I love a good challenge, and the effort to transport about 6 cubic meters (a large van full) of stuff from Paris to Nice on short notice during a national holiday provided an exceptional series of challenges.

The first challenge was to transport the stuff 1.5 Km from Stade de France to my hotel at 3 AM. Thankfully, there were a load of crew hands around. After chatting with them for a bit and with the people managing them, I received some free assistance pushing all the the equipment (thankfully everything fit on 6 flight cases with wheels) to my hotel – picture of this effort above. About 45 minutes later I paid my cheerful helpers with beer, orange juice, and candy bars, and convince the hotel to let me stash all of the stuff in the hotel conference room until the following evening. One down.

The second challenge was to find a way to transport all of the kit down to Nice, 950 Km away. Something told me that 5 set of helping hands wouldn’t do the trick this time. First thing in the morning my colleague help ring around to various “man with a van” services while some co-workers in London tried to find a suitable rental van. After just a couple of calls we realized that there was no legit service that was willing to do the delivery the next day – Bastille Day, the biggest national holiday in France. A while later we found that there were no vans to be rented in all of Paris. When continued searching all day in vain.

At 4:30 in the afternoon a glimmer of hope appeared as we found the last van in Paris – it was far to large and very far away, but it was something. I hopped in a cab and raced over. Upon arrival at the supplied address however, my heart sank. It was Rue de Rivoli 93 – the Louvre, which, in case you have never been, isn’t a van rental agency. I went in anyway and much to my surprise found that two floors down where the tour buses park, there is indeed a van rental company. I grabbed my vehicle at the last possible moment, loaded up my kit, and went to bed for an early departure the next day.

The drive down to Nice was a bit wet in the morning, but pleasant enough cruising through France and surfing local radio. The truck was a bit unwieldy in the cities, but proved to be a capable beast out on the road. The rain cleared as I left Lyon and found myself driving through Provence on a perfect afternoon. But then 7 hours into my 9 hour drive, the next challenge arrived. With the fuel gauge still reading 1/4 of a tank, the van started to sputter and stall. I was lucky enough to be right next to an exit, and pulled off the road. I hopped out and opened up the fuel tank, which was empty as I had feared. Checking the dashboard again I saw that the fuel gauge now showed 1/8 of a tank. At least it was optimistic.

I was blocking the exit, so I hopped out and with adrenaline surging, pushed the van back 15 meters out of trouble – to the spot you see in the picture. Then I turned to the phones, and with a little help from friends with access to a French land line that could dial local toll-free numbers, managed to explain my situation to the rental agency and also contact emergency services to dispatch a crew that could give me some diesel. I have never been happier to have studied French. A couple hours later I was back on the road with Hertz covering the cost of the breakdown as the emergency services technician explained that there was indeed a fault with the fuel gauge.

It’s the type of trouble that I like to get in while I’m out on the road – challenging, but with no imminent threat to my health or well being. It was stressful, but sipping a beer that evening it didn’t seem like a half bad couple of days.

Cross posted from the ONE blog

Phew! The U2 360 Tour has been fun, exciting, and a ton of work. As you know I’ve been traveling with the tour from city to city signing up ONE Members, coordinating volunteers, sorting out logistics… and “Kissing the Future”.

After the tour’s launch in Barcelona, we headed to Milan, Italy where lots of volunteers turned out to help sign up concert-goers to become ONE Members. One really cool thing about the volunteers in Milan was that it really seemed to be a family affair, with parents showing up with kids in tow just to help out. It was great to see different generations coming together to work as ONE. Some of the youngsters were pretty shy at first, but I found the trick was to get them out of their parents’ shadows, and then they really started to get into the fun. As more and more concert-goers poured in, I found the inter-generational dynamic of the volunteers actually perfectly reflected the make-up of the crowd, with people of all ages coming to enjoy the music and—assuming we did our job right—learn a little about ONE.

After Milan we headed to Paris for a couple concerts at the Stade de France. Stade de France is that it’s not only the biggest stadiums I’ve ever been in, but one of the biggest structures I’ve ever stood in, period. It was absolutely huge. While an awesome sight, this also made coordinating ONE volunteers that much more difficult. Security was also an issue, not leaving us with much room to catch eager U2 fans as they made their way towards the stage. Fortunately on the second night we went TO the crowd waiting in lines outside the Stade and signed up hundreds of ONE Members.

