may be a ton of errors.
We got up early on Tuesday for breakfast and our first big ride in the
Alps. Breakfast was the usual French event - croissants, french
bread, and jelly. Our cook added some eggs and yogurt to make us feel
at home. Dave was getting pretty desperate for
'his kind of breakfast' which he said always included Barnyard
Animals. Apparently the French don't believe in Barnyard Animal
breakfasts.
We had a good visit with our friends from Marseille and took some
pictures with them before they set out on their hike. We all felt
like that group would have made a good subject for a reality TV show.
They had every possible personality.
This day our goal was to ride two of the big and famous passes of the
Tour. The Tour riders themselves were in Italy and riding across the
border into France and we were going to see them the next day.
We got our bikes all prepped and the water bottles filled up. This was
a day we had been waiting for for a long time. What would it really
feel like to climb the big ones? We rolled out of our little hamlet
of La Danchere and rolled down to the main road. Or what we thought
was the main road. (I had spent a lot of time studying the maps so
that i would have a good idea of where we were and what would be best
for us to take on - but sometimes my memory wasn't perfect) We took a
right and headed East towards the high alps. The road was beautiful -
just two lanes twisting through the mountains and along a beautiful
river. We passed several little towns and hamlets and some of the
climbing was pretty intense. David and Steve rolled up ahead of Tim
and I as usual - those guys have a lot of natural horsepower despite
their advanced ages. Tim and I are pretty sure that alot of thier
power was due to the fact that they had triples on their bikes that
they didn't mention. (that isn't true, but I wish it was).
After about 45 minutes the climbing started in earnest - we were going
straight up a steep mountainside via a bunch of sheer switchbacks. It
was pretty amazing. At some point on the climb I mentioned to Tim
that i felt like the road was a LOT shorter than I thought it would be
and that there was far less traffic, etc. Well, we found out the
reason for all that in a few more minutes - we were on the wrong
road. We had turned right too early and had ridden about an hour and
a half out of our way. I tried to remind the guys that a warm-up was
always a good idea and that it was a pretty road after all. There was
no physical mutiny so that was nice. We then turned around and
smoked down the valley, past the La Danchere turnoff and to the actual
highway that would take us to the Galibier. We turned right and
started the climbing in earnest.
it was about 10 AM by now and the sun was up, but the temps were
cool. We set a good tempo and again David and Steve rolled up ahead a
bit. Tim and I got in a groove and started ticking off the
kilometers. We went through some amazing scenery - huge mountains,
lakes, rivers, long and dark tunnels, ancient towns and churches.
Dave would pull over occasionally and we would regroup. There were
riders everywhere. Going up and coming down - just a ton of cyclists
- and the cars were all sharing the road without complaint. We didn't
get the wrath of even one big Wylie dodge pickup with huge diesel
exhaust pipes that felt he needed more of the road than he already had.
We made our first significant stop in at famous ski and mountaineering
town of La Grave - narrow streets and some of the most fantastic
views we had ever seen. We grabbed some water from a little
restaurant and had a quick break and then started the next part of the
climb. (In our false start we had climbed about 400 meters or just
1200 feet and we were going to climb 1700 meters to the top of the
Galibier) It was 8k more to the Col du Lauteret. The Tour would be
passing Lauteret the next day so when we arrived the roads were
covered with people and campers. The landscape was kinda lunar - no
trees - just high alpine grass and giant peaks with a ribbon of white
campers streching up and down the road as far as you could see. We
stopped for pictures and met a few folks doing the same thing. People
were very friendly every place we went.
The next stage was the steepest - a hard 8k up to the top - twisting
through the roads and dodging the people and campers and riders.
Apparently these people just enjoy camping at high altitude - it is
like a state park got moved up onto the roadside. The highway was
closed and there were no cars moving on the road. The big change we
felt was the temperature. It was getting really cold. When I finally
caught Steve and David at the top they were beginning to succumb to
hypothermia. The wind was howling and there was a line of people
waiting to take a picture by the sign proving the pass had been
reached. We took our place in line and got the pics. It took me
about four seconds to put my camera in my pocket and in that amount of
time David had jumped the Tour barrier and was speeding back to the
restaurant about 1k below the top to get some warmth We stood inside
the shop for about 15 minutes trying to get the blood flowing back to
our fingers and finally decided we needed to get going. The descent
was VERY cold, but every kilometer brought us closer to the warmth and
soon we were comfortable again.
We met up at the Lauteret and then started our drop down to La Grave
where we had decided to have a late lunch. The decent was a thrill -
the roads were wider and and grade perfect for going fast, but staying
in control. There is a certain kind of excitement that you feel when
you fly into a pitch black tunnel at 45 - 50 and have to look at the
headlights ahead to know if you are in the right spot. While this
might not seem to be the safest thing I can pint to two facts that
indicate it wasn't a truly bad idea: everybody else was doing it and
we made it through safe.
We were starving by the time we got to a cafe for lunch. I am
surprised that we didn't take food off of the other patrons tables.
Tim and I were somewhat awed at the number of calories that Steve and
David could put away and stay so skinny. They were kinda like
squirrels (without the puffy cheeks full of food) - both had vast
caches of food in their luggage. Dave was also rather impressive in
his use of the french language. He was working hard on it with his
computer program at night and then using it during the day. Most of
the time the nationals didn't understand, but he was determined. We
sat in shadow of some beautiful peaks - probably the most scenic stuff
we saw.
Soon it was time to hit the road again - we were determined to get
back to our Gite for a shower and our next four course meal!
The descent was really fun - We had a great highspeed chase for about
the last 5 k. Going up I am not so fast, but m 190 lbs helps get the
speed up. Before ling we were on the short climb to our home away
from home and resting up for dinner.
Weeks before the cook had planned to do a Texas style meal of Fajitas
for dinner so we were pumped. When we came down to hang out on the
deck she was grilling the chicken and peppers over the fire. Dinner
turned out to be great bur for more reasons that the food. We met
some great people. One that I may not have mentioned yet is the 100
year old matron who had lived near La Danchere and Grenoble most of
her life. She was a fireball. Fun and opinionated. Not sure what
she thought about us, but I do know that she was disappointed that we
were eating American style food while we were in France. She was not
a fan of fajitas. We tried to extract some WWII stories from her
wiith marginal success - she had escaped to LaDanchere from Grenoble
during both wars - the Germans had never made it too far into the
mountains because of the light populations and difficulty of travel.
We also met some new friends from the UK - Philip and Paul - They
were from the Cotswalds. Really interesting guys - just al ittle
younger than us. A late comer to dinner was our future riding partner
Yves. Philip worked for a big bike shop and was Paul's dealer.
Apparently Paul had a serious addiction to bikes and Philip helped to
perpetuate that addiction. They both had a great sense of humor and
we laughed a lot. Yves is a 29 year old Belgian who spoke good French
and English. For a long while it was the older lady, Yves, Philip,
Paull, and us sitting around the table - it was pretty funny to try to
communicate. After a while the matron left and we turned our
discussion purely to bikes. All of us were looking forward to riding
up L'alp d'huez the next day.
We invited them to join us and Yves took us up on it - the other guys
had a early morning plan.
After a long conversation that night we went on up to bed and went to
sleep.
A good day in France.
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