On Wednesday we had reserved a spot for our daughter to paraglide off the mountain. We left the other kids in the apartment and took her over to the Brévent lift. She was warmly dressed and very excited.
We bought her the one-way ticket to the top, and waited for Sandie, the same pilot who had guided our oldest down from the mountain, to arrive.
But when Sandie showed up, she told us that the wind was coming from the wrong direction to fly from Brévent, and we would have to send her off from the Midi instead. So we all hopped into the van from her parapente company and drove across town to the other lift. Sandie arranged for the money we’d paid for the other lift to be applied to this one. And we sent our daughter with her, walking across the plaza.
The van took Mark and me to the landing field where we had a chance to examine a mock-up of the parapenting harness, hanging there for the parapente school.
There was a nice view all around the valley. We chatted with the driver of the van, who had such a strong British regional accent that I thought for sure must be a UK expat. But he had trouble with some English. After I complimented him on his accent he said that though he was raised here in the valley, his dad was British. He had a French-speaking chestnut-colored dog who ran free, snuffling and digging holes in the ground: “For the flyers to break their ankles on,” he said, kicking a divot back into place with one foot.
He offered us coffee, which we drank from a blue plastic camping mug, warming our hands while we waited for our daughter to come flying out of the sky under an orange wing.
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But then the driver’s phone rang, and it was Sandie: the air was too moist, it was not safe to fly; they would be coming back down on the téléphérique.
He offered to drive us over, since he would be going to pick up Sandie, but we elected to walk across town instead, and decided to take her out for a pastry afterwards.
We waited and she came out with Sandie. “Are you disappointed?” we asked her, and she said not really; she had not expected she would really be able to fly today.
“If you think it won’t really happen,” she said, “you won’t be disappointed if you can’t, and it will be a nice surprise if you can.”
Everything is weather dependent in the mountains. It is a good lesson, even if a little sad. She still has a chance to try it again when we pass through France next week, but you never can tell.
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So, back to the Best Bakery In the World (TM) where she asked for an apple-filled turnover and a bottle of green tea.
Mark had a petit pain au chocolat and an almond-paste-filled, sugar-dusted confection. I had a perfect plain croissant, and a cappuccino.
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Then Mark got in the rental car and drove away. I went back to the apartment and crashed, with a long nap.
Mark and our oldest were gone all day. The 17-year-old had quite the windfall. Jeff the guide had invited him to come along for free as the “guest” (re: guinea pig) for a climbing certification. A Dutch guide was about to take the test to become an aspirant guide, and he needed Jeff (the instructor) and also someone to play the part of the client. That would become our son.
We decided not to let him go on a multiday trip where he would stay overnight, but we agreed to allow them to take him out of the Chamonix valley into Italy, where the weather was much better. I sat down and wrote a note in two languages stating that he had permission to travel across the French-Italian border in the company of Jeff the mountain guide, for climbing, with our Chamonix address and phone numbers; and we gave him the note and his passport, and sent him off in the morning.
He sent us some photos.
Clearly the day was working out better for him.
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Me, I was tired, and Mark was gone too. The trip isn’t entirely leisure; Mark planned five days of work in total. He had a meeting in Switzerland, and had taken the car.
The meeting was a teleconference back to the States; his employer has a facility in Switzerland, so he went there to have the teleconference. An unusual meeting: he was set to appear before the promotions committee. Much of the previous evening had been spent preparing for it.
I let the 13yo and then the 11yo take turns walking in the town. The rest of us stayed in the apartment. With Mark gone, and me tired, we had warned them that it would be a “down day,” a work day. If they bothered me I was authorized to teach them math or something.
Eventually I had to put some food on the table, so I put on my coat and walked down into town and found easy food at the grocery store: bread to make grilled cheese sandwiches, and sliced turkey for my turkey-sandwich-loving daughter, and a box of surprisingly tasty and sweet tomato soup, and a take-and-bake pizza.
Eventually both Mark and the 17yo arrived home, around the same time. Mark was in a good mood, feeling that he had done well in his interview before the board. There was an amusing story involving the conference room booking and a misunderstanding concerning the time change and a wild goose chase in the Swiss facility, booting people out of the unbooked conference rooms they had been squatting in, ending with a Skype connection instead of a teleconference that was set up merely seconds before the interview was supposed to begin.
But we opened the champagne anyway (Aldi champagne; it had a Concord grape nose, but it was pink and bubbly and we gladly drank it). And the 17yo told about his multipitchclimbing day, and Mark told about the questions he was asked and how he answered them, and we planned what to drink later if we got something to celebrate.
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