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%.