Staying Alive, staying alive, oh oh oh oh

Well, that week is over. It was a long, long week, and I am happy to now return to my less interesting life as staff. It was a good week of challenge and growth. I learned a lot. I didn't wring any knecks, even though some of them deserved it. I didn't even tell any of them off, partly due to self control and partly because I don't know how to do so in French.

This week I have spent a day and a half fixing bikes. Between mountain biking and BMX, we destroy bikes at a frightening pace here at Teen Ranch. We don't have anyone here who is assigned to maintain or repair them either, which means that the broken bicycles pile up. Last week we had to use a couple of BMX bikes for mountain biking because four of our mountain bikes were busted. That doesn't work well. We also had three or four flat tires going into the weekend. When I mentioned all of these frightening details to the staff coordinator I was hoping he would find somebody to fix the mess. He did, but I was the one he found. Not exactly what I had in mind, but oh well. He excused me from the regular rotation of duties for a day and a half so I could focus on bikes, and now by the grace of God almost all of our bikes are once again more or less operational. I must confess that I enjoyed the challenge. It kind of reminded me of playing with Legos, except that I never used a hack saw to make things work when I played with Legos.

And now, I will post some photos. They are all full-sized because I don't have my own computer here and my friend doesn't have any photo-editing software, so my blog will probably load really, really slowly. Oh well.

Teen Ranch Hermon

Fastest gun in the west of France.


Tipis at sundown



Hidden mountain lake- during WWII secret church services were held here on Sundays because it was a remote location that the Nazis did not know about. The town closest to here, Chambon sur Lignon, hid thousands of jewish children during the war and nobody ever betrayed them to the Nazis. The nation of Israel gave the town an award because of it.