Savoring the Chaos: Issue No. 16

We Thought the Hard Part Was Over

I’ve got a story that turned out to be too ridiculous to squeeze into the book I’m supposed to be writing.

It starts with a car that finally arrived in France… and immediately tried to ruin our lives.

The only way to tell it is in pieces

*

After all the delays, I couldn’t believe it had actually shown up in time for our trip to Bordeaux, before the move to Beaune.

The delivery guy handed me a clipboard. I signed and went to tell D. Two seconds later she came out the door.

I turned to say thanks to the driver.

He wasn’t there.

No explanation. No keys handoff. Just gone.

The car had clearly been sitting for a while, but at that point, I didn’t care. I decided to take it for a spin and fill it up for the drive the next morning.

I turned the key. It started right up. But I couldn’t turn the steering wheel. The power steering didn’t work.

At all. Crap.

Over our first two months in France, we’d burned through thousands on rental cars and shipping. And now the car was broken.

More importantly, where the hell did that delivery guy go?

We were in the middle of nowhere. We didn’t know anyone. Our French wasn’t even good enough to order cheese, let alone call a mechanic. We had to drop off the rental car in Bordeaux the next day. And in two days, we were supposed to be driving to Beaune in Burgundy.

I did what any modern, mechanically useless man would do: I Googled it.

The forums were full of wild theories. Most pointed to the battery. Apparently, when a car sits for too long, it gets moody. The electronics panic. The power steering throws a tantrum. And the dashboard lights up like it’s possessed.

Before we shipped the car, I paid a lot of money to the best Mercedes repair shop in Tampa Bay. I told them, "Replace anything even thinking about failing."

They gave it a clean bill of health. I felt like a responsible adult.

Now it felt like I’d been conned. By the shop. Or the shipping company. Or the guy who sold me on the whole thing. Someone had screwed this up. I just didn’t know who yet.

I let the car idle for 10 minutes, hoping to charge the battery. Then I gave it a try. I reversed about 20 yards, rolled forward, and the steering came back to life. Just like that. Like nothing had ever happened.

Victory!

I drove the rental car into town and filled the SUV with its first taste of overpriced French petrol, half-expecting something else to fail while I stood there holding the nozzle.

Nothing did. 

The next morning, I drove the rental down to Bordeaux to return it. D followed me in the Mercedes, completely unaware of how little faith I had in the machine she was driving.

The drive was uneventful. The kind of uneventful that feels temporary. A rare win. I should have known the truce wouldn’t last.

The very next day, July 1, the official start of our Beaune month—we packed up and hit the road for Burgundy. The SUV was loaded down with everything we’d started to accumulate, and it felt good to be driving our own car. A fresh start.

We stopped in Tours for lunch. I remember scanning the dash as I pulled into the lot, the way you do when you don’t trust a machine but don’t want to say that out loud. Every light on the dashboard lit up. The power steering failed again. I was halfway into the parking space, unable to turn the wheel.

Perfect.

I wrestled it the rest of the way in and parked. We sat down for sandwiches and stared into the existential void. I kept checking my phone, even though I didn’t know who I was going to call. I was doing the math in my head — how far we were from help, and how little I wanted D to know I was worried. 

Tours is a big city. Maybe a dealer could help? I made a few calls. No one spoke English. Nothing.

We tried the car again. It worked. Back on the road, every finger and toe crossed.

We were off to Burgundy. For now.

The route took us through a part of Tours that made us question everything.

This wasn't the postcard Tours we remembered from thirty years ago—the one with the dreamy flower market, the golden retriever curled in the back of a produce truck, and a parking garage so high-tech it plucked your car off the street like a magician and stacked it seven stories up. That Tours felt like a movie. This one felt like a war zone.

Burned-out buses lined the road. The buildings were tagged and charred. It looked like we had taken a wrong turn into a dystopian Netflix series. 

And there we were, creeping through it all in a big shiny Mercedes SUV that occasionally decided to stop working for no apparent reason.

I was on edge. Every glance felt loaded. I needed to get out of there. I think we were being hunted.

Eventually, we hit the autoroute. I breathed out. We were headed to France again. Like, real France. Vineyards, stone houses, D buying decorative copper pots we don’t need. The good stuff.

