fete du bois

The Fete du Bois (festival of wood) was this weekend at Chamrousse. (the ski resort) Someone told us it’s a good activity for the kids. So we went. I don’t know that we will put it on the calendar for next year.

                        We looked up the program online. Like a lot of things online here, there was not a great deal of information. But it did appear that there would be lumberjack competitions and some sort of sheep herding competition today. (dogs, not lumberjacks, would be the ones herding the sheep)

                        The first thing we came across was the pony rides. Always a must-do for Kaitlyn. I was surprised to see that they actually gave the kids riding helmets, given how non-safety-conscious things seem here. I was even more surprised when the woman asked us which one of us would be holding the pony during our jaunt. Uh, what? Bill is the paparazzi so I got to hold the horse. The girl showed me how to hold with one hand on the strap next to his face and hold his rope with the other hand. We walked up the path she pointed to (she said to go “haut”… well on a mountain that is about the only way one can go). The path, by the way, was the area in between tents and tables set up by vendors. So we walked this pony up the path until we figured we’d gone about as far as we were supposed to for our 3 Euros. One of the pony girls walked up behind us with her pony-mess-scooper and told us no, keep going. Ok. So we turned around and went more haut. Then the pony started head butting me. He just kept smacking his head into me. I made Bill take over horse-holding. The pony didn’t stop. So we figured he thought it was time to turn around. So we did and he stopped hitting Bill.

                        After a stop at the playground, we thought we’d wander and check out more of the booths set up. One had an old machine that, amazingly, didn’t even particularly interest Bill. That was next to the sheep-shearing booth. There were piles of the fairly freshly shaved wool on a table; I guess so you could see what it felt like. It looked disgusting. I may never wear a wool sweater again.

                        Finally we found what looked like the lumber jacking area. There were about ten giant logs lined up in a row in an area behind some temporary fencing. A small set of bleachers was on one side. Nothing was going on. Oh, we arrived at lunchtime. How much wood would a lumberjack chuck if a lumberjack could chuck wood? None, if it’s lunchtime in France. Lunch seemed like a good idea.

                        We found a restaurant with seating across from where the chopping would be taking place. The waiter asked us if we could come back in a half hour. Seemed perfect, it would put us there right when the competition was getting started. (I saw a time on a poster in a shop window) So we went back to the playground to waste time.

                    After patiently waiting our 30 minutes we returned… hungry. We sat down and waited. And waited. And waited. Even for France, this was ridiculous. But looking up and down the row, all the cafes looked just as busy; it appeared we were lucky to even have a table. So we waited. And waited. And waited some more. Finally we had to flag down a waiter passing by after taking the order of a group that arrived well after we did. The service didn’t speed up, but at least the lumberjack competition got started to watch. In theory.

                    As soon as the emcee would yell something into his microphone (why do so many people think that you need to put a microphone in your mouth? Do they not understand that its role is to amplify your voice?)… anyway as soon as the emcee would yell something into his microphone, everyone who’d been sitting at the cafe rushed to the edge of the terrace and blocked any chance I had of seeing. Not that there seemed to be that much to see. Random people who’d signed up in the morning were just chopping wood as fast as they could. I can see that in the winter in my neighborhood. Those big huge logs that were all lined up? They didn’t appear to have any purpose whatsoever, other than being obstacles.

                        When we finished eating and finally managed to get our check, we gave up on the fete du bois. But not without another pony ride. This time, I made Bill hold the pony while I took pictures. I wasn’t taking any more chances.

One Response to “fete du bois”

  1. Todd Hollst says:

    I have heard that French ponies are dumber than American ponies…this experience seems to confirm this accusation. My question though, why didn’t you head butt the dumb thing back. That would teach him!!

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