GRAY MATTER: There's something inside my head.

With Hurricane Irene bearing down on the East Coast, U.S. air carriers have canceled nearly 5,000 flights this weekend and warned that several major airports in New York and Washington could shut down entirely to guard against the storm’s destructive force. Delta Air Lines, the nation’s largest carrier, said it will cancel about 1,300 flights from Saturday to Monday. So began my trip to France, scheduled on Delta Airlines, flying from LAX to Nice through….you guessed it: JFK and Hurricane Irene.

I had already been worried about this trip for more human reasons. Could I afford the time off? Could I afford the expense? With an exchange rate hovering north of 1.4 dollars per Euro, my purchasing power would be worth less than a ticket on Delta to France through an evacuating New York. For many reasons, I was doubting whether I should be taking this trip.

You know how in life you usually either have time but no money or money but no time? Well, for a rare change, I had enough of each to plan a 6-week soiree in France. The first 4 weeks I would attend a French immersion program at Institut de Francais in Villefranche-Sur-Mer on the French Riviera in pursuit of my dream to refer to myself as a polyglot (and pretend to be an international playboy).

The last two weeks, my mom, her husband and I were planning on driving to the D-Day beaches of Normandy followed by a week in Paris. They would be finishing a bike and barge octogenarian adventure in Southern France the same day my French immersion program wrapped up. The timing was perfect and would be the first European reunion for her and me since my green Members Only jacket and I tagged along on a tour she was leading several decades prior.

They say, “Time flies” and it seems the older you get the faster it’s speed. Despite the obstacles in my way, I realized life was going to tick rapidly by whether I took this trip or not. With that in mind I hopped on the phone with the Delta representative to find away around the hurricane. Mr. Delta told me due to Miss Irene, the earliest they could get me to Nice was Wednesday evening. Not nice. I would miss almost a week in a 4-week immersion program. Time to unleash my secret weapons. My mom used to work not only as a tour guide but as a travel agent. While in that industry she met our friend Sheila who still is one.

With their help, alternative “hurricane-free” connection cities were flung fast and furiously at the Delta rep. How about Atlanta, Cleveland, Detroit, Salt Lake City? No, nothing, sorry, I’m afraid not came the responses from Delta-man. In a last ditch effort Sheila uttered two magical words: San Francisco. Moments later I was confirmed from LAX to SF to Paris to Nice and would arrive in the evening the same day of my original itinerary.

Lesson #1: When life hands you hurricanes, throw Sheila at them. Or more generally, Neither poor exchange rates nor time off work nor force majeures should stay you from the swift completion of your European rounds. Put more simply JUST DO IT!

After my detour around Hurricane Irene via SF and Paris, I finally touched down around 5:30PM. Nice to be in Nice. When backpacking in my 20′s, I didn’t mind turning up in a city homeless then figure out where I’d lay me down to sleep. I do now. I also didn’t mind roughing it in gamey hostels that had all the charm of a FEMA shelter. I mind that now too. Before I left for France, I had scoured the Internet looking for a place that was affordable, clean and accessible by public transport. Trip Advisor to the rescue! I found the Hotel Le Panoramic in Nice for about 65 Euros or around 100 bucks which looked comfie and was an easy couple of bus rides from the airport. Easy that is if I had arrived at 9AM as originally scheduled. But after my rerouting, by the time I finally trundled off bus #1, bus #2 had already ceased service for the day. That gave me two options: 1) A pricey cab ride with a Nice cabbie – most of whom make New York cabbies look honest. (Cash cab excluded) Or 2) Walk the 1 – 1.5  kilometers to the hotel. If you’re American, I know what you’re thinking.

What’s a kilometer? Most of us, myself included, are metrically challenged. Fortunately, Google is not. I was looking at about a mile. How hard could it be to walk a mile?

Friggin’ hard. You don’t have to speak French to guess that Hotel Le Panoramic has a panorama and to have a panorama you need to be up a hill.

I was, rollin’…rollin’…rollin’ my 65lb HEAVY bag up a steep hill.

