What are you doing in France?

I have fielded this lazy pop-up on countless occasions since January 2011 and my answer is not much better now than it was then.  As recently as yesterday a curious friend stared with squinting eyes as I tap-danced on the hot coals, mumbling about a Master's course for which I won't receive a Master's degree, a five-week vacation last summer à la française, and the difficulty of procuring 18 reception tents for an international festival I helped organize at the Ecole de Guerre.  What am I doing here??  Let's investigate.

Sunday was a relatively normal day.  I shot a music video with two musician friends who were visiting from San Francisco.  I agreed to be a part of their project on the following conditions: I am the only person in the video (several Rodin sculptures are also featured), I get to wear a military uniform, and I don't have to talk or sing.  We'll see how it turns out. 

Yes, Mom, that is a cigarette.  If it makes you feel any better I eat only organic cheese.  Je plaisante.  Je ne fume pas ... ou au moins pas beaucoup et jamais en tenue.  Par contre, j'adore le fromage.

What else have I done...

Lots of sports.  On the advice of a predecessor at the Ecole de Guerre I signed up in September to play for the school's rugby team.  He said it would be good way to make friends.  At the first organizational meeting I sat by myself and took measure of the real rugby players.  I was surprised by how welcoming they were.   I was equally surprised to find myself in the starting line-up for the big match against the British War College in March.  The Lerwill Cup is the prize of the rugby season, the venue alternating between Shrivenham (outside London), and Paris.  In a stunning upset the French won the 2011 contest on the Brit's home turf.  This past March the Shrivenham Fifteen came to Paris looking for revenge.  

The 2012 Lerwill Cup was a brutal one-sided affair.  The British War College won 39-6.  This was not entirely my fault.  Let me explain.  The Ecole de Guerre is a ten-month course for 300 mid-level officers (200 French, 100 foreign).  The English equivalent is the Advanced Command and Staff Course (ACSC) (230 Brits, 90 foreigners). Ostensibly, the Lerwill Cup is an annual contest between these two schools, with each class building a team from within its ranks.  That is what we did at the Ecole de Guerre and such an approach explains how a beginner like me can end up in the starting line-up.  The Brits are a bit more creative.  The rugby club at Shrivenham fields three teams every year, drawing players from the several thousand students and staff who work at any of the several entities at the Shrivenham location.  The lines between these various schools and courses seem to wash away in the spring rains and the team that takes the field for the Lerwill Cup is anything but true to the spirit of the match.  To make matters worse, the director of the Joint Services Command and Staff College, of which the ACSC is a part, a certain Air-Vice Marshal, is keenly intent on winning.  In 2011 he participated in the match in his own special way, as the referee.  Somehow the French still won.  In another classy move, the Air-Vice Marshal has made an annual ritual of calling the Director of the Ecole de Guerre to ask if his chauffeur can play in the big game.  The story and the result are always the same: the Air-Vice Marshal says he's having trouble finding enough good players and the Director says ok.  The chauffeur, as you might expect, is a nasty little man, tough as nails, and quite handy on the rugby pitch. 

So now I've disgraced myself by trying to explain away our lopsided defeat.  All in, my rugby experience was wonderful, and along the way I learned a few things about English strategy and French diplomacy.  

A few weeks after the Lerwill Cup, on a Sunday morning in mid-April, I hit the bricks for the Paris Marathon.  Jeff Melody joined me from Stuttgart.  We ran together in the 2004 Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, DC and this spring we hoped to improve on our entirely mediocre times.  We started and finished the Paris race together, stopping briefly around mile 17 to say hi to Bevin and Elise (Jeff's wife and daughter) who were waiting for us as we emerged from the traffic tunnel on the right bank made famous by the car accident that killed Princess Diana.