Once upon a time...

My fellow Americans. Whats up? I hope you all enjoyed that little video treat below as much as I did. Hopefully that’s why you are back reading again today. Anyways things are still great here in Paris and all the locals have finally returned. School at the American University in Paris has now started. It has been tough lately to find younger people out and about that speak English so hopefully of the 350 students that just started at AUP we can find a few that are down for a good time.

As for the first football game I am glad we could all collectively breathe together after last Saturday’s performance. I have to admit I really did miss Gameday with you guys and am very impressed with the tailgate skills you displayed. Well done. Of the few pictures that I have seen it doesn’t appear any of you has missed a step. In fact you may have gained a few. All of that with no FRAT to depend on…impressive. Lots of fellowship im sure. We did not end up getting to watch the game with the alumni chapter as we had hoped but we were able to see it on the internet the next day. Not the greatest way to watch it but you gotta take what you can get. Believe it or not American College Football doesn’t appear to be on the top of anyone’s priority list over here in France. We have to wait week to week to see what will be carried on pay per view so we don’t really know which ones we will see just yet.

As for the Bike Tours, it appears that its par for the course to have at least one just shitty tour experience a week. This particular fairytale begins like so.

“Once upon a time there were five Portuguese doctors and their families traveling throughout Europe that knew nothing of the English language. All 18 of whom were traveling together with one interpreter. This one translator, being the supreme being that he was had the bright idea to sign them all up for an English speaking tour of Paris, France. On Segways. Unbeknownst to one particular young man, he would wake one Tuesday afternoon for the ride of his life…..”

Just in case you guys cant paint the rest of this picture yourself, please let me humor you. We first decided to split them into 2 separate tours. The first one would be the five fathers and the second tour would consist of the wives and kids. Why it was split this way I have no idea but that was just the beginning of the pandemonium that would ensue.

Let me first explain what the Segway tour for a minute and the people that are attracted to them. It is a 70 euro, ($100), 3 ½ reservation only tour. Everyone signs waivers saying they understand that if they act like complete and utter jackasses on these things they could end up coughing up the 5 large ($5000) that it cost to pay for one. We then spend roughly 30-45 minutes training you how not to act like a complete and utter jackasses so that you wont be down $5000 at the end of the day, and so you will have a “safe and great time riding through the streets of Paris.” If one pays attention to what we tell them and isn’t too busy trying to look cool in a helmet, which is impossible, then there is no reason for there to be any problems.

As for the people that come on these, I think I can pretty much break it down into a few separate categories for you.(1) The people who care about what you have to say and are scared to death to break one of these machines so they are easy to manipulate, and therefore make for an easy tour. (2) There are the techies who are obsessed with the technology that makes these things run, also fairly easy to handle but can act up on occasion while trying to “assess its capabilities”. (3) The wealthier families who can drop $500 on a tour of Paris just to keep their precious little children entertained and happy. They care somewhat about the history but really just are trying to appease the little ones by letting them ride around. (4) OVERCONFIDENT COCKY PEOPLE WITH TOO MUCH MONEY AND NO ABILITY TO TAKE DIRECTION.

So for the sake of my story we will randomly pick Group 4 to continue with our fairytale. So two guides, myself and Emily, take the group of 5 doctors (in Segway lingo, this is a squad of group 4’s equivalent to the 1992 USA Dream Team, except they have never seen a basketball before). Sorry if that analogy was too much, but I know some of you can appreciate it. Anyways we soon find out that we will first train the interpreter on each step and he will then pass along his knowledge to the Docs. Lots of head nodding going on through each step and everyone appears to understand. To their credit they were very intelligent guys and picked it up rather quickly. We also trained the moms and kids together which was significantly tougher but knew a little but more of how to deal with them after dealing with the dads.

By now, you may be thinking to yourself, “How are they going to understand the information on the tour? Is the translator going to interpret the whole thing?” The answers to those questions respectively are “They don’t care and No.” They paid just to ride around on Segways, we didn’t even take them all over the city. We could have let them loose in a corn field and it would have been just as informative and probably even safer for the civilians around them. By the end of the day we were 3 for 18. This means that 3 people bit it hard, and on the gravel much less. This means that 3 times we had to get the first aid kits out and bandage people up…once we could get them to stop bleeding. THIS MEANS THAT 2 TIMES PEOPLE DIDN’T LEARN FROM THE LAST IDIOT WHO ACTED LIKE A COMPLETE AND UTTER JACKASS.

After carefully analyzing my afternoon in order to better prepare myself should the same situation present itself again I realized what had just happened. What I am about to say has no racial or ethnic connotation but was honest the closest comparison I could think of. Short of throwing their own feces at me, I had basically just given a Segway tour to a group of monkeys. They could stand on a Segway. They could nod their heads as if to appear to understand what I was telling them as well as to trick the man in the yellow hat (interpreter). And given their first chance they went absolutely insane. In the end I literally had to corral these people and take them back to the shop short of the full tour so that they did not end up killing themselves, each other, innocent bystanders, or me. You live and you learn.

So what did I learn? Nothing. There was nothing I could have done to prevent these people from doing what they did, short of learning to speak Portuguese. All in all I can say it was the hardest tour I had given. But looking back, I realized I stressed out way more than I should have. I was totally in the clear for all situations that might occur. They had signed the waivers. I had taught them how to safely operate the machines. I had a loaded first aid kit with me. Hell, I had 5 doctors to pass them off to should they really screw up. I could have just let them keep on going and watched and laughed, patched each person up as necessary and headed back once we ran out of bandages, maybe even gotten a few brand new segways out of the deal.

Anyways, I am off to Interlocken, Switzerland this weekend for some extreme sporting adventures. I won’t say which ones just yet because my mom reads this and I want her to be able to sleep over the next couple of days. I will be sure to update you and share some pics once I get back. As for the Horns. None of that negativity. I think we got this. You guys have an awesome time at the tailgate again and try not to fight your TCU friends, its only football. I can only imagine how much shit they are talking right now though, must be tough. Take it easy everyone.

Oh ya , and I stripped to my wears at the Louvre. Perge!