Vic & Donna's Adventures

We departed Bayeux France 9/25/17 driving to Paris for a flight to Vienna Austria, our next stop.  As we checked out of our hotel, the landlord advised we go immediately to a gas station.  In France, union groups go on strike at will and the fuel haulers union was on strike.  Already flights had been cancelled because of fuel shortages at airports.  We went to three gas stations in Bayeux, but they were already out of gas.  We did not have enough in the tank to make Paris and our flight left at 5 PM!  We decided to try the next town on our route and were lucky to find a station that still had fuel which ended the crisis.

One of my hopes in the trip to Europe was to see a pilot friend, Mike, from France that I trained with at Columbus Air Force Base in 1953 and had kept in touch with.  My e-mail to him had come back (address changed), and there was no response to my letter (he never received it), but I had an address at Senlis that was only 20 miles from our Paris departure airport-Charles de Gaulle.  Europe has Interstate highways similar to the United States and traffic was getting heavier as we approached Paris.  Jeff said we had enough time to drive the 20 miles to Senlis (which was away from CDG) and try the address.  He put the address in the GPS and we drove there.  We were lucky and both Mike and his wife Genevieve were home.  It was a short but joyful reunion and we made our flight to Vienna as well.