Hello again, it’s been a while since my last blog entry. At that time Zoom airlines had just gone south and our plans to go to France had all gone bust leaving us in a real fuzzle. We had deposits made we couldn’t recover, sold most of our stuff, an offer on the house, the lot.

Well now it is almost a month later and things have settled somewhat. We lost the money for the airline tickets (or looks good as anyway), lost the deposit money on the rental in France, didn’t sell the house after all and have decided to stay in London … sort of. In the end a bit of R & R (Renovation and Retail Therapy) eased the blow. So we have spruced up the basement to a nicely finished family area, replaced the furniture with some nicer newer bits. In lieu of moving to France we will be taking longer (up to a few months) vacations to choice spots (like warm beaches in the middle of winter!). Looks like it will be a fair trade so far. Everyone is calmer, cooler, my son has returned to University to do more of his courses, our contract work has continued without break (as it would have had we moved) and I am enjoying not working 9 to 5, commuting 100KM to work and explaining to my bosses why I prefer to be barefoot. All in all it looks like things will work out. Everything happens for a reason, I guess France was not the answer we needed at this time, maybe later, maybe somewhere else. I let the universe decide.

Have you ever seen a house of cards collapse? It is coming up to Thursday (tomorrow) and I can tell you this time last week we had it all but this week? Naught. Last Thursday we where set to retire to France on September the 5th (two days from now), we had sold the house, sold most of the furniture, arranged distance courses for Matthew, bought airline tickets, paid a deposit on the property in France and rented transport at that end. It was all arranged, when we arrived in France, we would have enough savings left to carry us should something go horribly wrong. What we didn’t figure on was that the airline might go bust before we left, taking all our careful planning with it. This week we have no airline tickets, a several thousand dollar hole in our savings, a lost deposit on the France rental property and no immediate travel opportunities since airfares seem to have suddenly gone skyways. Acquiring new tickets to France (or any other destination involving airline tickets) would eat up so much of our savings that we could not recover should something go wrong, which it is now evident that it can. So we have naught. The only good news so far was that the France car rental company has returned the $65 deposit on the car rental. The only advice we have received regarding our Zoom Airline tickets is that we probably will never see that money again so don’t bother chasing it. Ditto for the deposit on the rental property. As for the sale of the house, there is no easy way to back out of it (we were not particularly attached to it having decided to give it up for France *but* we do need a place to live) as the sellers have few rights in this case having signed the agreement of sale. So we are scrambling for a place to rent before the closing and trying to pick up the pieces as well as can be. It is amazing however how totally knackered life has become because of the failure of Zoom Airlines, a factor out of our control and so utterly unexpected. A meteor strike in the middle of London would have been less devastating! Watch this space, I’ll let you know what’s happening when the cards cease falling down around us.

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrugh! Gluck! Sob! Sigh! %^#@$$%%^& Zoom Airlines!
Ah now I feel better! Yesterday, the 28th of August I had tickets to fly to France, transport booked at the other end, a long term rental on a 17th Villa in the South of France. Today, the 29th of August everything but the airline tickets is in limbo. The reason you ask? Zoom airlines has gone bust and ceased all operations, our airline tickets are no more and most likely so is the money used to purchase them. It seems Zoom has been in financial trouble for a while but failed to let any of it’s customers know this, while it fiddled the creditors, for fear of losing business and getting into worse financial troubles. Instead it took bookings, took payments up front and kept schtum. Now when the creditors close in and force the issue, we have lost our flights and are so far down the list of creditors to be reimbursed that even the camel drivers and dog barkers will be paid first. I doubt we will see any reimbursement any time soon. So our plans to move to France, to the villa are for all intents and purposes finished. Checking the airlines booking web pages for other airlines has confirmed that replacement tickets (if we could afford them) would be about 4 times what we paid Zoom.

So it seems our plans to move to France will have to be delayed at least until the dust settles from the Zoom fiasco and airlines ticket prices return the absurd levels that we would consider normal. In the mean time we are faced with the daunting task of trying to get our money back from Zoom Airlines, deposits back from car rental agencies in France, deposits back from the owner of the Villa in France, cancel the house sale. It is just an incredible total mess and the worst part is the fact that it is out of our control. We are helpless, with no way to force Zoom to return our funds, even less influence to get a similar flight deal to France from another airline. Once again we are at the complete and utter mercy of bad timing and bad luck.

We will get it worked out in the end, we always do but at this moment it seems incredibly frustrating and aggravating.

Do you remember when you were young, how you ran barefoot in the summer? Feeling the grass on your feet, the texture of warm pavement? So why are you wearing shoes right this moment? Is it because (almost) everyone does? Because the rules (what rules?) say you must? Because your boss says you must? Because the sign at the entrance says you must?

