My first "real" ride after my catastrophic old man back failure. It felt fine, but my legs are a little weak after several weeks off the bike
route here
Also worth mentioning: I finally got a compact crankset, which was installed very nicely and inexpensively by culture velo
Jon and Sue took us out to a birthday lunch at le Village: excellent. As an added bonus, the cheese shop guy walked in, and he recognized me and gave us an enthusiastic greeting! It was also the first day of the infamous sales, so traffic and parking were a total nightmare.
Alex got us up early to feed him and remind us to take pictures of Hauterives:
And after a quick breakfast, we left the kids with Sue and Jon (THANK YOU!!) and headed to the crag to flail on easy climbs. I also got on a mid 7 at the Tennessee crag and got shut down. I really need to lose some weight somehow! We headed back to Hauterives at lunch, fording the river:
Then we all packed up and went to Ste. Enemie for lunch. Next, it was back to Hauterives for more playing in the river, and finally dinner and then sleep
After packing up all the stuff and getting ferried across the river, we climbed at the moulin a huile sector, and then it was Pizza dn beer time, followed by the loooong drive back home. I did the whole thing in one 4:10 stretch. Tiring. It was a great time, but I would love to have a few days to recover!
Today we drove to the Gorges du Tarn with Jon, Sue, Ian and Susan. It was a bit of a long drive, but we broke it up with a stop in Voguë: a charming "plus beau village de France", with a little passageway called the Chemin des Puces:
It also has an artisanale ice cream shop, which is conveniently closed between noon and 15:00. After lunch on the river, we headed out on small and windy roads to la Maléne. We eventually arrived, and met the owner of the gite, to transport our baggage across the river
I was a little worried that our things would go plummeting into the river, but everything made it across just fine. After unloading our things, we drove to la Malene for the hike to Hauterives. First, of course, was the small matter of beers in the shade. Zoe got ahold of my Zeiss binoculars, which made me a very nervous daddy:
The hike wasn't bad, but I had to carry Zoe up the one steep part on my back. Happily, we soon arrived at the gite and hopped into the river immediately
Next, we moved into our room
And grilled up sausages for dinner.
A few words about Hauterives -- the town in which we were staying: It is only accessible by boat or path (~45 minutes walk from La Maléne), and is so beautiful that it routinely causes near traffic accidents and traffic jams on the other side of the gorge. The rooves are made of limestone, and are quarried from the plains above the gorge. I watched a video (Lauzes de Lozére) on how they are made, and it looks like hard work. The only nice thing about the process is that the limestone forms strata that are generally the right thickness for tiles. Having said that, it looks like quite a job to install one.
the town of le Fontanil has a lot of activities throughout the year, and tonight it was a free concert in the park. I was still hobbled with back pain so I couldn't gom but Chloe and Zoe went together. Apparently it was quite a spectacle, with dancing and live music. Zoe loved it, and was transfixed by the lights, dancing and music.
I could hear a lot if it from our house. Some of the highlights were "Rehab"(Amy Winehouse), followed by Waterloo (Abba) and my personal favorite: a hiphop version of Don't You Forget About Me (Simple Minds): "laaa la la la la, la la la la la la la la la la la la la COMEON COMEON COMEON"
Today was stage 5 of the Dauphiné Libéré: a total ball breaker with two very difficult climbs. Chloe actually volunteered (really! ask her!) to take care of kids while I rode from Grenoble to do Alpe D'Huez. It was an ambitious plan for me, as I don't ever really do any kind of long distance rides. The typical Grenoblois sandbagger cyclist will be eager to point out that it is basically flat to Bourg D'Oisans, even if it is 30 something miles ( and they themselves have either never done it or only done it once in their lives) but no matter! I was more worried about the bit at the end, of course. Unfortunately, things went wrong very early in the ride. In the first fifteen minutes, to be precise. In those first fifteen minutes, I realized that a) I had forgotten sunscreen and b) My back felt like someone had been hammer drilling it. I would be a fool to give away a rare and very generous day of babysitting though, just for a little back twinge, right? Well, by the time I go to the meeting point (ESRF), I was already in a lot of pain, and the ride up to Bourg was punctuated by my stopping and having to stretch just to regain the ability to breathe. At times the pain was very intense indeed, but like I said: babysitting! Also, this was my one chance to see a mountain stage of the Dauphiné, and I don't think I'm going to see any Tour mountain stages, so this was IT. Along the way, I discovered the key to being able to ride for more than a mile without getting doubled over in near-tears: keep the watts under 180. That is much easier said than done though, and I ended up getting passed by all manner of old, infirm and overweight rider. It was very frustrating. Eventually, we made it to bourg, where I went looking for a pharmacy for some chemical relief, but it was lunchtime, and pain can wait for lunch. We rode up to the base of the famous climb, and I told Ian to go on without me, while I paused every few hundred feet (very hard to stay under 190 watts on those first switchbacks). By the third switchback, the pain had become unbearable, and more troubling still, when the pain set in, I couldn't really breathe. so I pulled over and began stretching my back and may have made a somewhat hysterical phone call to Chloe. So I eventually made it, even though I'm sure it was not the best thing for my back. On days without pain, all the cars would make me not want to take this route though.
