Archie Update: Going to the Invitational

Archie and I have been working on our agility teamwork and handling these past few months. He is on his way to a MACH--he has 14 of the 20 double Qs required, and more than enough points. We stalled out this summer because I was pushing him too hard. I took a long break from trialing and spent the past couple of months focusing on training.

I'm not sure we will get that MACH. It will be a big accomplishment if we do. There are not many smooth fox terriers with that agility title. 

Our next big adventure is coming up in just a couple of weeks. We are off to Orlando for the AKC Agility Invitational. Going to the Invitational was definitely on my bucket list for Archie. After he advanced to the number 2 position in his breed this summer, I decided this was the year to go. Three years ago he was in the number 11 spot, and last year he was number 5. I didn't go last year but now that I'm vaccinated to the eyeballs and he's moved up so quickly in the rankings, I decided this was the year. He may qualify again in future years but I will only take him once. It's an expensive dog show and it eats up a lot of my paid leave. 

I went to the Invitational with Iz back in 2006. It was in San Diego that year. Boy, things have changed a lot in the past 15 years! For starters, there will be a lot more dogs there. As a result, there are many more rules and organizational fiddly bits that I have to keep track of. It was a big dog show back in 2006, and it's even bigger now in 2021. 

The Invitational is an interesting event. Only the top 5 dogs in each AKC recognized breed who are actively competing in AKC agility are invited. If any of those dogs decline, AKC moves down the list. To qualify for the AKC Agility Nationals, you have to be the best in your height class. Archie jumps 16" so he competes against small border collies and other fast dog breeds. Still, he's quite good and he qualified for Nationals this year (I didn't go). To qualify for the Invitational, you have to be the best in your breed. So "best" is somewhat relative. If there are only three of your breed doing AKC agility, you can be quite shitty at agility and still get an invite to the Invitational. 

As a result, the Invitational can be a mixed bag. You will see Basset Hounds, Elk Hounds, teacup Chihuahuas, Saint Bernards, and all manner of tiny mop dogs who somehow, somehow, still manage to knock down bars that are only 4 inches from the ground. You will see living examples of dogs that you've only seen before in books. And I can assure you, some of these dogs, both breed and individual, should not be doing agility in any form. But they will be there. 

One of the benefits of attending such a ginormous dog show is the vendoring. It should be magnificent! I've got some specialty items on my shopping list already. Bulk bags of freeze-dried lamb lung? Check. Real fur tugs in a thousand different permutations? Check. German steel thinning shears? Check. Hand-made leather collars? Check.

I have an "agility trial packing list" that I print out about a week before each trial we attend. I meticulously cross off each item when it is completed and/or packed into the van. Trim toenails. Take out the trash. Dog bedding for trial crates, car crates, and hotel. Bathe and groom the dog. 

The last bit may seem odd, but Archie stands out. He's got striking markings, and he's an unusual breed. Archie gets noticed. It would not reflect well on me (or his breeder) if I showed up to a trial with a scruffy, dirty terrier. As a result, he gets a bath 4 days before any trial, and is thoroughly groomed from nose to asshole 2 days before any trial. That schedule will have to be adjusted this time since we will be on the road for two days just to get to Orlando.

Lots of planning and packing. Always more training to be done. It's going to be an adventure.

Road Trip Part 2: Starting to Settle In

I still haven't put my bed together although I hauled the futon upstairs to the bedroom. The space is slowly starting to come together. Unloading the trailer didn't take long, but it took me two days before I was able to get the kitchen clean enough, and before I was able to find all of the requisite equipment to make some coffee.

I've been getting the place cleaned and organized before the PODS arrive on Monday. I've got a week to unload them, plus another week after that to at least partially unpack before I start my new job.

This cheerful space will be my office. I finally got internet set up last night. 

I think you can tell that one of my priorities was dog beds!

The cat has finally starting showing up regularly for meal times, and is sleeping with the rest of us upstairs at night. The fence is not completed, so the dogs have to potty in the front yard on leash, and they are none too happy about that. They are all still a bit jumpy--the trip was hard on them too, and they are just starting to get used to the new environment. It will take time for all of us to settle in.

Road Trip Part 1: "It Was Fairly Horrible"

So exactly how does one get three dogs and a cat from Oregon to Arkansas? Driving was the best option but it came with some unique risks and problems. That's a long trip for just one driver. Plus I was going to pull a 5x8 foot trailer. And my plan wasn't too clear on lodging options. I figured that I would just pack it all up, hit the road, and figure things out on the way.

Taken in Utah.

It was a marathon event. I drove 2350 miles in three days. I did a bit less than 600 miles the first day, just under 900 miles the second day, and around 850 miles the third day. It was fairly horrible.

The cat was not doing well. He was in a large crate with room for a small bed, litter box, and bowl of food, but he was by no means happy or comfortable. He wasn't eating, drinking, or using the litter box, and that can be a big problem for cats. I was worried about him, and decided the sooner we reached Arkansas, the better. I was going to spend the same number of hours on the road, and whether we pushed through in three days or four wasn't going to change that.

