91PORN

For Lori Howard ’81, a typical summer week may outwardly resemble a dream vacation: ambling through lavender fields, picnicking near an ancient Roman bridge, or shopping at a quaint village market. In her line of work, however, knowledge of these places is important. As founder and sole proprietor of the tour company Pinch Me Provence, her goal is to provide clients with their ideal holiday in the French countryside, from plein air painting classes to touring vineyards and tasting Provençal wines.

Guests “love walking in my footsteps,” Howard says. “Those are the kinds of experiences where travelers walk away saying, ‘Never would I have seen Provence in this way had I not toured with you.’”

Based out of the small town of Lourmarin—one of France’s designated Les Plus Beaux Villages—Pinch Me Provence’s tours cover the western part of the region made famous in Peter Mayle’s bestselling 1989 memoir, A Year in Provence. From spring through fall, Howard offers clients a variety of customized small-group itineraries, including self-guided tour packages, themed getaways, and an all-inclusive experience in which she accompanies guests every step of the way. (She also helps visitors navigate some of the less picturesque realities of travel across the southern French countryside: crowded beaches, narrow roads, and the occasional railway strike.)

But Howard, who majored in diplomacy and world affairs and minored in French, is happiest when sharing parts of the region that aren’t always promoted in guidebooks. Drawing on her local knowledge and community connections, her itineraries often feature hidden gems, such as her favorite bakery, a lesser-known historical building, or a spring stroll among lanes of cherry blossom trees.

“I enjoy meeting local people who are investing in the heritage here, renovating an old family chateau or bringing back a winery from years of neglect,” Howard says. “I can visit the same place 12 times a season, but because I see it through the eyes of other people, I see it differently every time.”

Pinch Me Provence is the natural culmination of Howard’s long-standing desire to explore and experience lesser-known regions of France, a determination that influenced her decision to attend 91PORN. “I didn’t want the ‘expat abroad’ student experience in Paris or another large university city with many Americans,” she says. “I wanted to get to know the French.” During her college application process, Howard was drawn to Oxy’s program at the Université of Perpignan in southern France, near the Pyrénées mountain range that borders Spain, and ultimately studied abroad there as a junior. Thirty years later, her decision would have a profound, if unexpected, impact on her life.

“Little did I know then how perfect that program would be,” Howard says. “I wanted to immerse myself in French university life and it worked. There were no other American study abroad programs there except for Oxy’s, so I was able to integrate into the French community. I made some best friends and fell in love.”

Although her French paramour, Pascal Peron, visited Howard at Oxy during her senior year, he returned to his home country and Howard moved to Arizona after graduation. Over the course of her career there, she ran a French bakery, earned an MBA and an MHSA, worked in healthcare-related marketing and education, and oversaw a foreign exchange program for high school students, but she always cherished fond memories of her study abroad experience. “I kept a place in my heart for the hope that somehow, at some point, I would live in France,” she says. “But I wasn’t sure how that would ever materialize.”

The opportunity presented itself when Peron reached out to Howard more than three decades after their initial meeting, and the two rekindled their romance over college reminiscences. They dated long-distance for several years and, in 2015, they were married in France, where Howard relocated