Nine lives?

Just like cats, we all might have nine lives – or hopefully, even more! We all know that our lives are weaved with danger, fear, accident and luck (good and bad.) Navigating our existence is a matter of dodging the bullet and making it unscathed as we progress along the way. When I was 4 or 5 I made a frightful descent in a three-wheel wheelbarrow into a deep valley. I should have died, but I didn't.

Shortly thereafter, I almost drawn as I fell in a mountain creek overpowered with spring-run off and was luckily saved by a little boy that played with me that day; I even remember his name, Gerard Leserson. During my military service, car accidents were in the cards. I first had one while hitchhiking with my buddy Guibelin, in the south of France, when the 403 Peugeot we were in rolled over on the middle of busy Route Nationale 7; we all made it out okay. Another one, most spectacular, involved me and three others, inside another Peugeot – a 404 this time – that was driven by my good friend Michel Duret. The car hit a tree head-on after aquaplaning near Montpellier, also in the south of France. We were brought to the hospital and also all survived it well.

Still in France, one night, my brother almost got us into the lake of Montriond, when he hit a retaining wall at a high rate of speed; thanks heaven we stayed on the road. After that, my adult life became busy, filled with job and family responsibilities that shielded me from these elements of danger. Aside from a few close encounters while skiing and in spite of millions of miles flown the world over without a major crash, I have stayed quite safe. The last dangerous exercise I remember doing to drive up la Restonica narrow road in Corsica in 2006, and since then, I have stayed extremely secure, I don't want to spoil my remaining “lives...”