France '99: Hang Gliding and the Big 5-0 Bouffe*
(French slang for "meal")

by Christy Huddle

A lot of people have a big party when they turn 50. They invite all their friends, hire a caterer and a band, and rent a big hall. They get a bunch of gifts appropriate for the milestone - things like California Select Prunes, subscription to AARP, a bottle of Grecian Formula. That ain't my style. About three months before the big day, I told Doug that I wanted to have my birthday in France and I wanted to spend most of the time hang gliding and the rest of the time eating great food.

On June 9th, we arrived at Dulles three hours before our Air France flight was scheduled to leave. I was hoping that by being first in line, we'd get the seats by the exit door that have all the leg room. No such luck. The plane was almost an hour and quarter late in taking off which ate into the time I'd allocated for making our connection at the Charles de Gaulle airport in France. Not to worry. We made it with 10 minutes to spare.

The Train a Grande Vitesse (TGV) is definitely the way to see the country if you're in a hurry to get somewhere. It is on time and it gets there fast. We arrived in Lyon, our jumping off point to the Alps, at noon, picked up the Budget rental car, and headed for the Chartreuse mountain area to spend the night in a country B & B. We stayed outside the little town of St. Hugues de Chartreuse. (Map showing area: http://www.parc-chartreuse.net/detail.htm)

The next morning we drove over the Col du Coq to St. Hilaire where we left our harnesses in storage, not wanting to have to lug them around on the side trip to Zermatt, Switzerland. We got to Zermatt that evening, the last part you have to do by train since cars are not allowed in town. Around 9:30 the next morning we left the hotel in the center of town, heading for the big valley that is on the north side of the Matterhorn. We started up the south side of the valley, on the valley floor, climbed up the side of the mountains ringing that side, decided we'd rather be on the other side (grass was greener, sun was brighter, view was more spectacular on that side). I'd hiked this area in 1986 when my sister visited me when I was living in France. We'd had a spectacular experience and I wanted Doug to see why my sister and I were still talking about it after all this time. (To orient yourself: http://www.ski-zermatt.com/zermatt_hiking_map.html )

It took us an hour to go down the side we were on and go up the other side. Doug could see right away why I wanted to be on the north side of the valley. The trail goes almost to the base of the rock outcropping (huge) on the north side and you have a view of the Matterhorn that can't be beat. The trail is skinny and hugs the steep side of the valley wall. There were still lots of frozen snow patches left over from the particularly harsh winter of 1998/99. At one point we had to cross a patch that had me praying for a safe passage. If I'd slipped it would have been a 5,000 fall to the valley floor. The last two hours of the hike were spent dropping back down into Zermatt. A mountain stream fed by the snow melt was doing a real number on the trail, making it particularly hard going.

We arrived back in Zermatt by 5 pm, after 7 hours and 15 minutes of nonstop hiking. Naturally we stopped in at the first outdoor cafe for big mugs of beer. For dinner we enjoyed a boeuf bourguignon which is a dish of beef strips that you cook yourself and then dip in the various sauces provided. Back to the hotel for a well deserved good night's sleep.

At 6:30 the next morning, our well deserved good night's sleep was interrupted by a drum and fife corps marching down the main street of town. No idea what the occasion was and the hotel keeper also had no clue. After breakfast we drove back to St. Hilaire via Megeve, Annecy, and Aix-les-Bains, taking small roads most of the way. It was a beautiful day with cumis popping off everywhere. We saw aviation of all kinds being committed on every ridge we passed. At the bottom of the road leading to St. Hilaire, we took pity on a paraglider pilot hitching back up to his car. We found out that it had indeed been a spectacular day for flying, in fact the best day of the whole trip. Eh oui.

We settled into our room at Le Chalet, the small hotel next to the paragliding launch that caters to pilots and had a good meal that night in the hotel restaurant. Naturally, on Monday the weather had deteriorated although the early hours were ok for some student flights. Doug watched these from the balcony off our room. (You can see them yourself: http://www.wing-vol-libre.com/cgi/webcam.cgi) On our morning constitutional it started sprinkling. When we heard that the forecast for Tuesday didn't sound much better, we did a quick assessment of the situation. My birthday dinner was scheduled for Thursday, June 17th (naturally, since that is my birthday), but the good weather was supposed to return on Wednesday. This being the Big 5-0, I had reserved a table at the Georges Blanc Restaurant and a room at the Georges Blanc Residence des Saules in Vonnas, one of the finest establishments in France (and therefore, the world). What a dilemma! Miss the good flying in order to have the big meal on the big day?? No way. I called and was able to move up my birthday to Tuesday night.

