the booming businesses, restaurants, shops, restored homes, churches and palaces of the Czechs who radically changed their own lives and revolutionized their own country. Stop into a cafe, enjoy a slice of Medovník and chat with a local. You, too, may find you’ve just had tea with a revolutionary.

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We are in Prague this week, enjoying the Baroque architecture, the cuisine heavy on root veggies (my favorite), and Kent is enjoying Czech beer. Here, I recount several faux pas from the past few weeks in France.

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Pig Roasting Human

Although there are many small (and often delightful) differences between France and the US, sometimes just when I think I have things figured out I’m surprised to suddenly find myself doin’-it-wrong.

When I arrived back in May, I went to the grocery store to stock up on household items. It turns out that it was remarkably difficult for me to purchase hair conditioner. I easily purchased a bottle of shampoo, called shampooing. I grabbed the matching bottle without really studying it, ending up with some shower gel called gel douche. Faux pas #1.

The next day I went back to the store and spent a great deal of time studying the toiletries and came home with creme de douche only to discover I had purchased — more shower gel.  Faux pas #2. On my third attempt, I went to a huge supermarket on the outskirts of town that had an enormous aisle of beauty products. I read labels, I pondered, I opened containers. This time I purchased a bottle called, of all things, après shampooing. Success!

Among other things which are different are sheet sets. A French sheet set consists of two bottom sheets, complete with elastic. They don’t use top sheets much, preferring duvets with washable covers. Although I thought I had purchased two sets of sheets, I didn’t carefully read and study the packages and that’s how I ended up with four bottom sheets and no top sheets for the guest cabin. Faux pas #3.

I also deliberately commit certain faux pas regularly. I eat food in the street, usually the warm, crunchy heel of a newly-purchased baguette. I eat cheese before dinner, whereas the French usually eat cheese after dinner (I do that, too). My lunch hours are not rigorously observed. Kent and I will actually eat sandwiches while the boat is moving. The French always stop whatever they are doing and sit down for a proper lunch. We get very quizzical looks from locals as we cruise by, eating our lunch, then their expressions change once they realize where we’re from. We can almost see the little thought bubble over their heads – “Mon dieu, what are zeese cretins doing not stopping for a proper lunch? Oh, zey are Americans…”

And even though the rest of the world thinks Americans are doin’-it-wrong, I love a huge travel mug filled with tea or coffee in the morning. You can fit at least five cups of English tea or French coffee in my stainless steel, insulated mug. Europeans never walk with coffee, they sit down at a cafe with their little tiny cups. Folks eye my travel mug warily when I stroll into the bakery in the morning with a cup bigger than a can of beer. But then, I’m the one warily eyeing their work-day, lunch-time wine!

So far, I haven’t made any huge, embarrassing social faux pas (knock on wood). I did make a pretty big language usage mistake last spring in Aix-en-Provence. When checking into a hotel late one night, I asked the night clerk for what I thought was a hair dryer, chaufage pour les cheveux. The clerk burst out laughing saying (in French), “I’m going to write that one down.” I had asked for a hair heater, or a hair furnace! The correct phrase is sèche–cheveux.

The great thing is that I learn from my mistakes, learning about a new culture or learning new words. Oh, and I also have a bunch of great-smelling shower gel!

Acquaintances have speculated, over the years, that Kent and I are actually secret agents of the US Government.  We’d like to allay everybody’s suspicions and lay the rumors to rest once and for all!

The Top 10 Reasons We’re Not Spies

10. Think about it. Spy on France? We’re NOT about to go to war with France. They’re getting more like us everyday – they can’t even smoke in public anymore.

9. The other location we frequent regularly is the British Virgin Islands, and we already won that war.

8. Heather’s secret weapon would be, um, cooking in field conditions?

7. Although Kent’s April 2011 trip oversees eerily coincided with the deployment of CIA operatives in Libya  (as noted by his fellow Beaver Creek Race Department employees), he was actually in rural France, not rural Libya. We have photos to prove it.

6. Spies are actually on the Department of Agriculture’s payroll, not NASA’s.

5. So what if Osama Bin Laden was captured exactly 10 days after Kent returned to work at NASA after spending the winter in Colorado?  Correlation isn’t causation.

4. We are two of the worst poker players we know. Spies are great at poker, right?

3. Heather might be good with gadgets, but she’s not that good.

2. The shoe phone won’t fit in flip-flops.

1. James Bond would own a faster boat!