We normally wouldn’t begin a journal entry by describing events at the end of the day, but this day’s end was not normal. Have you ever been locked inside a French Laundry?
Most of the details and all of the colorful language can wait until Honolulu. It’s enough to say here that the timeshare’s office personnel decided to go home without checking on whether anyone was still in the combination laundry/exercise room at the top of the stairs off the lobby. Going home includes “locking up,” and that’s what they did to Doug, who discovered he was locked in when he tried to leave during the rinse cycle and join Lennie for a glass of wine back in their room.
A couple minutes of door pounding produced no response, and Doug started to consider his options, which included throwing a dumbbell through the exercise room’s sliding glass window, which only opened about 5 inches due to a block of wood screwed into the track. Eventually, Doug managed to attract the attention of a fellow timeshare resident across the pool. The Frenchman’s English was as good as Doug’s French – non-existent – so it was through hand motions and perplexed looks that the locked-door problem was communicated. The man’s wife went off to inform Lennie, who is always good for a solution to a vexing problem. The Frenchwoman also spoke no English, so Lennie hurried to the laundry area not knowing what to expect. Before she could arrive, Doug’s mimicking of screwdriver motions produced a Phillips screwdriver from the Frenchman’s toolbox, and Doug removed the block of wood, slid open the window and clambered out and down.
Once on the pool deck about eight feet below the window, Doug was asked by Lennie, "Where are the clothes?" So in front of Lennie, the Frenchman, his wife and their teenage son, Doug had to replicate a maneuver he hadn't tried since Infantry Officers Basic Course four decades ago at Fort Benning -- hoisting himself with upper-body strength through the window again into the laundry, where he waited until the wash and dry cycles were finished. His final exit looked like a second-story man fleeing with his booty -- laundry bag through the window, followed by the perpetrator.
The day had been uneventful until that point, highlighted by a walk-through of a riverside market in central Lyon that catered to the Lyonaisse people of all stripes and nationalities. The accompanying photos show the color of the place.
Our hopes were not realized about the location of the wine region recommended by Georges Dos Santos yesterday. It was far too distant, so we decided to use a “national” highway and not the high-speed toll road to return to Megéve, and it opened up the countryside and villages to us – a lot slower, but much more enjoyable.
Tomorrow, it’s the high-speed train from Geneva to Paris, where we trust no more laundry-like stories await us. BTW, Lennie says she’ll do all the laundry from here on.
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