So, on Tuesday morning Doug and I headed for Vonnas on the back roads and via Chambery. It was a relaxing trip, especially after stopping at the small vineyard where they offered wine tasting. Dinner was a seven course, three and a half hour endurance contest. Doug won, hands down. I would have done better if I'd not been so successful at losing weight so I wouldn't be so heavy on my glider. My stomach was only big enough to hold the first three courses. By the time my main course had come (the 5th one), I only managed a couple of bites. The food was incredible. Doug said he had no idea it was possible to "do that to food". This was washed down (the French would say "bien arros") by two bottles of excellent wine, two out of the 1,600 offered at the restaurant. (For a look at Monsieur Blanc: http://www.leschefs.com/blanc.htm; he has received the highest rating given by Michelin - 3 stars - and by Gault et Millau - 4 toques.)

The sun woke us up the next morning. We had a gourmet buffet breakfast and were on the road by 10. Back in St. Hilaire by 12:30 (autoroute is much faster than the back roads), we met up with Bob and Alain, the instructors at the hang gliding school. We loaded the gliders we would be using and headed for launch. It was a light thermal day with paraglider pilots littering the sky. I eked out 32 minutes and Doug about 15 before landing in the valley LZ. Bob drove us to the funicular so we could take that up and they could go back up with the students for another flight. Hang glider pilots ride up for free. Paraglider pilots have to pay, but at a reduced rate.

Thursday was the Big Day. In the morning we drove down to Crolles to get some money from an ATM machine (I had to make sure the bank was open when I did it since I wasn't sure the PIN number was good and if it "ate" my card....) and a little cake for the evening festivities. Back on top most of the paraglider pilots were down as the wind increased in strength and got more crossed. The clouds were forming below the crest of the Dent de Crolles but there was plenty of lift. I flew around the clouds and got as close as I could to the Dent de Crolles. (For a view of the Dent on a clear day: http://pro.wanadoo.fr/f.couillet.consultant/chartreuse.htm; the road coming towards you in the bottom middle of the picture is the road to launch). The highest I got during my 1 hour 38 minute flight was 5,912' msl. (Launch is at 3,200' msl.) Doug, in the meantime, had run to the north in search of less crowded air and ended up sinking out after 35 minutes. He and everyone else was on ground in the valley when I top landed in a field not far from launch where some other pilots were already on the ground. A local pilot gave me and the glider a ride back to Le Chalet.

Doug and I had a reblochonade for dinner at the Chalet restaurant. When the French travel to other parts of France, they do it to enjoy the scenery and the local dishes. When in France, do as the French. The reblochonade includes a big dish of charcuterie (various cold meats, made from various parts of the pig, and all delicious), little potatoes kept hot in a small oven on your table, a small skillet that slides into the oven filled with a slab of reblochonade, the local cheese. You heat the cheese until the top melts, scrape this off onto a potato, add some charcuterie to it. Follow this with a swig of the local red wine and a tiny pickled onion or a cornichon.

The next morning we packed our stuff to move to a small chalet down the road. Someone else had our room for the weekend. After the usual petite dejeuner of cafe au lait, bread, and orange juice, we drove to our next digs and deposited our stuff, and then drove the short distance to the hang gliding launch. We helped get the students off, then set up our rental gliders while Alain went down to get to the students. The local pilots were standing around talking about the possibility of rain. It did look a little dark here and there, but nothing particularly threatening, so I jumped off. It was a brainless day for soaring. You could go anywhere up, down and around. Pretty soon everyone had taken to the sky. Doug flew a brand new glider (same kind, but straight from the factory) and found it to be much sweeter than the broken in one he'd flown the day before. Cloud base was a little over 6,000', enough to get just to the top of the Dent de Crolles but no higher. I spent an hour and 51 minutes of fun flying checking out the plateau and the Dent de Crolles up close. Doug landed on top after cruising the area for an hour and 35 minutes and I followed a bit later. Bob picked us up and we returned to Le Chalet for a continuation of the birthday celebration. I'd bought a bottle of good champagne (Perrier-Jouet) which the night before Alain had put it in the refrigerator of his parents' apartment in the hotel. Unfortunately he'd forgotten to turn the refrigerator back on so it wasn't particularly cold for us. It still tasted great and the students we'd invited to share it with had no problem drinking it down.

On Saturday the wind was already blowing a bit and from the north when we woke up. We met Alain at 10:30, loaded the gliders, and headed for launch. I had to wait for a light cycle to launch. The launch is a short, flat platform with an almost vertical front side. On windy days you stand back and wait for a lull. When the lull comes, you step to the front of the platform, fall forward and you're in the air. The strong north cross made for very rowdy conditions. I got dumped several times and it reminded me of the first flight I took at Slide Mountain in Nevada when the prevailing wind started outdoing the thermals coming up the face. It felt like Rotor City. About 30 minutes into my flight I watched as Doug and another pilot were trying to land in the field on top at the same time. The other pilot was a little lower and was taking his time coming down. Doug, not knowing where in the mowed section the first pilot would touch down, elected to land in the unmowed part of the field. After 40 minutes of the stuff I'd also had enough and headed in for a top landing.

