Red, White and Blue of a Different Kind

I ended up seeing the Bastille Day ceremonies in Menton. The French take their Bastille Day seriously: I ended up seeing part of the military parade in Paris on TV, where there was a representative troop unit from every part of the French armed forces.

One of the most impressive units at the parade was the French Foreign Legion. France is unique in letting foreign nationals serve in a special unit in its army. In return for serving France and her interests, the foreigners get to become French nationals after three years, with a new identity of their own choosing. In essence, you join the Foreign Legion, pick a fake name, and if you serve for three years or your blood is spilled on the battlefield, you become a French national. Of course, this attracts a certain kind of personality, specifically, the kind that has committed atrocities in multiple countries and has run out of options. Interestingly, Wikipedia says that the Legion had a reputation for allowing felons into its ranks in the past, but the admission criteria are much tighter now. Well, I'm sure that that line was added to Wikipedia by a French PR flak. In fact, if there had been a Wikipedia during the Franco-Prussian War, presumably written on pieces of loose paper and disseminated on horseback, it would still have said the same thing back then.

The French first responders followed the Legion, staged a car accident in the middle of the parade and cut apart a car with the jaws of life. I guess they need to show the public that they know how to respond to calls for help. I'd like to see the port dude in Menton do the same. Interestingly, it was a very slow operation, and at some point, it looked like the jaws of life they brought along was not going to be sufficient for the larger car they had for the mock rescue.

And finally, there was a group of tough guys from French Polynesia who got into formation and started hitting themselves in the chest. Apparently, they were doing some kind of tribal dance where the objective, presumably, is to indicate to your opponent that you're so strong that you can go into battle where you beat yourself up first, fight your opponent and still win -- it's kind of like pre-drinking before a night of partying.

Even in the tiny town of Menton, the celebrations were quite elaborate.

"Down with the King!"

WWII outfit alongside Bastille-stormers!
That guy can single-handedly mow everyone down with a machine gun.

Large contingency of allies

Jeeps and muskets. It looks just like upstate NY before the start of the regular deer season.

Vive La France! Mort aux oiseaux de mer!

There was, of course, a large fireworks show at night. They're not very big on safety precautions in Europe, so I got to see the fireworks barge up close. Very close.

Every single piece of fireworks gets its own mortar tube

It turns out that photographing fireworks is very very difficult, even with a tripod.

Monton Old Port to Menton Garavan, A Tale of Two Ports In One City

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How many ports must a small town build, before you call it a racially and culturally-integrated town? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.

So Menton has two ports. One dates back to the Phoenicians, and the other is  only 30 years old. They're practically side by side, and have duplicated all services. One look at this situation in this small border town, and I just knew what it was all about: one port, the older one, is for the French-speaking contingency in Menton, while the other is essentially an Italian colony. It's kind of funny, considering that the entire region used to belong to the House of Savoy and was, in essence, Italian until not too long ago. And oddly, most people here have last names that indicate Italian ancestry.

If this is the situation with the ports, I don't even want to know how the school districts work. Maybe they can make some headway towards unification by bussing Italian boats into the Old Port, and the reverse for the French boats into Port Garavan. A port costs $20+M, it is ridiculous to build two of them as an edifice to cultural separation. As an aside, the entire "unified currency in Europe" idea is predicated on the notion that labor can move freely to wherever the jobs are. Well, you can see why people might be reluctant to move across boundaries.

Stella, sans transmission,
trying to get her groove back yet again

In any case, I needed to show Stella the Engine to a mechanic, as it developed a gear problem. It was Bastille Day, so the mechanic in the French port was off. I thought I'd have to sail to the nearest Italian port, in Ventimiglia, to get the engine serviced -- a 4-5 mile sail, not long enough to be fun, on a windless day to boot -- but then decided to check out the new port within Menton. I was greeted with "Buon Giorno" by the guys at the port, and sure enough, the mechanic, Segnor Osvaldo, spoke only Italian and, naturally, was at work even though it was Bastille Day. He pulled apart the lower engine assembly, ground down a part, and reassembled the shifter, so now, there is absolutely no part of the engine that I have not personally touched. Stella the Engine seems to have gotten its groove back again. I was about to chuck it overboard and buy a new one, but at this point, I just can't get rid of something whose every piece I have lovingly touched, took apart and reassembled. She's coming with me to wherever Guizmo's final destination might be.

