We have been cruising along, living the dream! Until the last 2 weeks.

We have now experienced both a speeding ticket & an emergency room visit. Both experiences turned out fine, & probably, in the long run, were a way of slowing us down (literally!).

Les loves the French roads! They are in such good repair, & it's easy to really enjoy skimming along on them. He's a very good driver, really, but until now hasn't paid too much attendtion to the speed limits. We had been warned that there was a new radar in place here in Laurens on the main highway out of town, but this "set-up" was on a mountain road. They caught him coming down a hill on a straight shot just as he'd passed a car. And it was so hard to determine that the guy who stepped out to stop us was actually a policeman. Their uniforms, light blue shirts & navy slacks, are inocuous. They had no caps on either. So we really debated whether we should stop or not. We've heard stories about people being flagged down, then robbed.

But we stopped. Glad we did. The fine was 90 euros. It would have been heftier if we'd not stopped & they had chased us until we did! Les was going 118 in a 90 kilometer zone. Now we know that all national roads have a 90 Kilometer speed limit.

Our other big wake-up call had to do with speed too. Anybody that knows me knows that I do stuff FAST! I was painting our shower, just about finished, when I decided to touch up a part from outside the shower. So, in a hurry (like always), I propped the shower up against the bathroom wall (without the bathmat with the rubber bottom that has been sacrificed for painting on slippery French tile), climbed a few rungs, & whish....the ladder slipped, caught on my ring, & cut into my finger. Not at all pretty! See our album entitled "Stuff happens, even in Languedoc" for pictures related to these 2 events. Note: there are no bloody pictures & it all turned out fine.

We just turned the halfway point here, & are making a list of the places we want to visit before we leave. We did manage to get to Montpellier this past weekend, to their lovely Musee Fabre. We also took a little trip up to Sommieres, a lovely very old town where we will be next weekend, for dinner at a friend's house. Once again, there are some pictures in the same "stuff" album. Nothing exciting, but that's real life too.

We hope your "real lives" are going well, & that you avoid emergency rooms & speeding tickets this summer.

Love to you all,

Elise & Les