And about those sketchy lodging plans? After wasting an hour or more trying to sort out a hotel on the first night (when I was already exhausted), I gave up and slept in the van in an interstate rest stop, buried in a pile of dog blankets and the two terriers. With four crates in the van, there was just enough room for me to sort of stretch out along one side. I could only let the terriers out--no way would I have been able to lie flat and let Azza out too. I did the same thing the second night too. In a way, it was easier. I could feed the dogs in their crates and didn't have to shuffle a hundred bits of crap in and out of a hotel room. Sure, I didn't shower for three days. And it was really cold both nights, around 45F. But I have plenty of dog blankets and the terriers are used to sleeping right next to me. So it worked out.

I stuck to major interstates for 99% of the trip. It was a good plan because I was able to stop often, let the dogs out and stretch my legs.

Here are some random observations from the trip:

• There is a lot of empty country out there. 
• Wyoming is fucking enormous. And empty. But amazingly beautiful. 
• Even after three days, I would look up at the rearview mirror and think, damn, that car behind me is too close, before realizing it was the trailer. I packed the shit out of that trailer. It was about the same size as the van and didn't move an inch even in high winds. 

Dogs along the driver side, cat in the dark red crate. 

• Kansas has the best rest stops I have ever seen. Large grassy areas surrounded by trees, places to pull the van and trailer into the shade, clean bathrooms. 

Enjoying some early morning Kansas sunshine.

• Oklahoma doesn't even bother with interstate rest stops. Disappointing. 
• It takes a pile of five thick fleece dog blankets to muffle the seat attachment brackets on the floor of the van but once they were in place, and I was wrapped in another king-size fleece blanket with two terriers snuggled in with me, I slept pretty comfortably. 

There was snow on the ground at the rest stop outside of Laramie, WY. Mimi is not amused by the cold winter wind. 

• I can't come up with a good reason for this, but with respect to traffic, the east-west corridors were the most empty and the north-south corridors the most crowded. 
• While I can confirm that the coffee culture of the Pacific Northwest has not fully penetrated The Big Empty of the western US, decent coffee can be found. 

So after three days, we arrived at the new house. My bed was in the trailer, but after that trip, I was too exhausted to even contemplate trying to unload anything. Plus we rolled in close to midnight and that's no time to be toting boxes and bales. So I slept on the floor of the house for yet a third night in the same pile of dog blankets, although this time Azza was able to join us.

French Immersion

Despite the obvious pleasures of drinking wine and eating pork daily, my primary reason for going to Sancerre was to spend two weeks in a French language immersion program at Coeur de France language school.

The reviews for the school on tripadvisor.com were uniformly positive and while CdF could accommodate families, it seemed that they mainly catered to adult learners. I took an online test that helped determine my level of proficiency (intermediate, no surprise there). And after a bit of emailing back and forth with Gerard, an American who is co-owner of the school with his French wife Marianne, I was able to coordinate my travel schedule with a suitable course schedule.

I was also able to arrange rental of an apartment directly above the school which was quite convenient. Although the apartment was certainly atmospheric and charming, some of the other apartments in the village maintained by the school were nicer. But those will have to wait for the next visit!

The view from my apartment window at dusk.

Literally upon our arrival at the train station in nearby Cosne (pronounce "cone"), we were asked not to speak English during our stay. It was difficult to comply with this 100% of the time because there were people at all proficiency levels attending the school, some of whom had no French at all, so every so often we found ourselves quickly whispering important information to each other in corners.

The school has around 10 instructors, including Marianne. Marianne was the instructor for the two weeks of my class. I was in a class of 5 other adults, with four of them in the same class as me for both weeks: John and May from England, Nennia from the US, and Jean from the US. Being together for two weeks brought a lot of continuity to our learning and our ability to understand each other.

Our group met for four hours each day, alternating mornings and afternoons. I spent an additional four to six hours each day working on homework and readings and grammar exercises (I carefully read three TinTin adventures during the two weeks; they are excellent because they present short sentences, colloquial expressions, multiple verb tenses, and a rather advanced vocabulary, all accompanied by pictures to help with meaning). It sounds like a lot of work and it really was. I’ve never worked so hard on a holiday. But despite being serious business, it was also a lot of fun. 

My first dinner in my tiny kitchen (thank goodness I am completely used to tiny kitchens from living for three years in my hovel in Dhahran): pork chop pan fried with shallots and garlic and salt and served on a bed of greens, crottin du chevre, a bottle of Sancerre blanc, fresh bread.

I discovered too late that I could have also signed up for a couple of hours of one-on-one instruction each day. I think my speaking skills would have improved much more if I had done this. Another useful bit of information for the next visit!

