So first off, an update. currently in a hotel in deuville, freshly showered (FINALLY) with a passed out jim next to me. we were going to go out to eat and walk around and have a drink but its raining outside and him letting me borrow his computer to write an email is about to turn into me writing a novel because he isnt moving. we will be sleeping in the same bed tonight. its concave. hilarity should ensue.

so yesterday morning i worried and waiting for a cal from jim. i get an email that says that hes there but cant get his hands on a cell phone and is taking a nap. cool. eventually i went up to the airport to rescue his severely jet lagged self and i took him into paris to get a cell phone and lunch before sending him back on the RER to pass out in his hotel up by the airport. As much as i would have liked to sleep in a decent bed and shower I wanted to go out one more night. I wandered around the Gare de Norde train station sorting out tickets for this weekend and then got lost in the niehgborhood before finding a place cheap enough to eat at. i headed back to the hostel after that and stuck my stuff in the safe room because i didnt have a bed in the hostel for the night. fortunately my friends room had a free bed so i just slept there for free. score me.

anyways some brazilians and americans and i went up to the sacre coure again (yes its worth to go twice) with a guitar and screwed around, sang songs for people, drank, and enjoyed ourselves until theses creepy drunk armenian guys came on and tried to hit on the girls we were with. this one guy was stumbling around pulling his shirt up and another guy got drunk and fell on our whole group while i was away taking a tinkle. around there we left. on the way back down to the hostel i had my first butt clenching moment in france as a couple of guys were walking behind us in a dark alley in a bit of a hurry. we power walked to the nearest lit street, which was still freaking empty. i was scambling to find the blade in my sack, because i had my passport on me.

anyways we spent the rest of hte night goofing off at the hostel and we talked to these scottish guys about sports and comparing and contrasting the different states of our countries and whatnot. twas fun. we made plans to go out and pub crawl tomorrow down in south east paris tonight but it looks like theyll be going without me....
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because the next morning jim calls up and says he wants to meet. after both of us getting lost we met at the massive mall at the chatalet metro and lugged around all of our luggage while trying to figure out a place to go. we decided on deuville and made arrangements to go from here to deuville to lemans in te morning. found a place to eat and got confused as hell trying to get to teh train station but eventually wed get there.

we spent the first train on the floor between cars by the bathroom, since we had no seat reservations, we both slept like babies though. when we finally got to a seat it was next to these ttwo girls, one british and one an american from washington (like the 8th person from washington ive met here...). they thought us to be stereotypical texans. so we played that up. to quote, "i hate fucking hippies." score a couple points for texas public relations. twas funny. id like to think that they found us amusing.... Also, jim and i have figured out that the general mime for "id hit that" is universal in nature. a northern african dude who spoke french and jim had a moment. yay for international relations.

so we show up to deuville and its groggy and wet. when we showed up we thought hte place was a dud, but its just dead right now because its not vaction season yet. regardless, it is really pretty, right by the shore and hills with old french neighborhoods just perched on top of them. massively cool.

jim is out cold. i may go off by myself now....

anyways, so tomorrow comes the highlight of the trip for me. its something ive wanted to do my entire life. the 24 hours of lemans, so i will bore you with the details.

the 24 hours of lemans is the biggest sports car race in the world, period. bigger than indianpolis, daytona, monaco, anything. there are 4 different classes of cars on track at once, with teams battling for national pride. manufacturers sink millions of dollars a year into winning this race. not an entier series or championship, but his very race. the best drivers in the world compete. although the stars are not the driver. keeping a car running for 24 hours at 200+ mile an hours speeds is a team effort, and parts changes which would maen the end of hte race for any other team are taken care of in minutes. A victory for a marque of a certain country is a national victory. the teams are selected on an invitation only basis. its not a small deal.