Nice is on the Cote d’Azur (The azure coast) which at the end of August should be called Cote d’Hot&Humid. And I always wear pants and parkas when I fly to to survive the arctic air conditioning on board airplanes. Unfortunately I forgot to switch to shorts for my Sisyphusian stroll so by the time I arrived at the hotel, I looked like I had showered with my clothes on.

I love that the French have a good balance of work and leisure such as closing early on Sundays. I do not love it, however, when I arrive late on a Sunday and there’s no bus to take me and my heavy bag up a steep hill nor is there anyone at my hotel to check me in. So I checked myself into my spartan but clean and cozy room,…

washed up in the bathroom (big and wide enough for a skinny cowboy), which was next to

    an equally petite douche (shower) and…

as the sun set, I leaned out the window, to a spectacular panorama, and wished Nice an exhausted bonne nuit.

Remember your first day back to school? You were sporting new clothes, a back pack loaded with Pee Chees and #2 pencils and you arrived early; an eager little sponge thirsty for knowledge. And remember that unkempt kid who showed up late and unprepared then bummed your paper and backup #2 pencil? I was that kid.

Decades later on my first day of French language school, I became that kid again. Monday morning I bid my panorama at Le Hotel Panoramic adieu and trundled my big bag to the nearby bus stop to await the # 80 at 7:45. It would carry me along the Moyenne Corniche, the middle of three roads stretching from Nice to the Italian border, depositing me near the Institut de Francais 2o minutes later. I’d have plenty of time to drop my ginormous bag, let any accumulated sweat evaporate and mingle a bit while enjoying my first breakfast in France. Thanks to a confusing French bus schedule, none of it went as planned.

After waiting an hour for the quatre-vingt bus, it didn’t take a French scholar to figure out I must have misread the schedule. Fortunately, I had a backup plan. The bus line which had quit running the day before prompting my sweaty march up the steep hill had already passed me several times this morning. So I hopped the next one, turning the steep hill, yesterday’s nemesis, into today’s ally. At the Nice port, I transferred to the number 100 which I was told would go to Villefranche-Sur-Mer. Upon boarding, I asked the driver for Plaza Octroy, which I thought was how you pronounced Place de l’Octroi. Based on his look of: Quoi?; I knew it wasn’t. He said something to me in French and after my look of: What?; he nodded a nod which seemed to say, “Move it or lose it monsieur”  So I moved it, paid my euro and 15 minutes later arrived at Plase d’Loktwah in Villefranche-Sur-Mer.

It was about 9:15. We were supposed to be at Institut de Français at 9 and I still had to find my way there. I knew by my map, it was on Av. du Général Leclerc. There was a small sign near the Place labeled Institut de Francais with an arrow pointing in the general direction of up, because everything in Villefranche-Sur-Mer is up…unless you already are. After rolling along the Basse Corniche to the East then back to the West, my big bag and I finally committed to rolling up Av. de la Grande-Bretagne, tugging and sweating until I ran into two French ladies getting into their car. In my best non-existent French I asked “Excusez-moi,” (Which I later discovered you say when you’ve done something wrong. I should have said pardon.) then I followed up with “Ou est Le Institut?” They then said something that sounded like ur3D8#1n9!BYgg which I took to mean, “We pity your silly saturated soul. Hop in.” Several merci’s later I got out of their car at mon général Leclerc Ave and rolled my bag in the direction of their pointing; relieved to finally arrive at a gate with a sign which read

with many, many, many stairs on the other side. Merde. If I hadn’t already sweated all of the moisture out of my body (and weren’t so manly), I would have cried. Instead, I abandoned my bag at the bottom of the stairs and crawled up and up through the garden to the main building of the school wondering to myself, “Why are you wearing pants again?”

I finally arrived hot and bothered, not in a good way. After a futile attempt to communicate with me in French, the instructors and administrators took pity on me, assured me someone would retrieve my bag at the bottom of the stairs, brought me a bite to eat, a glass of water and my aptitude test. I appreciated 3 of the 4 gestures and settled in to impress them with just how little French I knew.

Lesson #2: Always have a backup and Never wear pants on the Côte d’Azur in August!

For more about me, check out my website at  Brian von Dedenroth