Four hours is a long time to sit in a class and Marianne used a variety of different activities to break things up. One activity that we did each meeting was to have group conversation. Marianne would usually initiate it by asking each of us to speak on a topic (what did you do on the weekend, tell us about your best vacation, describe situations where you’ve experienced French customs different from your own, etc.) then allow the others to ask each speaker questions. This free-form activity often led us into surprising conversational territory which sometimes we had trouble negotiating when our French wasn’t quite up to what we were trying to say.

By the second week, the five of us were getting pretty comfortable with each other and the jokes, made mostly at our own expense, were flying fast and furious. You know you are making progress in another language when you can make a joke and everyone gets it. After our group of five spent the weekend together drinking wine and gossiping, learning a lot about each others' lives outside of France in the process, we started teasing each other in class. Sometimes I think our teasing was maybe a bit too “English” for Marianne (even though it was all in French) but she remained calm when we started acting up.

We even established a few memes in our short time together. Jean watched "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone" five times in one day, all in French of course. So watching or reading something five times became our new standard, a true measure of learning. I created a meme for “rolling the dice” because I was always getting confused about grammatical choices which appear on the surface to be similar and small but which actually affect the meaning in big ways, such as que/qui, tout/tous, le/la, a/de/nothing with infinitive verbs, whether the "c" at the end of parc and porc is pronounced (yes in the first one, no in the second) and so forth. I’d invariably make the wrong choice and be corrected by Marianne so I’d shake my hand and open it like I was throwing out a pair of dice. (I also managed to successfully explain the related 50/50/90 rule to John entirely in French!)*

Freshly made crottins set out on wire racks in a cool room to begin aging.

One of the most interesting group conversations we had was prompted by Marianne asking each of us to select, read, then discuss an article with the class. We could choose the article  in any media or language that we wanted but we had to give our recap of it in French. Jean talked about the recent suicide death of a film director which spiraled off into a discussion of euthanasia and why people might choose suicide. Another woman talked about a study of the incidence of autism. From those two topics we spiraled off into a discussion about Lance Armstrong having his titles stripped from him, doping in sports, and whether immoral people can do truly good deeds or not. After all this serious stuff, I felt a bit bad about presenting the article I had chosen about the new model of Barbie that will come out in December of this year. But I only felt bad for a little while because I had invested a lot of energy into this assignment. What’s special about this particular Barbie? She was created by a transvestite fashion designer (Phillip Blonde) and looks eerily like him. How exactly does one know that a Barbie doll is a transvestite? You can't use the presence or absence of secondary sexual characteristics since Barbie dolls only have breasts. But you can use as evidence her extremely heavily made up face, her wildly spangled gown, and the words of Mattel itself. I used my iPad to show photos of this socially radical doll. And it turns out that there have been other bizarre Barbies: a pregnant one (with suspiciously Latina skin and hair coloring) and a Barbie with an accompanying yellow labrador doll, a pail, a scoop, and little plastic dog poops (crottes du chien). (Marianne commented dryly, <<Évidemment elle n’est pas française>> which nearly dropped us to the floor with laughter; even in a small village like Sancerre, dog shit is everywhere on the streets). Nennia continued the hilarity with her discussion of the naked Prince Harry photos from his Las Vegas excesses.

We had role-playing activities each class meeting as well. One of the more amusing assignments required us to confront our partner who was playing the role of an upstairs neighbor who was having parties every night and making too much noise. Marianne asked us to not script these conversations out but to try to deliver them spontaneously. Much silliness ensued since beyond agreeing on the general outline of our skit, we had no idea what the other was going to say!

Here are some of my favorite vocabulary words: gonflier, to inflate; noyer, to drown; une fourmi, ant (ants produce formic acid, dontcha know!); une chauve-souris, bat ("bald mouse"); il fait loup, it's humid; se balader, to take oneself out for a walk; les draps, sheets, bedding; parier, to bet or gamble; se tromper, to be mistaken (tromper without the reflexive pronoun means to fall)...well, I filled two notebooks with interesting words and grammar bits and I could bore you for quite a while. I'll just leave you with this gem, a very difficult French tongue twister: Les grenouilles fouillent sous les feuilles à Marseilles (the toads rummage under the leaves of Marseilles, which just doesn't have quite the same ring as the French version).

In fact, I would have to say that we spent a good part of each class laughing uproariously. I didn't expect this at all but I think that we got lucky and had a pretty good mix of people. I was quite shocked to find out that the others thought after that first week that I was too serious (maybe even a bit scary serious) so I tried to be more relaxed about everything the second week. I even managed to figure out how to use an idiom with an incredibly obscure meaning (it involved prunes which were entirely metaphorical). And John, May, Jean: I still most firmly maintain that the act of dreaming (rêver) is expressing an emotion, i.e., c'est un verbe de <> donc ce n'est pas suivi de préposition avec un verbe infinitif.

