It's Me, Sara Louise

The funny thing about living in a teeny tiny place where nothing ever happens is getting overly excited about things that I never would have given two hoots for before. That’s me now, the girl who goes loopy-de-loop when she sees the signs for the circus going up, or the bumper cars arriving for the village fête.

The morning after that crazy dinner at Le Petit Bar, we woke up early to a buzzing Le Petit Village (for the record we always wake up early in The LPV; the 12th century church bell behind my house clanging away and an early bird dog ensures that no one ever sleeps past 7AM)… there was going to be a race!

The race explained why there had been fluorescent orange and green arrows spray painted randomly throughout the village streets; they were there to direct the contestants, and more importantly, they were directing them right past my house! I’d be able to sit on my steps and watch my very own Tour de Le Petit Village!

My excitement level reached a new and embarrassing level of dorkdom. In between making cups of tea for my guests and making beds, I’d shout out to the living room, “has it started yet?“

“NO!“.

A couple of minutes later… “Now?“

“NO!“

I seemed to be the only one excited.

After only seeing a couple of runners jog past the house who were merely warming up, we gave up on waiting (actually I gave up on waiting because I was the only one who actually was waiting) and walked into the village square for croissants and coffee. Lucky us because we walked smack dab into it.

In order to get to the boulangerie, you had to walk past the start/ finish line where loads of teams of cyclists and runners were milling about (each team was made up of a cyclist and a runner who would compete together… I didn’t understand it either). And sometime while we were waiting to place our breakfast pastry order, the race started. We got to play Dodge ‘Em as we crossed the street to the bar for our coffees. It felt less than safe.

In typical Le Petit Village fashion it was organized chaos minus the organized part… some of the contestants would start off and look around not sure what direction to go in and then someone would shout at them to follow the arrows, so then they’d look down and barely avoid knocking down a villager out for their morning stroll. It was mass confusion with lots of coming and going and shouting. I still don’t know who won. Lots of the teams weren’t even wearing matching shirts so we gave up trying to follow who was competing with who after a few of minutes.

But in a weird coincidence (was it a coincidence???), Mr London and his baby brother were wearing matching shirts. They could have been a team (a special team). Maybe next year.