The tension started to ease.

Until I realized the car could betray me at any moment. So I decided we needed to get there fast.

And by fast, I mean I tucked in behind a couple of German sports cars doing 100+ miles per hour and just... went. D was asleep, so I had plausible deniability. She woke up just as we took the exit into Burgundy, and that’s when I saw the cops.

I have a pathological reaction to cops. Even when I’ve done nothing wrong, they scramble my brain. If someone in the car points at one — actually points — I lose it. Because now the cop thinks I’ve done something.

Put me in a foreign country, with rules I don’t know, a language I don’t speak, and the one thing I fear more than anything: jail. My nervous system goes into full revolt.

At the toll booth, I picked the wrong lane. The lane with the fob system. The kind for locals and freight trucks and people who know what they’re doing.
I backed out. Slowly. Embarrassingly. The cops were on the right, watching all of it.

I slid into the correct lane, inserted my money, and noticed a small army of gendarmes watching me. Hard.

Did they know I’d just obliterated the speed limit for the past hour? Was this how I was going to learn about the French penal system?

I crept forward.

Google Maps said to take a right. But one of the cops looked me dead in the eye and motioned for me to pull over.

I was toast.

D asked why they were pulling us over. I blurted out that I didn’t know. I also blurted out that I’d been driving like Mario Andretti for the past hour. Her look said, “You idiot.”

The officer came to the window. I started rambling about my Florida license photo and how I looked like a baked potato. He didn’t laugh.

Instead, he asked why there was no front license plate.

What?

I explained that we’d just shipped the car over from the U.S., and in Florida, you don’t need a front plate. Apparently, that was fine with him. He told us to enjoy our day. 

It wasn’t until later that D mentioned something my mind’s eye had seen but I hadn’t registered.

There were at least ten gendarmes milling around the toll booth. And more than a few of them were taking pictures. Of us. Or the car. Or Sully sticking his head out the window.

Maybe it was the giant American SUV with no front plate. Maybe it was my Florida license. Maybe it was me: sweating, rambling, and looking exactly like what I was.

Florida Man, spotted in the wild.

As I turned right, I wondered when my heart rate would drop below 200.

*

There’s more to this story. I’ll pick it back up soon.

A Place to Visit: Mirepoix

Mirepoix is old. Not in a precious way. Just genuinely old. Half-timbered houses lean in around the central square like they’ve been there since everyone agreed this was a good idea, and then never revisited the decision. The history is obvious, but it’s been worn down by daily life, which makes it easier to like.

We arrived on market day, which felt less like an event and more like the town briefly revealing how it actually functions. Stalls everywhere. Bread, produce, meat, cheese, people lingering without urgency. It was warm, but the covered timbered arcades around the square kept everything shaded and civil. Sully had a blast weaving through legs and baskets, happy and unbothered, which felt like the right endorsement.

We ended up at La Maison des Consuls, tucked under the arcades on the square. It was one of those places that feels like it’s always been there and sees no reason to explain itself. Tables pulled just far enough into the shade, market noise drifting through, and no pressure to do anything other than sit and watch the day unfold.

While enjoying our time there, I noticed two guys already well into their third pastis. It was still pretty early in the day. The drinks looked innocent enough, pale, cloudy, almost cheerful — and it was a warm day, so much so that I ordered one myself, purely out of curiosity. It arrived with a glass of water, which should have been a warning sign. It wasn’t. A few sips in, I realized I’d made a mistake. Pastis doesn’t announce itself. It waits. Then it reminds you who’s in charge.

Still, there was something about it that felt right. Sitting there, shaded from the sun, market noise echoing off the timbered beams, it struck me that this was a town comfortable with its own rhythms. No rushing. No performing. Just people living the day they were having.

And I’ll admit it, I like that Mirepoix shares its name with a cooking technique. A town named after the quiet, foundational thing that makes everything else better. Carrots, onions, celery. Nothing flashy. Just the base note you build a life, or a meal on.

I could live in this part of France. That thought surprised me.
Mirepoix isn’t a place that tries to win you over. It doesn’t need to. It just shows you what it’s been doing all along and lets you decide if that’s enough.

Until next time.

Thanks for subscribing and thanks for reading.

Paul