Bottles of Sancerre blanc from the mid-80s stored in a cave. They keep a few bottles from important vintages to see how they age and keep. It is unlikely that this wine is still any good but the bottles looked pretty cool.

The school brings in a decent amount of money to the village and the shopkeepers are certainly aware of this. A two week stay like mine was common; some people even stay for four weeks! During this time, we do a lot of shopping and eating in Sancerre. In fact, we were instructed to tell shop owners and servers in restaurants that we were students at the school. Not only was this a flag that we wanted to try to practice our French but it was also a more subtle communication that we were not fly-by-afternoon tourists.

The woman who ran the charcuterie in particular was most charming to me (she saw me almost every other day), answering my questions about her terrines once I got a bit bolder and more confident that I could understand her.

One evening when I was out for a walk, I ran into Yvette. Imagine a typical little old French woman and you’ve got Yvette: small-floral-print dress, stockings, sturdy shoes. She was walking uphill and I was walking downhill. She stopped to rest on a bench and when I passed, I said “bonsoir, madame” because to pass by without speaking would have been considered quite rude, especially as we were the only people on that road at the time. Well, that was the only opening she needed. Yvette was off, chattering away to me about all sorts of things, only about half of which I understood. But I did get these bits from her: she was turning 85 in September, she has lived in Sancerre all her life, and during the war (the second one) when she was a girl, she was sent away with the other children to farms in the country. She also told me that there was a very large sweet pea vine at the end of a vineyard down the hill that I should be sure to stop at and get some wildflowers (les fleurs sauvages) for my kitchen table. When I told her I was a student at the school, her next question was to ask who my instructor was (I found this was the most often-asked question by the folks in the village). When I told her my instructor was Marianne and added that she was “tres formidable,” Yvette laughed knowingly then told me that Marianne had grown up in Sancerre and that her family was still in the area. It turns out that both Yvette and Marianne are well known throughout the village, each formidable in her own way!

This was a great holiday in many ways. I was kept busy every day learning and thinking and practicing French but I had ample time to enjoy the atmosphere and pleasures one would expect from a holiday in a village in the middle of France. I would recommend the Coeur de France school without hesitation...but you must be prepared to work hard!

Looking towards Chavignol village from the surrounding vineyards.

* The 50/50/90 rules states that given a choice between two equal (or equally likely) things or events, 90% of the time you will chose the wrong one.

Sancerre: Geology, Wine, and Crottins de Chavignol

After spending a couple of weeks in the U.S., I flew home, did some laundry, played with the dogs, made a batch of dog meatloaf, repacked my suitcase, and in about 48 hours was boarding another plane, this time to France. My ultimate destination was Sancerre, located in the eastern (upper) end of the Loire Valley, south of Paris and almost in the center of France. My goal: attend two weeks of French language immersion at the Coeur de France school. Because this was another amazing adventure, I’m going to have to spread it across a couple of posts. In this one, I’m going to talk about Sancerre itself. If you couldn’t care less about history, geology, wine or cheese, then you’ll have to wait a bit for my post about the language school experience!

Sancerre is an unbelievably charming medieval walled village located on the top of a hill overlooking the Loire River. It isn’t the highest hill in the area but it clearly has major strategic value by virtue of its many clear sightlines across the river floodplain and back into the hills. The older settlement in the area is located down on the river itself but it apparently was abandoned several times due to flooding and warfare; the river is broad and shallow and the floodplain is  flat although bordered by low hills, and the riverside settlement would have been difficult to defend.

Looking east towards Sancerre from the vineyards.

Looking NNE towards the Loire River in the upper left distance. You can see the broad river floodplain and the gentle hills that surround it. Sancerre village is directly behind me.

The hill is a distinct topographic feature (more on this below) that was probably used for thousands of years by Neanderthals and other early humans for a variety of purposes, even if for nothing else but the views! Native Celts probably used the hill for scouting (they established settlements in the area though apparently not on top of the hill) and the Romans certainly liked it, building roads up it, several successive churches on it, and a fortification on the top. Foundations of the village wall date from this time. Things really began cooking in the 10th century as the growing middle class of landowners and merchants started building larger, more elaborate homes, establishing Sancerre as an important center of commerce, trade, and power. There is a mostly intact (it’s been thoroughly repaired) tower dating from around 1150 that is all that is left of a larger, multi-tower castle. And there are buildings in the village, some occupied now as private homes, that date from the 1380’s or so. The fortified village was involved in a dizzying array of wars and local power struggles because of its geographic position and the wealth of its residents. Still, it has managed to survive and thrive.

View of the 12th century tower (far upper left) from my window. The other towers that you can see in the middle background are much younger.

I climbed to the top of the tower on a beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon. The tower is at a topographic knob at the top Sancerre, roughly in the middle of the "back side" of the hill. Here I'm looking southwest. In town, you can see the main church in the middle left. At the west end of the small plaza in front if it is the charcuterie. This photo really shows the topography of the gently rolling hills within the Sancerre AOC and the topographic isolation of Sancerre village.

