What To Pack

Our Air France flight allows only one checked bag of 23kg or less. We can pay for extra bags, of course. Each extra bag is $55. Bags weighing over 23kg are OK for an extra $110 for each overweight bag. I did the math and decided that it is much cheaper to pack a lot of medium-heavy bags. Our only scale is on the top floor of our house. It is not portable, so I will be banging the suitcases up and down the stairs to make sure they are not overweight. Maybe I should invest in a normal small scale at Target.

I am used to bringing two very large and heavy bags each way. Luckily I brought mostly summer clothes with me. But, there will be new purchases, supplies and gifts to bring. I need my regular luggage allowance.

For awhile, earlier this summer, I'd made a resolution to limit my packing to one 23kg bag. I was optimistic that I could pull this off. I don't need shoes, I have them in Paris. I don't need books, I have a Kindle. I don't need to shop this summer... whoa! I have to draw the line somewhere and this is it.

The fall clothes are just coming out now. It's hard to tell what I will want to wear in November, but I have to try to picture it. The better I am at visualizing myself in the fall, the more shopping I do. The result is that the one bag is now a fantasy that can never be fulfilled.

On The Way To The Cafe Yesterday

When I'm in the US, I try to practice speaking french. It's difficult because there aren't many native french speakers in Southern California. I don't want to practice with other Anglophones because I will pick up their accent (just like mine so that's easy) and reproduce their grammar errors.

An ex-teacher of mine, Nadine, now gives private lessons in a cafe in Redondo Beach. I share the lesson with a fellow french student, Jean. We speak only in french. We enjoy each other's company, share stories and ideas. It is very convivial.

The cafe, the Coffee Cartel has been around forever. Instead of cafe chairs there are big, overstuffed, kinda dirty couches to sit on. There are no servers, you order your drink at the counter and take it to a couch. Most of the people in the cafe are young, tattooed, and using computers. Wifi must be free with the coffee.

This is our meeting place. It's close to the beach, relaxed.

Jean and I carpool to the cafe. We've known each other for a long time but only get together for our lessons even though she lives a few blocks away.

Yesterday she was telling me (in English and French) about her recent trip to Mammoth.

She went with her son's family. During the trip, they visited a ghost town called Bodie. We took the kids there, maybe 25 years ago and I remembered it very well. It is a place that was abandoned when the California Gold Rush ended. There are still bottles in the pharmacy and the saloon, furniture in some of the little houses, it is a snapshot of what life must have been like 150 year ago in California.

As we talked I realized something. While the US has a much shorter history than Europe, we have some very interesting historical events. I'm most familiar with California history. As we drove, we discussed our history. The California missions are wonderful. The Gold Rush, the railroads, the ranchos. I'd forgotten about this until our drive to the cafe.

Margaritas?

It's been sunny and warm in California -- finally -- after six weeks of gloom.

Saturday night called for margaritas after a day at the beach. We bought the ingredients -- that's easy. But, we'd forgotten where are margaritas glasses were stored. It's been ages since we've had margaritas. We're more on the french champagne circuit these days and I know instantly where the champagne glasses are.

A trip to the garage was needed. I keep many of our older glasses stored in boxes in our storage room. I went through box after box and finally found the margarita glass box, buried about six deep.

I brought the box upstairs and started to unwrap the contents. Eventually I found three of one kind and two of another. At some point in the past, we must have broken a lot of margarita glasses. As I took them out of the newspaper they were wrapped in, I looked at the date on the yellowed LA Times pages. Evidently the last time we used these margarita glasses was in 1993 and 1994. Could it be possible that we haven't made a margarita since then?

How Do The Pros Do It?

Changing locations involves a lot more than packing a suitcase and canceling the newspaper. We are constantly adjusting. Food, language, activities all differ. Even the time of day when we do things is different. In the US, we eat dinner earlier. Errands take much longer in France. We just adjust.

One of the things that is the hardest to adjust to is the different types of tennis courts. In Manhattan Beach, we only have hard tennis courts. It's what we learned to play tennis on. This type of court is faster (the ball hits the ground and then comes up faster and usually lower), it is usually green. In France the courts are usually red clay although we've seen a variety of other types of courts, usually in a public park. Red clay is very gentle on the body, the ball bounces up higher, giving you more time to plan your attack. But hitting it really hard doesn't insure that the other person won't get it because the court slows it down.

Every time we change locations, we have to figure out how to play tennis all over again. We look like beginners the first couple of times we play in each location, slashing at the ball, overrunning it (running past it), actually swinging and missing. You have to hope no one's watching when that happens.

It's also easier to fall down on the red clay because it is slippery. But if you fall you don't get hurt, where if you fall on a hard court (cement) it will definately hurt.

Tennis pros play on all kinds of surfaces and seem to be able to play on anything. I watch the players week after week, on grass, on hard courts on clay. They always play well, they never swing and miss. How do they do it?