orpierre, day 3

As usual, Alex did not sleep well. Unfortunately, I had the night shift. He only got up once, however, so I was in luck. Since it was 5:30 AM, and there is not much point in trying to get a half hour of sleep, I took a few pictures of the village



After breakfast, we went to the Puy crag, which is beautiful. I had configured my new Cilogear pack, which I will review at some later date, but suffice it to say that I am very impressed thus far. I was expecting the kind of blocky limestone you find at other southern Vercors climbing areas, but the bottom of le puy tuned out to be surprisingly crimpy and technical. Here is Ian on "Le Meilleur du Pire"

and here I am, helmet camming it up


I worked the moves on the first route, but found it to be pretty difficult.

Meanwhile, the parents had taken the children to the cafe

and my mom taught Zoe how to take pictures with her camera. Here is Zoe's second ever photo:

We bought some ground beef at the local market (I politely declined the meat that had been sitting in the grinder since the morning!) and grilled up roquefort burgers for lunch. Yes, the gite even has a gas grill and patio! Next, we decided to visit Sisteron. Chloe and I must have passed it a few dozen times on our way to various crags, but never found time to stop. The Renault Espace's Nav system brought us right to the citadel, and then we all walked up to the top. We were all impressed by the fact that Kenji made it to the top, and quite quickly!









Here is the tower where the King of Poland was imprisoned


Next came a visit to an overpriced salon de thé (are they all?). We stopped at the impressive looking blades of rock across the river from the fort to check out some of the routes and then headed back to Orpierre for another excellent dinner : salad, lasagna with a bechamel sauce and more homemade cookies. Oh yes, and much more wine.

Orpierre, part 2

After picking up Ian at Aspres-sur-Buesch and picking up more goat milk for Alex (He is allergic to cow milk) at the excellent Bio Epicerie in Serres, we hit the rock. I rallied the Espace up the dirt road to Quiquillon and we were soon at the foot of the cliff.

I took the opportunity to try out the helmet cam on my new helmet

on Cauchemars de Roudoudou, before receiving a beating on a few of the new climbs on the orange rock, but c'est la vie.

Here is Chloe, enjoying her belay

After taking over baby care while the parents walked around, I showed my mom around to some of the interesting parts of the town, like this ancient fountain (with a giant iron stopper!)

Dinner was excellent again: one of the best onion tartes I have ever had, followed by chichken in a cream sauce and rice. Apple crumble for dessert.

Orpierre

We picked up the rental car last night (Our family is now too large for the civic!) -- A Renault Espace with seven seats. This afternoon, after taking care of some work things, we loaded up the "BIG CAR" (as Zoe calls it) with mostly baby things, and a few of our own. Next came the drive south to Orpierre, and the location of the Gite, which is *fantastic*. It is in a building in the center of the medieval town, next to vaulted stone arches and century old fountains. There are quite a few rooms, a big well lit dining room, and about twelve beds. The owner is very friendly, and after we had shuttled in all of our gear, we used the Jedi mind trick on Kenji and Gail to take care of kids while we ran up the hill to the Chateau crag to get in a few routes. We warmed up on C Sake Bon and then moved on to Les Ailes du Desir. There were a lot of wet holds on this one, and I actually had water dripping off of my hands several times, but I got the on sight. Yay for non-negative progress, I guess. It was a real fight, though.

Dinner was delicious: everything was organic, and included a delicious salad, a frittata and a salmon tarte.

There were also home made cookies and fromage blanc for dessert. Also: giant loaves of bread:



We had loaded up on wine from HEIDSIECK ET RASCLE in Place aux Herbes, and finished a bottle, but I can't seem to remember which one! We had an excellent Pelardon as well.

A trip to Vienne

We drove (in a maddening and round about way on Departmental roads thanks to the stupid GPS) to Vienne today. We had an excellent lunch at Les Cloitres, and then walked around for a while, checking out the church and Temple of Augustus-Livia (and a few stores too)

he he

115k euros might buy you cutting edge technology, but perhaps not reliability!

Mont St. Martin climb

time compressed into 8 mins

Zoe's new thing

is to collect snails, and then yell "MARCHEZ!" at them (WALK!)

Lunch at ciao a te

Excellent

Helmet cam, mont st Martin

I bought a helmet cam and tested it out on the ride up to Mont St. Martin. I'm still working on compressing the ascent, but here is the descent video:



I'm capturing in the 60fps mode, which is amazingly smooth and high quality. I tried mounting the camera on the handlebars, but the results were not good. The helmet works fine, but it makes you look like a tool.

The ride itself was ok. It felt a little better than normal, and the power output was decent.

Parents in Town!!

