June 16-19, 2022

When Leslie and I knew we were going to be spending 4 weeks in beautiful Provence, I contacted friends of ours who now live in Lupsingen, Switzerland. Craig and JoEllen DePorter are now officially Swiss citizens and they drove the 7 or so hours down to Bonnieux to spend a long weekend with us. Craig and I worked together in the early 2000’s at Johns Manville in Denver and they lived just a couple of miles from us in the southeast part of Denver. They moved to Europe about 17 years ago.

It was great to see Craig and JoEllen, we had a blast running around the Luberon, hiking, dining, going to markets, looking in the sky for space junk at night*, it’s as if no time had passed since we last saw each other.

* Propeller-head Craig has an app. whereby you can track the space junk (satellites, rocket remnants, etc.) in a given area. It’s actually quite interesting to do in an area with limited light pollution. We saw many objects that looked like mini-shooting stars.

FJM

Over the years, as several of our circle of friends departed Johns Manville, we continued to have lunches together and decided to name our lunch club FJM for Former Johns Manville (a 4 letter expletive can also be substituted for Former). Over the years, several of us continued to meet for lunch and eventually Craig moved his family to Europe but we kept in touch and he became the only Euro member of FJM.

During their weekend here, we scheduled a dinner with another former Johns Manville colleague of Craig’s, Philippe and his wife Helena who happen to live nearby. I didn’t know Philippe at JM but it was as if he and his wife were old friends, they were a joy to have dinner with. We all had a marvelous dinner in the town of Lourmarin, one of those great affairs on a beautiful terrace on a perfect summer’s evening where 3.5 hours seemed like 20 minutes.

Craig and I decided to induct Philippe into the FJM club. We’re not sure if he totally got the joke, but it was fun anyway.

See JoEllen’s Aperol Spritz recipe at the bottom of this post.

Now about the Spoon

One night at the rental house, we were having a bottle of sparkling rosé. The wine had just been opened after being chilled and it was very refreshing on a hot summer’s day. I took a sip or two of the wine and grabbed a bit of cheese and noticed that at the top of the rosé bottle was a spoon! Someone had placed a spoon with its handle down into the bottle.

So let me just explain something, Craig and JoEllen both have PhDs, they met at the doctoral program at Virginia Tech, Craig’s is in polymer chemistry and JoEllen’s is in chemical engineering. I mention this because they are both rather intelligent people, not crackpots by any means.

Here is our dialogue as I remember it:

Matt: What the $%&@ is this spoon doing in the bottle?

JoEllen: Oh, it’s there to keep the fizz in the wine. Didn’t you know that a spoon keeps the bubbles going?

Matt: Huh?

Craig: Yup, it works.

Matt: So what’s the science behind that Docs.?

Craig: Not sure, but I know it works.

I looked it up on the information super highway and apparently this notion is prevalent in Europe. It’s been debunked I guess, although I did find one site that suggests it does work.

When in Europe……..

JoEllen’s Aperol Spritz Recipe

(GOVERNMENT WARNING: (1) According to the Surgeon General, women should not drink alcoholic beverages during pregnancy because of the risk of birth defects. (2) Consumption of alcoholic beverages impairs your ability to drive a car or operate machinery, and may cause health problems”.)

Please drink responsibly.