I'm looking south from the top of the tower. In the middle of the village at my feet you can see an L-shaped, grey-colored, grey-roofed building with white window casements. That is the Coeur de France school. My apartment was on the right side of the L on the second floor.

The Sancerre hill is the result of a fault that runs at its foot (see the map below). The fault juxtaposes different rock types (older rocks to the west of the fault, younger ones to the east). Because the section of older rocks is tilted, different types of rocks are exposed at the surface. This soil variation is the source of the world-famous Sancerre wines. There is verified documentation of wine making in the area dating from 582 AD but as with most things of this nature, it is likely that the people in the area were making wine for centuries before that.

The blue colors are for older rocks of Jurassic age, say 150 Ma, and the greens are for younger Cretaceous rocks, say 90 Ma. The orange blob north of Sancerre is Eocene age, around 35 Ma. The tan color at the top of the Sancerre hill is also Eocene produced by weathering of the Eocene rocks. This map is a reproduction of an old hand-colored map and unfortunately the colors in the legend don't match up too well with the colors in the map. The linear fault runs N-S at the foot of the Sancerre hill (on the west side of the hill). To my great annoyance, there is no scale on the map but I estimate that one inch at the full-size of the scan is about 1 mile. Put another way, the crow-flight distance from the center of Sancerre to Saint-Satur is about a mile.

If you drink wine, then you have heard of Sancerre white wine, which is made using sauvignon grapes. You may not know that in the same area they also make small volumes of rosé and red wines using pinot noir grapes. The small wine region around Sancerre has a coveted AOC (appellation d'origine contrôlée) designation, and the land and the vines are very tightly controlled indeed. Many of the larger vineyards have storefronts in Sancerre or in nearby villages and I did two formal and several informal tastings. One of my favorite wines was a rosé from the Alphonse Mellot Domaine Moussiere vineyard which has obtained a rare “biologique” (organic) labeling from various European and French agencies (they don't make much of this rosé and don't export it; I was lucky to be there at the source). I also really liked the white wine called “Les Chasseignes” made by Domaine Fouassier. It is a beautiful example of a Sancerre white: light, dry, low acidity, slight fruit aromas and flavors but not fruity tasting (nor terribly sweet), and smooth to drink.

(For you wine buffs, Pouilly Fume whites are cousins to Sancerre whites. They come from similar soil types and also have their own AOC, but the vineyards are located on the other side of the Loire River. This constitutes an enormous difference in the world of AOC.)

There is a museum in town called “La Maison de Sancerre” which has to be one of the more interesting museums I’ve visited in a while. They don’t have art. Instead, all of the displays address some aspect of the history, anthropology, manufacture, cultivation, science, even the geology, of the local wine industry. And the displays utilize an amazing array of technology, lighting, and color. It was professional and scientifically thorough. I know that might put some of you off but I found it fascinating! There were bizarre 3D models, examined under a magnifying glass, of the various parasites and insects that can infest grape vines. There were panels describing in fair geologic detail the four main types of soil present in the Sancerre AOC (variations on chalky, chalky-clay, and chalky-flint). There is quite an obsession with the different taste that each soil type gives to the wines. There were movies that contained long and rather humorous interviews with local winemakers that you watch on Macs in small alcoves or projected onto large screens placed at the back of a diorama of an underground storage cave. The movies were in French, of course, but there were English subtitles and they were a great opportunity to practice listening to “common” French (which is different than written French or formal spoken French). In the movies you could watch multiple generations of winemakers, fathers and sons, brothers and cousins, talk about their work making Sancerre wines. There are even a couple of women winemakers. Traditionally, many farmwives maintained a few vines and made their own wine, but commercial wine making ventures are not often run by women in France. The museum is housed in a mid-17th century building that was originally built as a meeting place for the guild of Sancerre winemakers. Out back was an herb and flower garden in full, magnificent summer display. I gained a much deeper appreciation for the history of winemaking in Sancerre from the afternoon I spent in the museum.

A description of one of the important soil types from La Maison de Sancerre (the wine museum).

These soil profiles are not in La Maison de Sancerre but in the tasting room of one of the largest vineyards in the area, Henri Bourgeois. This was an activity arranged by the school. We got to taste 10 Sancerre wines, a real treat. I bought a bottle of 2002 Jadis, an unfiltered wine made using old fashioned techniques on grapes grown on chalky caillottes soil (the word "jadis" means "in times gone by"). This wine was incredible! It had an almost powdery texture and was very flowery without being at all sweet. It is unusual for a Sancerre blanc to be aged for so long but it was a wonderful bottle of wine.

