Tourist season over, cranes and values

Dear friends and family,

Now after five days of riding the routines are setting in place and the legs and butt are adapting.

We spent a couple of days at Lacanau Ocean, a resort town on the Atlantic coast.

Nice to see the big views of the open Atlantic and the many surfers waiting for their perfect wave to ride. Very odd to see the lack of barefoot footprints in the soft sand as it felt so lovely on our bare feet.

Our visit coincided with Armistice Day ( Veterans Day in the US), so this was kind of the last gasp for tourism for the season. Most shops and restaurants were closed already for the season. We stayed in a ” once great” hotel right on the beach that clearly had seen its best days many years ago. As we walked the boardwalk we noticed a steady crowd lined up for seats in the hotel’s restaurant, thinking it might be really special, but finding out later it was the only choice other than frozen yogurt or churros.

When we were ready for dinner at around six they let us know that was their closing time and one other restaurant in town would open shortly. I had a big bucket of local mussels in celebration of finding this only restaurant!

We stayed an extra day to leave our panniers behind and ride the five miles to the a natural reserve ( the Reserve Naturelle de l”Etang de Cousteau) where the European Cranes nest. We were lucky enough to see a couple fly overhead, but we could hear their specific call. 

On the way we saw the results of Napoleon’s efforts to build up a huge sandbank near the sea and plant thousands of pine trees that sucked up the estuary moisture and gave him a cash crop to finance his campaigns. 

The reserve itself is left natural and we climbed the five story swaying wood tower to observe it from above.

On the return towards Bordeaux, I had a straight bike trail to ride for five hours. This lent itself my mind pursuing an inquiry into values.

My early childhood values came from my parents and soon from my Catholic school upbringing and seminary high school. 

As I explored more, I shifted more towards Eastern thinking and embraced the concept of karma, both here and possibly in another life.

Further philosophical inquiries led me to discover Stoicism and the idea of an internal set of values, using “virtue” as a guide to living.

One Stoic virtue is justice, which they subdivide into piety, honesty, equity, and fair dealing.

Even as a teenager I was interested in what people used as a value system and how and why they would live their lives aligned with these.

One reason I chose accounting as a profession was my belief that we accountants were the ones holding businesses to be honest and fair in their financial representations. The value regulators.

When I graduated from college in interviews with several large international accounting firms, one in particular, Arthur Anderson, pursued me, probably based on a combination of my class standing and extracurricular activities. 

They told me in the interviews that they were not like other accounting firms , but were much more creative. I Trusted my gut and declined their offer and then understood what “creative” meant when they were found out ( and subsequently put out of business) for helping engineer the Enron scam many years later. Bubble starting to burst.

More recently I feel naive to not have noticed that about half our country now embraces and supports the concept of lying and cheating to accumulate more money while not giving a damn for those less fortunate, or at least supporting those that do. That bubble burst.

I’m tempted to judge, but If I judge those who do go against my values, aren’t I violating my own values by my judging?

But if I did embrace these majority values, then maybe I “wasted” all those hours over the last 35 years being honest in business and helping the disabled. Had I used those same hours lying and cheating and making more money I could have accumulated a shitload more money and be:

Riding my touring bike in the South of France, feeling the wind rush past me and the sun on my face  while hearing the dry oak leaves crunching under my tires and having time to enjoy deep thoughts, (although in that case it would be thoughts about my not living up to MY own virtues.)

I’m off for my cafe au lait and croissant breakfast.

Sending all an extra dose of love today,

Charley

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2 thoughts on “Tourist season over, cranes and values”

  1. Sounds like you are taking time to enjoy all the benefits of this trip. And yes, we are all thinking about values these days. are any of the values we learned and live by shared by the others in our country? Really makes you wonder.

  2. ‘This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man“. Hamlet

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