From February 12-13 seven bicyclists including Yours Truly traveled to the town of Gignac on a trip whose main destination was the pretty town of St. Guilhem-le-Desert.

Having a colonoscopy is about as fun as having a lubed cable with a scissored tip inserted six meters up your large intestine. I should know: I’ve had four.

Recently, the government recruited a doctor to open a practice in Apt’s recently constructed public building. When we heard the news, we made an appointment right away.

Mid-winter didn’t seem the best time to drive a Fiat up a mountain. But if I’m good at anything it’s letting others take the initiative and having some unexpected fun as a result.

Antiques are pretty normal here in the old country. The future and even the present are illusions because the past is everything. I agree with that, now that I am a senior.

It’s customary during the holidays to write something sentimental. So here’s my list of favorite things.

One kind of love I’m curious about is the certainty people have after sampling hallucinogens that all you need is love, which is the answer.

“Hints of past meaning sometimes reach me unexpectedly from across great distances and time, like the spooky actions of subatomic particles or the millennia ride of photons across the universe.”

My sister posted a photo of a painting by Andrew Wyeth, Willard’s Coat, painted in 1968 when I was 10. I experienced a moment of awe.

The ceremony was followed by a cocktail party, where I continued to pretend I was not on the verge of shitting my pants. Then we stepped out into the night, climbed into waiting limos, and raced through Paris to the alumni event. 

When he came to view the house, the first thing the cabinetmaker wanted to talk about was... my guitars. Then as we moved through each room, he shared a hundred things he noticed about the house. Someone had, for example, tried to break in through the back door and window.

To refresh your memory, the Foreign Legion is a group of expatriates of a certain age who have taken up tanned arms against invaders. They hold positions in and around stone structures, where they dig trenches and engage in chemical warfare while complaining about the heat.

The house belongs to us. We are the owners. It’s ours. What a weird feeling it was to open the gate with the key and drive through… and even weirder to have the gardener/tree surgeon we contacted suddenly drive in behind us!

In Provence you drive past boring inspiring vistas, climb blandly exquisite cobblestone roads past forgettably striking stone buildings, and look for miles over a countryside indistinguishable from the other campagnes provençales except for their breathtaking variety.

My German family’s love of communication bowls me over. They look each other in the eyes. They retell old stories and laugh. Everyone joins in — including my daughters, just as they have nearly every Christmas since they were tiny.