Like most decently sized villages in France, there was a small number of local food shops: a couple of patisseries and boulangeries, quite a few fromageries (see next paragraph for more on this), a tiny marché with a lot of canned foods and a few fresh vegetables. There was also a charcuterie around the corner from the school, facing the small plaza in front of the old church (the structure of which is only three hundred years old or so). Madame made pork and duck terrines using local ingredients, stuffed the sausages by hand, and of course she sold beautiful chops from local, free-range pigs. You might not be surprised to learn that I ate pork in some form and drank wine every single day I was in Sancerre. Every. Single. Day. (Lardons on top of greens with shaved goat cheese and a dash of olive oil most definitely count as a form of pork.) It was sublime.

The local goat cheese industry was also a surprise. They call the individual cheeses, little round wheels about 2” (5 cm) in diameter, crottins de Chavignol (this link is definitely worth a visit!) (Chavignol is a tiny village west of Sancerre). They have a rather silly story to explain the origin of the word, something to do with impractically small oil lamps roughly the same size and shape as a crottin. But most suspiciously, the word for poop is crotte or crottin. It sure makes a lot of sense if you imagine the little cheeses to be the droppings of a rather giant goat. But that doesn’t make for a very palatable tourist sell, does it?

 
Anyway, crottins de Chavignol also have a coveted AOC designation; the area of this AOC overlaps closely with the Sancerre wine AOC area. It’s hard to imagine how they find room to fit in pastured goats when so much of the land space is covered with grape vines, but they do. There are three or four kinds of crottin which are all the same cheese prepared the same way but progressively aged. The young crottin is very soft and smooth, brilliant white inside with only a tiny bit of yellowish rind. It tastes a bit too much of goat pee for my taste. I liked the demi-sec, aged about a month, the perfect texture and firmness for cutting up and serving on a small plate with a glass or two of Sancerre white wine (I didn’t even need guests for dinner to do this; I often made this little treat for myself after class was over for the day). The sec crottins, aged 3-4 months, are perfect for shaving over sautéed veggies or a fresh salad or fresh melon or peaches (the latter were in season and I stocked up). The sec crottins can look horrendous: covered with a thick, grey or brown, wrinkled rind that looks like a fungal infection gone very wrong. The hard cheese inside is a pale yellow color.

Sec crottin at top, aged 4 months. The two on the lower left are demi-sec, aged two months, and the one on the lower right is the young one, aged just a couple of weeks.

You already know that I love to cook and I particularly love to cook when in France, so I was able to indulge myself almost every day. Besides eating pork and drinking wine, I managed to eat some crottin de Chavignol every day as well! It was sublime!

I stayed in an apartment above the school, which is located in a 17th century house built by a local semi-demi-nobleman. My apartment had a small but decently stocked kitchen and a tiny washer and dryer. And utterly fabulous views of that mid-12th century tower that looks over the town! I never tired of watching the sun rise and set each day out my windows.

The tourist industry hums along in Sancerre. It has more hotels and hostels and BandBs and apartments for short-term rent than most French villages of its size. I saw many French families on holiday but there were plenty of Brits and Dutch, a random German or two, and a scattering of Americans. Most were making day trips into the village as part of their chateau-viewing adventures farther west along the valley but plenty of people stayed overnight.

I took early morning jogs through town, exploring the streets in the pre-dawn grey when everything was quiet and it was just me, the cats, the bats, and the guys who go around town each morning to water the hundreds of flower pots maintained by the town. Apparently there was live music in the main square in the evenings but I don’t go out much after dark no matter where I am and stuck to my early-morning habits. Even though none of the street surfaces are original (houses have plumbing and municipal water; all the original streets were ripped up to lay mains and sewers, although some were resurfaced with cobblestones to give an air of authenticity), I could easily imagine myself in another time when walking along the curving, narrow streets, some no more than alleys, far too narrow for modern cars, overhung with crumbling buildings.

On the Sunday in the middle of my stay, I made a long morning hike of about 15-16 kilometers, following a designated randonnée that I researched on the internet. Randonnées are formal walking routes, often with a bit of signage here and there. It took me 5 hours to make the round trip from Sancerre through the villages of Amigny, Chavignol, and Verdigny, skirting a bit of Saint-Satur on the river, then back up the hill to Sancerre. Except in the villages, the route was through the vineyards covering the hills. There is a maze of roads and paths up there so I used the GPS on my iPad to make sure I didn’t miss a turn and end up too far from home.You can see all of these villages on the geologic map.

View of vineyards that I took during my hike. Every so often you see a brightly colored flowering plant at the end of a row of vines. The plant type may vary (roses are most common) but the flowers are usually red or deep pink. What is the purpose of these flowers? Decoration? That seems pretty frivolous for the serious business of making wine. We discussed this in class and thought it might be a sort of "canary in the coal mine" thing whereby if the flower wasn't doing well, perhaps the vines needed some attention too. But there were far too few of these flowering plants for them to be a broad measure of something like soil health or fungus or something (this site agrees that the roses don't serve this purpose in the modern vineyard). Another suggestion is that the flowers are used to attract flying pollinators (bees, moths, etc.) to the vines. But most grape types don't need flying pollinators (see this link and this one for TMI). So this explanation doesn't work too well either. I guess we'll just enjoy the spots of color and not worry any more about it!