Ombleze

We drove down to Ombleze yesterday to stay at La Moulin de la Pipe, and enjoy their excellent restaurant. We met Ian and his mom there around 6 PM or so, and had a chance to walk around with the kids, scoping climbs as the clouds rolled in. Today we started off in the on s'pete la Ruche sector, warming up on Apericub. Midway up, I was savagely attacked by a mutant half sparrow-half eagle hybrid, but I stayed on and finished the climb. We also did El pachalane to the right. Both climbs are excellent. Next, it was off to the Evasion sector, which is my new favorite at Ombleze: interesting moves on absolutely fantastic orange blocky limestone. Perfection. I did l'unique and Prince a vue. Next, it was lunch time and finally on to Aqualand, which is a sandbagged, and nasty sector without much interest except for the short approach (which unfortunately involved walking through an icy cold river). I lurched up Barboton first try, but it was ugly. Shortly after we decided to stop climbing, it began raining really, really hard, and kept raining all the way back to Grenoble. On the descent from the col de Limouches, we saw some pour touring biker getting absolutely drenched.

expe

We stopped in pont-en-royans to check out expé: very nice! They seem to have everything. Even this:

Gas powered hammer drill!

Lans

Cycled up to Lans after work. It felt pretty easy after all the hell rides we have been on recently, and for once I wasn't in my biggest rear cog. As is typical of cycling in France, we passed some guy at nearly twice his speed after Engins, and the next thing we knew he was putting the hammer down to catch us and draft off of us. I'm definitely getting sick of that kind of behavior and will just have to pass with more authority next time. I don't understand what is going through their minds! I guess it's just the embarrassment of getting passed that quickly, but jeez!

Eight hundred something meters, with a very fun descent.

Note chain droppage at 75 mins. ergh.

col de porte

Cycled col de porte... felt pretty good but was almost in Bonk City by the end. We went via Clemenciere and the col de Vence, rather than Sarcenas, and then back down through Quaix. At the col, we scarfed down cola flavored gummies and compotes de pommes to recharge, and refilled our bottles with the delicious cold Chartreuse water (hopefully not trucked up from the Isére).
All told, more than 1000m of climbing, and it didn't take too long, so I'm starting to get my legs back.

les Écouges

climbing at les Ecouges with Ian. We set up the tent under the big overhang, hoping now hardmen would show up to do the 7c+ there, while we took turns with baby duty. Récup Active is fantastic, if a little runout, and Mouli Net is the best route I have climbed recently, on varied terrain, huge tufas and cracks. Oh yeah.

oh yeah

new cycling shoes!! full carbon soles! ... are awesome!

climbing at St Egreve at lunch. Gotta love living in Grenoble

Riding

cycled up to St. Nizier, through lans-en-vercors and back down the D532. An exceptional ride, but at more than 3000 vertical feet, a bit painful. All in all it was 36 miles. Yes, it's cycling heaven here!

burglary, again

Our cellar was broken into (they destroyed the door, but were unable to break the Abus lock), but the thieves did not take anything. Yes!

most painful ride ever

While perusing google maps, I found a road just West of us that goes out of Voreppe to the Monastere de Chalais. I didn't have a chance to look up the altitude gain before I left, but noticed that there were very few switchbacks: surely that meant that it was not as steep as the dreaded Mont Saint Martin, right? No. It was definitely the hardest climb I have been on here, and "relentless" does not even begin to describe it. We actually had to turn around because I needed to get back to the apartment, but shortly before the turnaround decision, I saw where the road was taking us and despaired. It went into a steep switchback which seemed almost designed to scare off bikers. We had no way of knowing that we were only a half mile or so from the end, but I don't think I could have continued in any case. If you look at the power plot, you can clearly see me struggling and bonking: boooo!


The road does not seem to dip below 11% for more than fifty feet or so.

At around 10pm that night I started eating everything in sight. Next time I will do some serious carbo loading, I think.

edit: I forget to mention that we came across this guy walking his Camel on the way:

Grenoble, Bike Trailer

We went into Grenoble today to look for clothes for Chloe and have lunch. After finding rockstar parking right next to the Place aux Herbes, we wandered around and I discovered that someone is re-issuing a classic skateboard deck design, apparently:

I stopped by my favorite ice cream place in town, near the Jardin de Ville

and then it was Jardin de Ville with Zoe for her to run up and down the play structures. While I was sitting on the bench, I discovered an amusing wifi access point

Shopping was mildly successful, with the best purchase being a new set of sunglasses for Zoe


We stopped at Routens to look for a bike helmet for Alex, and I picked up a few little things too (Mavic road cycling shoes!!!)

When we finally got home, we got down to business finally setting up the bikes and bike trailer. We bought a special infant sub-seat for Alex, which took us forever to figure out how to attach, but otherwise it was pretty straightforward. Alex's helmet unfortunately cants his head forward, which made him a little less than happy



But in the end, we cycled on nice deserted roads through wheat fields and took turns trying it out. I put the binding posts on chloe's bike and my road bike. I'm not sure if it's bad for a race frame, but I wanted it on a bike with really good brakes (and Campagnolo Chorus fit the bill).

