Wow, we just had a very challenging 24 hours. After running into Oxford, we jumped in our vehicle to race to the ferry in Dover for our crossing of the Dover Straits into Calais, France. We arrived at the ferry about 5am. The white cliffs of Dover loomed above as we maneuvered our way to drop off the van, drag all our stuff and our bodies onto the ferry for the 90 minute ride. Could not see much because of the fog but the sea was very active, a testament to the difficulty of the swim across the English Channel. This ferry, too, was replete with shops and food concessions, game room, bar, etc. Quite the way to travel. If you are a foot passenger, you get special escort to and from the boat. I talked with more people about BPR including a Dutch man who was awed because he had once run on a relay the length of the UK.

Once off the ferry, we had another long drive to Beauvais, France, where we arrived sometime late morning, a bit grumpy. Napped, then visited the town and had a wonderful dinner at Bistrot du Boucher, including some French wine of course! Beauvais has an amazing cathedral. We met some Chileans in the restaurant and turned them on to the Blue Planet run. Laura was able to speak Portuguese with them, very fun. Slept another 8 hours and rose to a beautiful French breakfast in our hotel. Then Laura and I went shopping for groceries. We run at 9pm again tonight from here to Vallangoujard, France. Then we will sleep in St. Quentin, France and head on to Belgium tomorrow.

Our team will not go to Paris, but we will be doing Antwerp and Breda in the Netherlands, and Bremen, Berlin and Halle, Germany, then Wien, Austria and Krakow, Poland. We are knocking off the countries. It is amazing the speed at which we are moving forward. And the analogy launched by Dill, one of the technical directors, seems right on: across Europe we are building the campfire, across Russia and Asia we will be setting the fires, and when we get to the US on August 1 we will be ablaze!!!!! By then we are hopeful the website will be keeping the same pace as we runners so that you can follow us step by step and event by event on the same schedule as we.

Laura and I share a love for cheese so we have been in”cheese heaven” here in France. We are so impressed by the cleanliness of the places and the helpfulness of the people. They have as much fun as we trying to figure out what we want to say. Today we searched for peanut butter and translated it to “cocoette (?) pate” which was understood, but they did not have it. Lots of chocolate butter and meat pates. I am practicing my German for bringing the message when we get there, but it is hard with the mix of other languages. I find myself spitting out a word in Spanish, German or now French and having to repeat it in the language I intended. How someone like Simon keeps his six languages sorted out is amazing to me.

My friend from Tanzania Simon Mtuy is in California readying to run Western States. He sends the following message: “Maji ni Uhai” which means “WATER IS LIFE” We will run together for water in Tanzania sometime in the near future. Cheers! More to come.