Menton

This is a quaint little town. Reminded me of Antibes and Cadaques in a way, even though it lacks Antibes' city walls and the giant bay that defines Cadaques.

Menton, town view

This Greek warrior welcomes you at the port.

The kids act slightly differently here than they did elsewhere in France, closer to what I saw in Spain -- there is much more screaming and running away from the vicinity of the parents. So the parents entrap them in plastic balls and keep them there until they run out of oxygen. I'm not kidding; the kids remain in those balls for 20 minutes or so and come out much more subdued.

There is no way you can stay in there for that long in the US

Any kid not sufficiently punished in the transparent ball prison gets to be tied up onto the trampoline thingy.

Note little shrimp at right, trying to emulate the upside-down girl

Menton has yet another shutter technology, very different from the ones in previous cities. This one seems to have higher degrees of freedom.

High-tech shutters. Apparently, these are Italian-style.

The place is full of ice cream stores. I liked this one.

Saw this on a menu.

Good deal? I guess it all depends on the piece of the butcher one would be getting

 Random street view from Menton.

Holy Mother gets the best window.

There are quaint little bookstores here.

This one is going after the Somalian youth demographic.

Monaco to Menton

The short 3.5 mile jump from Monaco to Menton turned into a nightmare. Meteo prediction was for "Force 2 winds and cloud cover." Anyone can handle that in their sleep. Left the port, put up all the sails, sat back, was about to worry about music selection on the stereo when whitecaps and a substantial swell arrived suddenly. Went down to two reefs and a reefed jib. There was so much wind that when Guizmo jumped from the wavetops and splashed the waves, the splash on the windward side would come into the cockpit in its entireity, without a wasted drop. Which is fine, it's what foul weather gear is for, except it sucks to plan for a nice warm outing and instead have to trade your soaked clean clothing for foulies. The wind was only around 25-30 knots, which is still totally fine and nothing Guizmo has not faced before. But the thunderstorm was a bit too much. I heard some rumbles, and tried to attribute them to planes on approach to Nice, except it was pretty clear these weren't planes. I hate lightning storms at sea. The tall mast on a mini makes me feel like I'm doing a peer-review replica of Benjamin Franklin's experiment, and I know what happened to Franklin's assistants in that experiment.

Approximately 0.8 miles away from Port Vieux Menton, the big cloud cover reached the boat, the wind died down, Guizmo's engine lost her groove again, and the lightning was all around us. Sitting in the cabin and waiting out lightning flashes was an interesting experience. Tossed out the sea anchor, but the action of the waves must have undone the knot, as it was lost (incidentally, first time I lost anything overboard on this trip). I was slowly moving towards the shore, and thought, "ok, it's safer over there anyway, and if I get really close, I'll drop the anchor and try to hook land before I hit it." I tried to hail someone on the VHF, but no one responded on channels 9 or 16 to my first-ever PAN-PAN call (though it later turned out that the portmaster actually heard my call). I called the port on the cellphone and asked for a tow, also for the first time, but the connection was bad and the fellow was in the worst mood: he understood my plight, but said that he was alone at the pier and could not help. It seems odd that he could not ask someone else. I can only hope that Dante's hell has a special level designed for these beaurocrats, where they get pitchforked in hellfire with random devil's helpers who frolick all around them, could help them if they wanted to but don't because of a badly-written policy document. That level will undoubtedly be reserved for French government workers and AT&T employees.

Suddenly, the clouds cleared, there was an enormous rainbow, and Stella the engine started working again. I pulled into the port, had a nice conversation with the portmaster where I acted all cool like nothing had happened. He was a bit sheepish and overly nice to me, like he knew what he did was wrong, which gave me a bit of hope for mankind.

In the end, the storm was probably no big deal for any real pro sailor, but it was a little over my comfort level. Will check Greek meteo, reputed to be much better for the Med than any other, religiously from now on. No pics, even of the rainbow, as it was too wet to take out the camera.