Open Road

My first driving excursion in France

I’m here in France. No fanfare this time, no dramatic “I’m leaving my comfortable home in the US for the Great Unknown” farewell blog post, no “I have arrived in the land of sweet buttery pastries, my own form of heaven” arrival post. Just… well… here I am.

It’s day 3, and it hasn’t sunk in yet. I feel like I’m in another big American city, where, rather inconveniently, no one understands what I’m saying.

Anyway. Today’s adventure:

Pretty much my sole job while here will be to help drive for a family who, for medical reasons, find themselves driverless. Now, this family seems pretty darn perfect, and the work involved sounds pretty minimal, so I definitely wanted them to like me. That’s how I ended up exaggerating my manual transmission driving skills via email, when said skills were, at the time, nonexistent. See, automatic cars are practically impossible to find in France, much like manual cars are few and far between in the US. I knew the basic theory behind driving a manual car, as in, I knew *cognitively* what it takes, but I’d never had a car to practice on. And since the sole qualification for this job was to drive the car, I set to learning ASAP.

I took two lessons with a guy out in New Jersey who wasn’t exactly the model of professionalism. Basically we’re talking about a guy who happens to have a stick and is willing to give you the most basic hands-off advice on the cheap. You may wonder why I chose him, and I’ll refer you to the previous sentence, where I said: on the cheap. After two lessons I was able to ease into first from a stop and change from 1 to 2 to 3 (but not back down again). That’s it. I wasn’t willing to have another incomplete lesson, and I was only a few days from leaving, so I decided to rent a car in France instead and just throw myself into the fire, so to speak.

Not to spoil the story, but I’ll give you a hint: It was hell.

The thing no one really talks about with the old “sink or swim” adage is that while you are trying not to sink, you are miserably inhaling water and trying desperately to remain in the dear world of the living. It is not pleasant.

So. Let me set the scene for you. I’m in Lyon, the third largest city in France, where I’m spending a pleasant four or five days of vacation before continuing on to this job. The Enterprise car rental agency I chose is the closest one, at the train station. This train station is in the absolute heart of the city, Lyon Part Dieu. It’s the same kind of scene as Union Station in DC or Penn Station in New York. It’s messy.

The car is on the sixth floor of the garage. After checking out the car with the agent, I’m ready to go. Out of nowhere, a large group waiting for their car begin to fan out into the driving area, just as I’m putting the car into first. I’m self conscious about them watching me and also know there’s a high probability I’ll hit them, but I guess my terrified face was apparent enough through the window because they scattered very quickly as I pulled off. Down the tight spiral ramp to the first floor. And bam, we’re in Lyon downtown.

Everything was great from here on out. I have trouble, but the car hasn’t stalled. My biggest issue thus far has been stopping, but my menacing look was enough to stop pedestrians from crossing and I didn’t actually have to really stop the car all the way up to the highway. And then it was all open road. 

I drove two, two and a half hours to Dijon, had a pleasant lunch (unfortunately not featuring mustard) and got back in the car.


Now, my rental car was due back at 8pm. I didn’t want to push it too late, because I absolutely didn’t want to drive at night.


So instead, I ended up in rush hour traffic, getting to the Lyon outskirts around 6:30pm.


Traffic on the highway outside Lyon was bumper to bumper, but I felt pretty good about myself for navigating it. Shift into first; ease off the clutch, add some gas. Foot back on the clutch. Brake to a stop. Do it again. Up into second now. Okay, it’s slowing down. It’s stopping. Put it into neutral. Come to a complete stop. I continued like that until traffic let up and I could ease on into downtown, which was slightly more predictable.

Until.

Within three blocks of the train station, there was one of those underground tunnels that dips down under a street or two and comes back up. They have a ton of them in DC. This one seemed to have a particularly steep uphill at the end, with a traffic light right at the very top. I knew it would be a problem before I even got to it. Traffic slowed, and I had to stop at the base of the hill. The light was remarkably quick, enough for 3-4 cars only, so the pressure was on. Another green light cycle. Now I’m at the middle of the hill. That’s where the trouble started. The next time the light turned green, I was trying to start on the hill and hurry up so that I could make it through the light. I guess I popped off the clutch too quick. The car stalled. I turned it off and back on again. In the rear view mirror I see the driver behind me raise his hands in the air in exasperation, because by the time I’m finally able to get the car on again, the light’s red. I inch up a little higher on the hill.

