Skiing, or the Rally of Monte Carlo

Jube and I woke up this morning at 7:30am. That's right, we woke up at 7:30 on a Saturday. Why did we do that? To go skiing, of course! Isola 2000, the most southern ski station in France, is only an hour and a half from Nice. Since it snowed early this week, almost all of the pistes were open, and the weather report predicted sun with highs (in the mountains) of 2 degrees Celcius. Jube's family loves skiing, and I was pretty excited about our ski trip en amoureux. We drove out of the parking lot at 8:20; we were back 2 hours later.

What happened? At first, everything seemed to be going fine. We stopped for gas on the outskirts of Nice, and as we drove along we could see the snow-covered peaks of the Alps getting closer and closer. The sun was shining on the mountains, and they glistened temptingly in the distance. Then, suddenly, the traffic ground to a halt. We drove in deceiving spurts. First, we were stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic, with no one getting anywhere. Then we were driving along at 90km/h without a care in the world. Every time this happened, we thought, "Ah, it's cleared up, we can get going now." And then we would see the taillights flash red in front of us, and Jube would pound on the steering wheel in frustration. Finally we decided to turn around at the next intersection and head back home when we realized that we would only be able to ski for 4 hours at most. We finally caught sight of a bridge that crossed the river Var near the town of Gilette. (Do you think that's where they make the shaving cream?)

As we made the U-turn, we saw some policemen directing traffic over the bridge, and some people with cameras gathered around. Then two muddy sports cars revved their engines, and we realized that it was part of the Rally of Monte Carlo. We had some vague knowledge of the Rally's existence from the news reports we had heard all morning. This threw Jube into even deeper spasms of frustration. "Of course we went the only day it would be blocked!" he raged. "Stupid jerky road!" (He actually said "route à la con!" but I figure my translation is good enough.)

So we just arrived back at the good ol' villa. I wonder what we'll do today . . .