September 5th - Your mission, should you choose to accept it …

There is no peace for the wicked. They say that moving house is the second most stressful event in life after bereavement. The statistics take no account of distance. Add the vagueries of moving to another country, with a foreign language, and you add a whole other dimension. Nevertheless, we continue to think up innovative ways to complicate our lives - while, in my case, improving my French vocabulary with spurious technical terms that will be utterly useless in any social context.

It has long been a standing joke that John’s mission in life at the moment is to set me a daily challenge. It usually starts, “I think WE need to call X and ask …”, or “WE need to pop in and see Y about …”, followed by “Could you ask …?” And it is never something simple. NEVER the sort of phrase that one is taught, “Ça fait combien?”, “Le train va partir à quelle heure?”. You get the idea.

Last week I successfully imported my bike. It is a BMW, so it couldn’t have been much simpler. Whatever John and I might be tempted to say about HAL, the onboard computer responsible for the bike’s electrical idiosyncrasies, a new BMW is a new BMW, whether it was bought in the UK, France or the US. Getting the necessary Certificat de Conformité (showing the bike conforms to French standards), took a single call to BMW in the UK with the chassis number. The Certificat arrived by return of post. Once installed in our French home, we looked up the address for the local Hôtel des Impôts and Sous Préfecture, and “presto”. 10 minutes form filling and, 165€ lighter, we walked away with a brand new Carte Grisse (registration document or title).

John’s bike has proved a little more problematic …

Before leaving the UK, John rang Triumph - the same day, in fact, that I rang BMW. He was told that they would have to ask the French distributers if there were any modifications necessary to issue the Certificat. They would get back to us. Weeks went by and we kind of let things slide. Eventually, in the absence of a response from Hinkley, I rang the distributers in Paris. Having established that the speedo was marked with both km and miles, and that the headlight was adjustable, they assured me that there was nothing else necessary and I should simply send in a copy of the UK registration document. Ha!

A letter arrived by return of post. It transpired that John’s 2003 Triumph Trophy could not be identified as a model that had been available in France. By way of assistance, I was directed to produce the letter to the local DRIRE (Directions Régionales de l’Industrie de la Recherche et de l’Environnement, if you are interested) in my démarchés administratives - whatever they are. Bloody typical.

The DRIRE turns out to be in Colomiers, on the outskirts of Toulouse, which is convenient as we can probably coincide our appointment with a visit to a local CB dealer …

Not content with settling in to a new home in a new country, we have also managed to import a few old problems in the hope that, somehow, despite certain language difficulties, we will now have time to deal with them. I speak of our long-standing CB issues. I am sure I can hear some of our American and Canadian friends laughing already.

We fitted CB radios on our bikes in preparation for our 6-week trip to the US in 2006. Most of our biking friends over there have CB (as distinct from 2-way walkie talkies more commonly used in Europe), so it seemed a logical choice. Ummm. The trouble with breaking the mould, is that one is always going to find advice and information a bit sparce. On top of which, of course, what we knew about radio communications generally could be written on the back of a postage stamp.

Nevertheless, we identified a suitable Midland radio that functions throughout Europe and will operate on the correct frequencies for the US. So far, so good. Unfortunately, having bought from the distributers direct, we were now on our own as far as installation went. It is hardly surprising then, that once we got to the States, it was difficult to make each other out across a parking lot, let alone out on the highway! Various solutions were suggested. We bought an SWR meter and changed antennas (twice). Nothing seemed to help. We resigned ourselves to having to wait until we were back in the UK to sort our communications out, but priorities at home were somewhat different, so the problem never got fixed …

It was against this background that John and I found ourselves in a Toulouse car park last week discussing (in French) some of the finer technical issues affecting CB transmission with a bemused local Midland radio dealer. He quickly diagnosed an insulation problem on John’s antenna set-up (a plastic washer was wrongly positioned), and referred us to a colleague in Colomiers to cable up a couple of new antennas. This will be our fourth set!

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