From Paris we headed south to Nice, which ended up being a bit of a trick in terms of transporting all of our tabling kit. I ended up enlisting the aid of a crew of men in the middle of the night to help me push a cart of equipment back to my hotel, then hired a van with a faulty petro meter to drive down to Nice. But once I was there, it was amazing. Informally referred to as U2’s “second home town”, The crowd there really treated U2 as one of their own and the atmosphere was very warm, pun on the 34 C weather not intended. Just as the other stops along the tour, lots of music and lots of sign-ups.

From Nice we went to Berlin (which Carola was kind enough to write about here) and then to Amsterdam for another two concerts. There we set up kiosks inside the stadium as there was absolutely no space to set up our tents outside. Interestingly, the security there asked that we not sign people up to become “ONE Members” but asking that they sign a “petition” was perfectly okay. With a little finessing, everything worked out. I also followed the old rule “when in the Netherlands…” and hired a bicycle for my stay in Amsterdam. While I normally have to take taxis to freight my equipment from place to place, I managed to load most of it up my bike and cruise around on the beautiful bike path between my hotel and the stadium. It turned my otherwise stressful commute into a peaceful morning and evening ride.

All in all, a very successful tour so far, with over 16,000 sign ups by the end of Amsterdam. I’ll have more for you from on the road soon!

While the item in the picture may look like a finely shaped poo, I assure that you that it was two delicious flavours of ice cream sculpted into a a flower. This sweet chocolate rose was the nightcap on an evening out in a lively area of Paris with one of my friends in town.

It appeared as thought I was going to miss out on having a meal out with a local in Paris, but thanks to an unfortunate travel arrangement I was stuck in town and managed to duck out for dinner, a bottle of wine, and ice cream. We headed to Rue des Lombards, a lively and lovely strip of gay and lesbian bars near Centre Pompidou. We settled on a crowed tapas place and played a long game of catch up over a large meal, and a bottle of wine that felt too small in the end.

I suppose what you expect to find in a place is what you end up finding, and dinner that evening was no different. I felt surrounded by young couples in love, people smoking hand rolled cigarettes, and beautiful food. Maybe that’s really how Paris is, but every time I’m there I feel like I wander into that same stereotypical dream of cheerful “bonjours” and life lived with time to smile and smell (or eat) the flowers.

The second stop on the tour was Milan, and I was nervous that my freshly hatched plan to have a meal with a local would fall through as I didn’t know anyone in Milan, and I was only going to be there for a few quick working nights. As it happened, we had a meeting with the local office of another non-profit about how we could collaborate, and two of the local volunteers took us to dinner at Obika mozzarella bar.

As it was a crew of English and Italian campaigners, the conversation naturally drifted to politics. I identified with the Italians as the tone in their voice and look in their eye when describing the state of Italian politics and Prime Minister Berlusconi matched the same pain that I used to have when describing American politics in the age of W. Bush. It’s somewhat ironic that the man who destroyed America’s image abroad now provides a source of identification and camaraderie.

Dinner finished with them insisiting on paying for the wine, and winning the argument by speaking to the waiter in Italian. Thanks for the evening guys!

Before I headed out on the U2 tour, I was trying to figure out some fun activity that I could repeat in each stop along the road. It wasn’t until I was actually on the trip that I settled on what I wanted to do: have a meal with at least one local at a restaurant of their choosing. I settled on this activity after an interesting evening with a flamboyant cast of characters at Fidel’s sandwich shop in the El Raval area of Barcelona.

I had met one of the group working on the show, and she invited me to get a taste of Barcelona in an evening out with her group of friends. The varied and humorous cast shone through the language barrier. There was the large jovial story teller who wore his double chin like a crown (right in the picture). The quick witted joker who compensated for his small stature by working out a bit too much. The dark haired bearded IT expert. The shy girl, who was clearly sweet, but was slow to engage in the conversation (center). The good looking couple who laughed loud, but made few jokes of their own (she’s left in the picture – the one who invited me to come along). And finally the power blond who was building a successful career in business.

The evening was a study in group dynamics and how much fun people can have together just sharing sandwiches for an hour. There was a magnetism in the group dynamic that had brought them together, and made me yearn to better understand the conversation. If I ever write a novel, some of the characters present at the table are sure to make an appearance in some manifestation or another.