The light turns green again. I’m the second car to go. Or I should be. But I stall again. The driver behind me starts to swear. I get the car on again and I stall. Yes. A third time. It seems impossible. I’m swearing too. The guy behind me is shouting, because it’s rush hour, and only a few cars get to go at a time, and the light takes forever anyway, and he’s tried to swerve around me but there isn’t enough room. I’m sweating.

Finally, the light turns green again, and finally, I successfully manage to make it into first and up the rest of the hill. I see the car rental parking garage, but it’s on the other side of the street. Around the block in tight traffic I go. I cut into an alley which has the shortest traffic light cycle of them all, and… another round of stalling. Twice. Another upset French man is swearing behind me. I just need to get into this impossibly tight garage and dump the car there so I can go home and feel sorry for myself. I get the car going in first and beyond, round the block, get into the garage, up the six stories, and pull into the first space I see.

Hastily, I rub the sweat off my brow, gather my things, and step out the car.

Tout s’est bien passé? The car rental guy asks me. Or whatever the proper phrase is in French.

Oui, I said. Parfait. Merci. Voici les clés.

And I stumbled my way home.

Winter

A short note on grief and loss

In mid-October 2016 I was sitting in my little single room in the apartment in France. I had a little box of French cookies next to me on the bed, and I was beginning to read “Qui Es-Tu Alaska” (Looking For Alaska), which I’d been putting off for awhile. I was bored. While there was wired Ethernet internet in the apartment, I hadn’t managed to connect yet, so I was on my third week sans-internet. My roommate was out, and it was early evening, too early to begin thinking about reheating last night’s chicken cutlet and lentil ragout on the stove.

Then I got a phone call from my mom.

I’d known my mother wasn’t feeling great when I left for France. I had spent the summer living with her in suburban Connecticut, where she’d been struggling with issues related to her gut. She had been seeing doctors, trying to get the myriad of intestinal-related problems under control. But it wasn’t so serious back then, to me at least, so I hadn’t left with any grave concerns. This phone call changed that. She had been to a doctor who told her the issues were far more serious than previously believed. She may not have long to live.

Lot’s of things happened in the two weeks that followed. I came home. My mother had a sixtieth birthday party. She was hospitalized. We met with funeral homes and lawyers and doctors. Family and friends poured in. And I had a choice to make – whether or not to go back to France and complete my gap year teaching English. It was one of the hardest choices to make, given very limited information, a stressful environment, and what at the time was a life or death scenario. So, while my mother was in the hospital, I made a 48-hour trip back to France to collect my things and close my French bank account for good.

I got home prepared and expecting to spend the next few weeks as the last weeks with my mother. I got a part-time job at a grocery store so that I wouldn’t constantly be hovering over her day after day. I tried to settle into life, this sort of “new normal.” People brought over home cooked meals and came to visit with my Mom. She rested, and greeted visitors, and made her preparations. Time passed. And yet as time passed, something remarkable happened – it wasn’t the end. My mother wasn’t feeling stellar, but no longer was she on her deathbed. Other possibilities came to light – perhaps the doctor was wrong in the prognosis, or at least in the timing of it all?

As we toyed with this notion, my mother set Valentine’s Day as her Victory Day – the day she would definitely decide that the prognosis was not a perfect fit for her illness, and that she thus needed to move on. It’s not that she’ll never kick the bucket – it’s that it probably won’t be in the next few months, so it’s time to move on with life.

The time between early November and late February was not easy. It was a tremendously stressful period not only for me and my family, but for so many of my friends and support network. I can truly say I learned what it means to be a friend – what it means to ask for and give support, and the true power of love. I learned about grief and loss. How we can feel loss for a person, or for an idea; loss of a future; a lost opportunity.

At the beginning of my gap year, I said I wanted to use the year to grow and learn. The universe has a funny sense of humor. But I did grow. And I did learn. Though it has been a roller coaster ride we’ve exited safely to the right with all of our belongings, and life goes on. I wish my mother had not had to go through what she did, but I am so glad she’s okay and that I was in a position to be here with her.

Now, in the face of my mother’s temporary recovery, I’ve decided to end my gap year in France the way I began. Though I wanted to return to the school where I was set to teach, I never received any word about returning. So instead I’ll be helping out a family a little farther south, about two hours northwest of Toulouse. I’m excited to write about this adventure and more in the coming weeks.

I thought the greatest misfortunes I’d write about during my stay in France would be weight gain from eating too many croissants or getting lost trying to speak the language. I’ve encountered quite a few more trials and tribulations than that during this year. But I would be a very different person without this journey I’ve been on.

And isn’t this travel blog all about the journey?