Wednesdays Soccer Practice

Today Etienne will take part in his second soccer practice. I'll be there too as one of the coach of the U6 Les Petits Bleus team. Here are some pictures of what happened last week:

Elodie, Gramie, Grandma and Stephanie all came.

and we learned how to dribble with the ball...

how to play without a ball...

how to pass the ball...

and how to shoot!

Huntington Lake

Nous avons emmené Gramie faire du camping le weekend dernier. Ca se passait a Huntington Lake, dans les sierras entre Yosemite et Kings Canyon. C'est un lac de haute montagne (2100 mètres d'altitude) peu connu et parfait pour la baignade: plage de sable (presque) fin , température de l'eau très correcte, pas de moustique...

US Airways sucks !

Gramie's trip last week was not a pleasant one.

To: US Airways
Customer Relations Department

Subject: Customer Service Complaint and Refund Request


Dear Sir or Madam,

On Thursday, August 16th, 2007, my mother traveled on US Airways from Paris, France to San Francisco with a connection in Philadelphia. Her flight from France (US755) arrived on time in Philadelphia but she missed her second flight (UA189) to San Francisco because of a two-hour long wait in the Immigration line.

Since there were no other direct flights to SFO that evening, she was offered a seat on an alternate route through Las Vegas. She was to arrive at SFO at 1:34am on flight US179, instead of 9:24pm as initially expected.

Flight US 788 landed in Las Vegas 40 minutes late, but she still arrived at the departing gate 25 minutes before departure and expected to board flight US179 at 11:59pm. At that time, she was told that she was not confirmed on that flight, that it was overbooked, and that she would not be allowed to board.
Her suitcase, however, did make the connection and arrived in San Francisco as planned.

After a two-hour long wait at the US Airways desk, she was finally able to call me so I could talk to a US Airways employee and find a solution for her. Much to our dismay, the US Airways supervisor-in-charge in Las Vegas at 3:00am that day claimed that the flight from Las Vegas to SFO was not overbooked and that it was my mother’s fault that she missed the connection to San Francisco. This is absolutely false. In fact, four other people were turned away at the gate in Las Vegas.

The supervisor refused to provide my mother a hotel room. The only request that he accepted was to switch her from the 11:45am direct flight to SFO, to a 6:50am flight to SJC with a connection in Phoenix (flights US3 and US280). So, my mother slept 3 hours in the Las Vegas Airport without her suitcase, and then traveled another 4 hours to her destination early Friday morning.

The whole trip was a nightmare for my mother.

While we understand that US Airways has no control over the length of time waiting for US Immigration clearance, US Airways most certainly does have control over the customer service they extend to their patrons.

Your company made two inexcusable mistakes that day. One, the employee in Philadelphia should never have sent her to Las Vegas without making sure that she would have a seat on the Las Vegas-SFO flight.
Two, the supervisor in Las Vegas should have recognized the mistake that US Airways made and provided her with a hotel room.

My mother was absolutely exhausted when she arrived and we are incensed by the way she was treated by your company.

We expect some kind of compensation for this awful experience. A full refund of the ticket fare (938.04 euros or $1263.54) would be an appropriate way for you to restore the trust we had in your company and to re-assure our loyalty as customers in the future.

We do have a choice when choosing our air travel arrangements and we certainly would not choose US Airways if we are not satisfied with the compensation and apology offered by your company.

I have enclosed copies of her invoice and her e-ticket. My mother will be returning to France soon, but you can contact me directly if you would like to discuss what US Airways can do to rectify the situation.

Sincerely,

Camping Trip to the Volcanoes

Last week was our first week long vacation since we moved back to California exactly one year ago ! What a change compared to our French vacation schedule !!!

We packed our tents and sleeping bags in Stephanie's car, and drove 1400 miles across Northern California and Southern Oregon. it was our first camping experience with the kids, and it was a big success !


Click on the map to see our pictures of Lassen, Crater Lake, and other volcanoes of the Cascade Range.