It’s probably for all of these reasons and many more myths that need to be forgotten, changed or unlearned. The truth is going barefoot is incredibly natural, more healthy for you and puts you in touch with your environment like few other experiences can. Wearing shoes cramps the feet, affects your posture, promotes athletes foot and a host of other nasties, costs more and is not particularly eco-friendly.

Going barefoot in the modern world is unusual perhaps (given our social mores) but is not particularly hazardous. Many of us work in offices, retail establishments, at home, schools and universities where the greatest hazard is having someone wearing oxfords stepping on our toes. There are lots of places where the hazards of the environment call for some sort of protection for your feet, factories, construction and overheated kitchens come to mind. However in general going barefoot is not hazardous at all. There are in fact no laws that prohibit going barefoot in any retail establishment, restaurant, office or while driving. Individual stores or establishments may well choose not to serve you if one is barefoot, that is their choice (to give up my sale) just as my choice is to go barefoot.

In the modern profit oriented materialistic society that we live in, even the big name athletic shoe makers have discovered that there may just be something to this barefoot thing and have started marketing “barefoot” sneakers. These are shoes that are more ergonomically designed to match walking barefoot, doing away with raised heels, arch supports, thick rubber soles and such. Seems like an ok way for the sneaker makers to get in on the game I guess but why not do away with the sneakers all together and go barefoot? I will be I assure you.

Happy barefooting!

Additional Reading:
New York Times article
Wikipedia says
Vibram barefoot shoes
Running barefoot prt.1
Running barefoot prt.2

Remember when you were young and you and your friends ran to the library to look at the pictures in the National Geographic’s? The ones showing the African or South American or South Sea Island natives in the all together? I was reminded of this strangely enough by a radio news story about a German dude who was arrested for hiking in the Black Forest in the nude and was subsequently allowed to go to serve his sentence in the nude, ostensibly because he was a naturist. In remembering the N.G. pics, then as now what struck me most about them was not the naughty bits on display but the complete nonchalance and candidness of the pics. Those natives thought nothing about being in the buff, weren’t really displaying their naughty bits because no one in their society had spent 10000 or so years telling them they were naughty.

The incident in Germany, which reminded me of the N.G. pics also reminded me of a vacation I took a few years back to Panama and the nude beach I frequented there and further back in the stores of my memory a vacation I took with some friends in college to a naturist resort up near Ottawa. In both cases one shed their clothes at the entrance and thought nothing of it. At the beach were people of all sizes, shapes, colors, walks of life. Trouble was, we were all exceptionally equal there. We all had two arms, two legs, 10 fingers and toes and a few naughty bits (only considered naughty because we been told that for a few thousand years). Nobody walked up and down the beach in total arousal, ogling the opposite sex, passing any kind of judgment related to appearance. Everyone was there to enjoy the sunshine, lounge about, read a book, swim in the ocean (an incredibly exhilarating and natural feeling, swimming naked in the salt water of the ocean). It was the most natural thing in the world, put you in touch with the environment in a way that can never be matched when clothed and no we weren’t eaten alive by mosquitoes and black flies.

Recall the huge fuss and kerfluffal a few years back when a few women in Ontario chose to go topless in summer? There were court cases, media coverage and outrage on all fronts, it was going to be total anarchy they said. Why? Because it’s taboo for women to go topless that’s why. No one blinks an eye when a man (good looking and muscled or 450 pounds ugly as all get out) goes topless, funny that. Mostly it’s because we equate nudity with sexuality, believe that the moment someone get naked (or even partially so) we’re all going to lose control, get aroused and do the things that everyone knows should be private. Truth is that is not so however.

Remember that vacation at the naturist camp I mentioned? I was in my last year of college in those days, so I was young (compared to my age these days) but still old enough to see the truth before me. The resort we stayed at could have been mistaken for any posh resort or KOA campground you care to mention. There were people playing tennis, lounging by the pools, kids canoeing in the lake, playing Frisbee. There were two major differences however, first there were no clothes to be seen anywhere, second there was no way to tell (by looking at the people there) who had arrived in the Mercedes 450SEL and who had arrived in the Ford Maverick. Everyone at that resort was just that, themselves, equal and any shape, size, color you could imagine. Couldn’t tell how rich how poor, what religion, what preference they were. They were just people, no taboos, no naughty bits, no embarrassments, no judgments.

