Surviving Nevers for sixteen months

We were newlywed when my wife and I moved to Nevers on September of 1975. First, we rented a nondescript single family house, with animal trophies on every wall, then we purchased a “historical” apartment right in the middle of old town, near a covered market.

This is were I would experience urban living mostly at its worst, parking our car in the street, with opposite side neighbors ogling into our space and a roof that failed as soon as we moved in. The summer of 1976 would also prove to be extremely hot, making our experience quite uncomfortable and this is not even mentioning a job and a workplace that I didn’t enjoy.

Thank God, the Beyls were nice enough to grant me a month off in January 1976 to go to Chamonix for my last certification step in ski instructing. This enabled to ski a bit more, even though we would return every weekend to Morzine and brave the five and a half hour drive each way. This regularly gave us a chance to ski and escape a place we both despised.

Since nothing in my new career or my new residence was working well for us, we decided to put our apartment up for sale in November of 1976 while, in spite of making very good money, I resigned my position with Look. My plan was to rejoin the Avoriaz ski school for the winter season and use that time to reassess my future career options.

With Christmas as an exit date, I participated at our international meeting that took place early December and this would literally be a life-changing event. During that meeting, Look was welcoming Paul, the newly hired president of its American subsidiary that would start operations on January 1st and be located at its current distributor facilities, in Elmsford, New York.

That distributor, Beconta, was in the sporting goods business and was handling Puma athletic shoes, its own line of ski clothing, Dolomite boots and Kästle skis. Pitou, its sales manager had accompanied Paul for the meeting as he learned that I was leaving Look, thought it would be a good idea for me to come to the U.S. as a way to help launch the new subsidiary.

This sounded good to me as it was better than “relapsing” into ski instructing or working elsewhere in France. Call it flight forward if you will, but I was seduced by the idea and while I thought that I would play that opportunity by ear, I accepted the offer and negotiated an okay deal that got me to America...