Although I could have rented a car on the weekends, the idea of trying to see a chateau or two along with the hordes of other tourists just didn't seem very pleasant. Except for a couple of trips down to the Carrefour in Saint-Satur and my Sunday randonnée, I stayed close to home in Sancerre.

It was almost like having two separate vacations in one: the quotidian routines of life alternating with the intense atmosphere in the language classes. With four hours of instruction each day and hours of homework and extra study each night, I was working very hard. Excursions to buy bread and cheese and wine were a welcome break from that.

We have a four-day weekend in KSA so I have no excuse to finish the second post in this set on my language school adventures. Stay tuned!

Portland: Mountain, Ocean, and Agility

As part of my long leave that spanned nearly all of August, I spent six days in Portland catching up with an old friend. She was quite the host, cramming non-stop fun into my visit.

One of the many highlights was a hike that A, I, and her two terriers made to Burnt Lake located near the foot of Mount Hood. It was a rather warm sunny day even by Portland standards and even though I was just a bit disappointed by the weather (I can get hot and sunny any time here), the blue sky and the bright sun made for a great walk in the woods.

Too bad those terriers couldn't pack their own poop bags back to the trail head!

We saw this little guy on our way down: a flying squirrel perched on the side of a dead (burned) tree.

Ironically, we almost missed the stupendous view of Mount Hood! We didn’t even realize it was looming over us the entire time until we stopped on our way back down above a small group of hikers on the trail in front of us taking pictures. What were they looking at? Oh, at that gigantic snow-covered volcano up there! The fabulous view was over our shoulders the entire way up, and even though we stopped in that very same clearing to admire some dead trees, we never looked behind us! We stopped at the lake and didn't go all the way up to the saddle at "Zigzag Mountain" from which the view of Mount Hood would have been a lot more obvious. 

Mount Hood.

The next day we headed the other direction to the ocean for a leisurely stroll in the surf. The fog and mist and surf (the tide was low when we arrived then coming in so the waves got bigger with time) combined with the nearly empty beach and sunny, clear sky made it an extremely restful morning. And of course, for a couple of terriers, a beach is an endless source of things to sniff, put in one’s mouth, or pee on.

A and Skeeter in the surf and Forrest with me attached at the other end.

Forrest with real treasure: a deliciously crunchy but very dead starfish.

Mist. Wet sand. Reflections of the trees. And a clear blue sky over it all.

Me with Skeeter and Forrest.

A generously indulged my pork and wine needs. We managed to eat brats (first boiled in beer with sweet Walla Walla onions then grilled with more of those fab onions; apparently a northern/midwestern recipe) three nights in a row (although the middle night was leftovers from the first night but it still counts)! And homemade berry jam on very good, locally made, whole grain bread. Decent bread is nearly impossible to find here in KSA. I refuse to eat that soft, mushy, sugary stuff they call bread and do without until I head to some place that isn't KSA. 

A is rather crafty. She knits and crochets and felts and makes dog tugs and leashes from fleece. I had no idea she had such skills. I don't do those sorts of things. Oh, sure, I can make jumps and pause tables and such but that's more engineering and less crafting. A makes cute purses and totes and even small bowls out of felted wool. We were in a pet store and I pointed out these catnip-laced body pillows for cats made of fleece. They look fun, I said, but not for 7 bucks each. Oh, A said, we can make those in no time at all! And so later that week we did just that using fleece scraps and some catnip that I bought for the purpose. I left one of the body pillows with Bhumi, the Siamese mix that I rehomed with my mother, and brought three home for my two feline beasts. I can't leave them out all the time since fleece equals dog toy in Azza's head and all she wants to do is eat them.

My mother's ancient cat Freckles (he may be 18 or 19 years old) curled up with Bhumi. They became BFF nearly upon sight. I always suspected that Bhumi was gay. Sorry, A, no pics of Bhumi slobbering on his catnip body pillow! I owe you a pic of Kinky and Tsingy slobbering on theirs.

A particularly memorable part of my visit was the Saturday we spent at a local agility trial. When I was corresponding with A to arrange the trip, she casually mentioned this local trial was going to be held the weekend I was there, and said, oh, would you like to run Forrest at the trial?

I know I have some non-dog-sport readers so let me take a moment to elaborate on this. Very few dog sport people are willing to let someone else run their dog. The reasons usually come down to “you might break my dog” and “you might make me look stupid.” Yeah, I know, not logical or even particularly sporting but that’s how it is.

But I guess I’m pretty lucky. I’ve got some amazing dog friends who don’t let that kind of thing get in the way of a good time. For example, there’s DW who let me run his beautiful red BC Eris last year for the entire weekend of a flyball tournament. And now A offered me her PRT for a full day of agility!