I settled in to a comfortable barrier, and got to talking to a french couple from Grenoble. They were staying with friends in Bourg and mentioned that during races like this, Bourg becomes a small Dutch colony. Seeing as almost every rider doing the climb before the race was Dutch, I believe it! After a long wait (I had budgeted enough time to do the climb and come halfway back down) . 
Eventually, the race came by.
Two Cervelo riders had tried to escape
but were soon caught by Contador/Astana/ et al.
I was amazed by how broken up the field was. It looks like the earlier climbs (Glandon in particular) really spread them out. They generally looked like they were suffering.
Sag Wagon!!
Painful to even watch how slow I had to go:
All in all, my Dauphiné experience was wonderful this year... even with the very disappointing day today. The obvious comparison to make is with the Tour, and in my opinion this is a much, much better race to watch. There are relatively few spectators at the DL, no epic traffic jams and the atmosphere is less frenetic. There are still plenty of cols and hard rides to slow the riders down though. Having said that, nothing really beats the pageantry, scale, and pain that the Tour inflicts on the riders: The Dauphine is "only" 6 stages and a prologue. The Tour is a bit longer!
We live right near the fountain at the center of le Fontanil. As a result, I see the strange things people do to the fountain that might otherwise go missed. I've seen kids try to drink from it (much to their parent's chagrin). I've seen all manner of trash that people have thrown into it despite the presence of a trash can three meters away. Yesterday, I noticed an older man filling a plastiuc cup from the spout as we were leaving. I thought it was odd, but it was the usual morning rush to drop off kids. After dropping ZZ off, we passed by the fountain again, and the guy now had a towel over his shoulders, a face full of shaving cream, and was SHAVING and rinsing with water from the fountain!
Today I took off early to go check out the end of the first stage of the Critérium de Dauphiné Libéré. My commute bike dropped it's chain multiple times on the ride back home, of course, which put me into a high wattage (for me) frenzy to get to the race site before the race. After getting all my stuff together, Ian and I rode up over col de la placette and down into St. Laurent du Pont.
and power
We arrived in town and were shocked and delighted to find very few people there. We sidled up to the FINISH LINE (amazing!) and watched the riders climb the last climb on the jumbotron-truck
while listening to the announcer
and eventually watched the sprint to the finish by HTC Columbia and Lampre
And then the pack (including Alberto Contador)
Next, we rode to the team car staging area to take in the sights
Lampre's awesome Wiliers+ Campy:
Cofidis:
Well over one hundred thousand dollars of bike on the Sky-mobile
(new Pinarello Dogmas with Dura ace electronic transmissions)
And Francaise des Jeux
Team Radio Shack!
And of course Cervélo
Nore Pinarello Dogmas for Caisse d'Epargne
And team Footon, with Fujis, but more importantly, the coolest team cars (Audi S6s)
Next came the ride back home. We got passed by all manner of team bus and car and all were respectful and gave us plenty of room. All, except for Quiskstep, which gave myself and other cyclists like 0.25 meters of room and almost ran people off the road. Amazingly, both their bus AND team car did this, which were separated by several minutes. Maybe their riders aren't the only ones that are coked up?
We drafted behind the Cervélo team cars on the descent from Placette, which was inexplicably very very cool. Who knows why -- it's not like they gave us a free R3SL!