Back at the shop we debated about waiting around to see if it lightened up and decided to take a hike instead. I paid for the flights (they gave me a free flight for my birthday!) and we headed up to the back side of the Dent de Crolles. After a few false starts we found the main trail to the top of the mountain. I didn't care for the condition of the trail. There was a lot of loose rock and my jogging shoes had almost no tread left on them. I was almost on all fours holding onto whatever rocks or vegetation I could that looked connected to the ground. I made it to the bottom of the Dent de Crolles outcropping, but blanched when I saw the cable bolted to the vertical face of the first rock wall. "No way am I going up there. I'm heading back down. You can go, but there is no way I can do that." I guess as you get older, you're less willing to take chances and now that I'd passed the Big 5-0, I was going to have to be hooked in to a hang glider before I'd be getting up on something like that. Doug continued on to the top and reported back later when he caught up with me on the trail down (I was taking it slowly) that I had made the right decision. It got worse after the cable.

The next morning conditions were looking even stronger than Saturday's and we decided to bail. We headed out on the small roads via Chambery, stopping at a village to buy the fixings for a picnic (saucisson sec, thinly cut cured ham, roquefort, a local cheese, some pastries, a baguette) which we ate further down the road on a tiny dock by the side of a lake. Beautiful scenery all the way to the outskirts of Lyon. After putting our stuff in the hotel room in downtown Lyon, we walked over to the Basilique Fourviere arriving just in time to walk to the top of the tower for a great view of old Lyon. (For some views of the city, including the basilique Fourviere, go to http://www.mairie-lyon.fr/fr/histo_patrimoine.htm#1.) After that we checked out the Roman ruins (See http://www.mairie-lyon.fr/en/focus/histoz_parcarcheo.html) and then returned to the hotel to don our best clothes for the last great meal of the trip at the Restaurant Chevallier. Before going to bed Doug set the alarm on the computer/TV in our room since we would have to get up early to catch our train back to the Charles de Gaulles airport.

We were up and packing by 5 am on Monday morning, our departure day. It was only a five minute drive to the train station Gare de Part Dieu, but when I allocated an hour for the drive and for returning the rental car, I hadn't taken into account the difficulty I'd have finding the damn rental car parking lot. The area around the station is confusing with Its One Way Streets, Its Construction, and Its Odd Topography. (If you've been to France, you'll recognize the style of that last sentence.) In a panic when the first 45 minutes went by without finding the parking lot, I dropped Doug off to tell them I was coming. We'd lost the plastic card to the gate and I didn't know if I could get in without it. Doug found the rental car office with no problem, but couldn't find anyone who understood English well enough to know what predicament I was in. ("You can't find your wife, monsieur?") He ran back out onto the streets, but quickly realized that trying to find me on the streets of Lyon would be futile as there were millions of small white cars like the one I was racing around in. He ran back to the parking lot and found another rental car worker who seemed to understand that I needed help and who said he could find me. He and Doug were heading out just as I was coming down the last stretch into the lot. Just by luck I'd come onto the street I'd needed and had seen the tiny sign giving directions on how to get into the rental car parking lot. Someone was at the gate to open it for me and I just ignored the red light on the one-way portion of the long drive in. By now the rain was coming down. Flying down the steep ramp into the lot I needed, I saw Doug in the car. I started yelling and waving my hands, pointing to the side entrance to the train station. I flew past, hit the brakes with a screech of tires, jumped out, yelled to Doug to take the bags into the side door of the station, and ran into the car rental office, slapping the key and rental agreement on the counter and telling them to "take care of it." I raced back to where Doug was and we grabbed our stuff and started dragging it through the station, without knowing which track we needed to be on. We had two minutes left before the train was scheduled to leave. We passed someone in a uniform and I gasped, "Le TGV a Charles de Gaulle, ou?" She pointed up the escalator right in front of her, "Voie G." We lumbered up the escalator, one minute to go. We saw a looonnng train sitting on Voie G - two trains in fact, back to back. Out of breath, I asked at the first door of the first train, "Charles de Gaulle?" "Non, la", she said, pointing down to the other end of the train. I knew it was time for the train to be on its way, so in a complete American style panic, I started yelling out, "Please! Wait! Please! Wait!" as we hustled as best we could (with our harnesses, clothes bags, 4 bottles of wine, fondue cooking set, and daypacks) to the first door of the second train. Only the conductor was outside the train now, staring at les deux americains tres bizarre. As we crammed ourselves into the small vestibule at the end of the car, the doors were closing. We stood there, soaking wet from the rain and the sweat, breathing like buffaloes in heat, but IN the train when it pulled out of the station seconds later. After all that excitement, the 4 hour wait in Charles de Gaulles airport (Air France was late again) was heaven.