The second point to be made explicit here is that I am blessed with amazing dog friends who say, hmm, what would make CircusK9 happy? Oh, I know, how about having her run my dog! Friends like that are treasures indeed.

The amusing part of the agility affair is how many hours A and I spent trying to get into Forrest’s fuzzy little brain. We set up a course in her backyard and during the week I ran him through it several times as well as working tricky sequences such as dogwalk/tunnel discrimination and sending to the back side of a jump. He worked fairly well for me in her yard, and whenever we went out and about, A handed me his leash and said, you’re in charge of him! She coached me on her routines at the crate and at the start line, at contacts and even for the end of the run (she taught Forrest to jump into her arms). I practiced them all.

The trial was held outdoors in a covered horse barn. It was hot and dusty...just like most other horse barns that I've done agility in. When it came time to actually do agility in the ring, Forrest wasn’t particularly sure he liked his new handler. For the first run, he did six obstacles before leaving the ring. On the second run, we managed to get to the 10th obstacle before he shut down. A said that he had ring nerves and used to do the same with her so this wasn't new behavior. Before the second run, I bought him super special treats (dried lamb lung, mm!) in a shameless attempt to bribe him, but even that wasn't enough to convince him that I was worth the trouble. 

The time for our third run was approaching and we had tried just about everything we could think of. That left only the unexpected. I asked her if she had ever done a “drop and run” with him. Yes, she said, when he was very green she did that a few times. Drop and run is when the handler holds the dog in her arms at the start line, then drops the dog to the ground and both take off at the same time. It is often used by handlers when their dog doesn't have any control at the start line. It can also be hugely motivating for some dogs--it's really just a chase game. She also felt that I was being too soft with him. Me, a soft handler? "But, but, but," I sputtered, "he’s not my dog!" It’s really hard to get tough with someone else's dog! In the end, though, that is exactly what I did, drop and run at the start and became the drill sergeant handler. I badgered him all the way, staying in his face, clapping annoyingly, doing front crosses way, way late, but by god, we completed that third course. In the video, which I present with no editing, you’ll see that I bailed on the weave poles. Forrest has lovely, fast weave poles but he simply wasn’t prepared to do them with me that day. Pfft, no matter, it was all for fun. And at the end, he jumped into my arms like he'd been running with me for years.

A note on this video: because I am now using a wireless internet connection instead of fatter, faster DSL, I couldn't push the original video through. I had to cut way back on the resolution to get it to load. Still, I think that you'll get the idea. 

What's the message here? Well, Forrest is a fast, happy dog who enjoys agility (especially at his new jump height of only 12") and while he wasn't too thrilled to be out there with me, he's still gave it a decent try. And A generously allowed me to fumble my way around the ring all day long with her dog...because she thought I'd enjoy it. And I did.

Coming here to KSA has been a lesson in what is truly important in life. I lost many things...and in the end discovered that I could live pretty well without them. They were just things after all. I instead gained some perspective on what you can't live without. Pork, good wine, good friends, and happy dogs all go on that list (perhaps not quite in that order). It's a good holiday when I can combine all of those things together.

Escaping the Heat

The weather station near my house was reporting 118F at 2pm today. It’s as dry as a damned desert out there with about 5% humidity. The dew point is 32F which means, duh, no dew, because even at 9pm last night it was still 98F. To add even more misery, I think that a shamal is trying to start up this afternoon. That could mean several days of strong, hot winds from the north bringing dust down from Iran. All this and it’s only mid-July.

I usually don’t post about my travel in advance but I am heading out in about 10 days and I am really looking forward to this particular break. I’ve been a bit frustrated at work and taking some time off is often a good solution to that sort of attitude problem.

I regret leaving the pups for so long (I’ll be gone for a month) but this trip will be my repat, an annual trip OOK that I am legally required to make. I am pre-imbursed by Aramco according to a somewhat arcane formula for repat expenses.

I will be out for nearly all of Ramadan (and thus will not participate in the dubious pleasures of the sin room) and the subsequent eid (a thinly veiled excuse for Saudis to expand their overindulgence of eating and buying into daylight hours). Not that I’ll particularly miss either of those events. But last year I was here during Ramadan and got the most amazing amount of work done. No Saudis after noon, lots of expats gone as well, no meetings. I started and completed some big projects during that time. This year, I’ll be one of those expats escaping the heat.

A couple of the places I’ll be traveling to will be much cooler than here but that isn’t the reason I chose those places. It’s simply important to get out of here for a while.

A friend and I went to Bahrain on Friday. It was the most normal day you could imagine: walking around a mall ogling hideous shoes and USD 4,500 purses (that were not too hideous), having lunch, then having a couple of glasses of wine in a nearby hotel. When I called her that morning to remind her that the driver was on his way, she said, do I need my abaya? (She’s new here.) And I said, hell no! And that’s another reason to look forward to trips out. I can act and talk and dress like a fully grown, actual human being when out in public.