So why do we wear clothes? In the beginning way back when we were less civilized (some might argue that point what with modern wars, prejudice and inequalities) we wore clothes to keep us warm, keep the dudes in the next cave from bashing our heads in, to show off our hunting prowess and maybe attract the good looking girl on the other side of the cave. Funny how little things have changed over time? Modern clothes are the costume of society, the badge of office, the suit of armor for the business world. Kids can’t be cool if their shoes aren’t Nike, their jeans aren’t DKNY. You can’t be a professional if you’re dressed in a t-shirt and shorts. You can’t be better off than the Jones’s if you shop at Wal-Mart instead of Neiman-Marcus. Oh and don’t forget, you can’t display any of the naughty bits; we’ll all lose control of ourselves.

In my last entry I told you about our plans to up sticks and move to France for a year (at least) and do away with the 9 to 5, the rat race, the winters and all that other stuff. As promised I am posting more of the adventures that are the preparations for the jump. I say preparations but really it is more like barely controlled chaos.

We have cleaned up, spruced up, painted up, emptied out most of the house so that it would look more presentable on showings. I think it looks very good but rather bare now 8-(( , so much of our stuff has been removed. We still seem to have 40,000 books and cd’s to get rid of, dozens of appliances and all of the big furniture we can’t live (for two more weeks) without such as beds, 1 couch, appliances and the like. As much as we move stuff out, we discover some new corner where we hid yet more things. It’s like living in the tardis!

Then there is the bureaucratic morass of trying to get straight answers regarding visas, taking our car to France, driving in France, working in France, going to school in France. Every web site you look at, every official you consult seems to offer a different answer to questions slightly different than the one you are asking. Seems that neither I nor my son need visas to settle in France or go to school in France, all we need is a residency permit that is applied for and acquired after we get there. I may need a visa to work but I will only find out after I arrive and check with the local prefecture. We can bring our car (given enough money) so long as we change all the “americanisms” such as white fogs lights, red turn signals and such to meet European standards, then have a European emissions test done, then pay all the port, VAT, local and other taxes on it. We figure it should cost us about 15 grand to get our $9000 leased Subaru to France. I guess we’ll buy a smart car when we get there, sigh.

Now with only two weeks to go before we fly out, it seems like we’re on this whirling dervish, going ever faster and faster. Time is quickly running out and we have so much to do still. We have sold the house but have to now close the deal, finalize our finances, pensions, bank accounts and all that, get the carrier crates for the pets, get rid of the remaining furniture, get rid of the cars, get packed, get all the baggage, kids, cats, dogs and everything else to Toronto. Can’t imagine I am doing this voluntarily, got to keep thinking about the peaceful quiet wine country we are soon to arrive at.

Now off to the passport office to see what new twists Canadian bureaucracy has in store for me.

So my family and I (My wife Jacky, my son Matthew and myself) have decided to up sticks and leave the rat race, commuting 100Km to work, winters, concrete cities, noise, smog and the crazy pace of city life behind and move to the country side of Southern France. For 10 months or so at least in any case. Then we’ll see what is next, maybe stay there, maybe move on. Are we nuts you say? No I don’t think so, time marches on, we all get older, we all talk about doing it but few of us actually do it.

Life is a great adventure, it should be lived, full and vibrant every day. It is far too easy to be stuck in a rut of day to day survival, working 9 to 5 to pay the bills, pay for the commute to work. Both my wife and I are very interested in history, art, classical music so what better place tgo experience ity than from France. Being in France most everywhere we would dearly love to visit is accessible within a day or two of driving, less by train and some by walking out the front door. From Canada, visiting the Louvre or the Artists Quarter in Paris, or Notre Dame (or any of a thousand other places) would be an expensive airpline trip and a weeks vacation away. So we made the decision, “let’s do it!” and “let’s do it now!”.

So now we are preparing for the move and what a job that is! Decided to keep our house and rent it so we have some minimal fallback should it all go pear shaped (don’t expect that it will though as we’re both of a spirit to make it work). Then discovered that we really should spruce up the kitchen with a lick of paint … but wait that made the counters look dull so we’ll spruce them up … ah but now the trim in the front room looks a little tired, better paint it up as well .. and so it goes. Then we decided to sell up the detritus, flotsam and jetsam we didn’t want to take with us, didn’t want to store and didn’t want to leave. Wowsa! What pack rats we are! Four billion books, two billion nick-knacks, 750 assorted appliances, some classic vinyls records, ancient calculators, old lamps, 17000 bits of old clothing (some fits, some doesn’t), enough shoes and sneaks to keep Immelda Marcos happy, prints, pictures and so much more. Can all this stuff possibly come out of our one house? Not to mention that now we have moved all this stuff from it’s original spot to the living room, the place now looks like several bombs went off! Well it all has to go somewhere by the end of the month (August) because on September the fifth we’ll be on an airliner headed for France. Winging our way to sunshine, a slower easier pace of life and trying madly to master enough french so as to not embarrass ourselves when we land. Watch this space, I’ll post more as the month progresses, it’s sure to be fun and funny.