Zoe likes my socks

Zoe on my new Mavic cycling socks: elles sont JOLIes chaussettes!

Tabac again

This afternoon I saw the Gendarmes van parked outside the Tabac. I was thinking about how nice it was for them to follow up on the burglary, but then discovered that they were just there to buy Lotto tickets.

Break in

The Tabac downstairs from us was broken into last night. I slept through both the robbery (at 1:30 AM), the alarm, AND the Gendarmes. Chloe was woken up by the alarm, but by the time she looked out the window, the owner was there with the Gendarmes. I talked to him today, and it is his fourth robbery in five years. He did say that it was much better than in the center of town, where as a Tabac owner (which are apparently favorite targets) you can expect to have your store broken into 2-3 times per year! They came in through the non-fortified owners entrance via a crowbar and stole cigarettes. He said they left all the books, noting that they were not intellectual burglars, apparently. In le Fontanil, the boulangerie, mini market and florist have all been broken into in the last several years. When I suggested that he install a surveillance camera over his doors, he told me that he would need authorization from the city hall to do that. I can understand not wanting to have France become like the UK, where CCTV cameras monitor every street corner, but I don't see why a shop owner can't point a camera AT HIS OWN DOOR! I guess there would be no use in just installing a pinhole camera himself because he wouldn't be able to show it to the Gendarmes for fear of getting fined himself. Brilliant.

After work ride

I did a quick after work ride with Ian today up the Mont Saint Martin. My legs are DEAD now. This climb is relentless: no rest and an *average* gradient of 10%.

Happy Birthday Chloe!

We went out to Ciao a Te -- a wonderful restaurant in the antique quarter of Grenoble to celebrate.

A bike commute gone wrong

Biking in the Grenoble area is generally a joy, but sometimes it is not. Profound words, I know, and maybe you disagree, but read my sad story of poor planning and almost getting crushed by trucks.

Today I had an "off site" meeting to give a talk at in St Quentin, and since the weather forecast was good, I decided to go by bike. Things being a little hectic with two kids, I did not have very much time to consult the Grenoble bike path guide, and blindly plugged the endpoints into Mappy. It came up with a very reasonable 8 mile ride, with only a little complexity at the start. Also, on my previous exploits, I had seen people biking on the opposite side of the Isere (the side closest to the Vercors), so even though it had me going on the Route Nationale, I held out hope that I would be able to stay on the bike path. This was sadly not to be. I started the trip by missing the first two turnoffs, which was no big deal since I could make a different left and I was in a comfy fully separated bike path. I found the alternate left hand turn towards the Vercors and soon found myself on a road without a bike lane. There was almost no traffic, so things were still going well for me. I was slightly disturbed by the fact that I had to cross through two busy lanes of traffic to/from the autoroute, but no biggie. There was even a short bike lane which took me over the river. Unfortunately, it dumped me out onto a dirt track with huge river stones, and I quickly found myself mountain biking with my road bike. The bumps were so jarring that my hands were cramping up and at one point they shook my chain off the chain ring and rear cog (not fun to deal with on a bike with no derailleur). Why didn't I just go onto the road? Because I was on top of a very tall dike with a concrete retaining wall (at right in the photo below)

Eventually, the retaining wall disappeared and I slid down the grassy embankment and started pedaling like mad. The problem is that there is no bike lane (see above and below)

which by itself would not be a problem, except that there were trucks and cars whizzing by at 60 mph. Eventually I gave up on the sweet tarmac, and went into cyclocross mode and started riding on the shoulder. The shoulder seems to be a convenient place for people to throw their bottles, because it lights up like a chandelier if the angle is right. I am amazed I did not get a flat tire. I should also mention that it was wet and muddy.

It will not surprise you that I was the only one to arrive by bike.

My trip home was much longer, but I found an alternate route which took me to the bike path on the other side of the river. I only had one crossing of an autoroute entrance/exit to deal with. Nice. 20 hard earned miles added to my bike odometer today.

Vespa convoy

climbing at St. Egreve: a little worn but fun.

Stealing cookies from babies

first sighting of a hipster bike in grenoble!

Huzzah! I'm breaking out my skinny black jeans and metal studded belt!

hike near Proveysieux

We hiked near Proveysieux today to try to get up to the huge limestone towers that are visible from the valley floor. It turned out to be a little too much of a hike with the babies, however. We turned around after ~1100 vertical feet. It traverses a lot, so I have no idea how long it was, but it felt like it went on forever. At this rate, I'm not sure how we will survive the 3740 vert foot approach to the Dibona this summer.