The Tour de “Pack’EmIn.” How getting a too small car can make for fun friends.

Diana and I had arrived at les Cypres de l’etang, a glorious bed and breakfast and horse riding retreat in the haut Var region. The closest town was Sillans le Cascade and there was a definite sense of being in the country. Diana was in hog heaven although she had been given a rather high-spirited horse. She seems to think that my writing her riding resume in glowing language may have resulted in her getting over-matched, but in the end, she declared it the time of her life on a horse.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to organize myself for the arrival of a bunch of folks wanting to ride bicycles and I was to get some gear for the group, a roof rack for the Renault wagon was a high priority but I simply couldn’t find one anywhere. Being France, certain things are sold in certain places and rook racks for bikes aren’t sold in bike stores but in car accessory stores. One popular French version of Auto-Zone is “Feu Vert” which means “green-light”. When I asked folks about where to get a roof rack, they kept saying go to the green light. I would do just that and the intersection would have perhaps a café or a MacDonalds and I was stumped. I figured this all out in the last few days of the trip…too late.

Sunday, July 10; happy we were in our isolation in les Cypres de l’etang, but the new people would arrive and the biking would start.

The women get in, Margaret and Mary, Al’s plane left without him because storms kept his RDU flight from leaving until very late. The three of us take a shake down ride in the Haut Var, a hilly part of Provence north of Toulon. Very scenic and popular with cyclists. It features some of the “prettiest villages of France” which is the name of a promotional association that identifies these places and markets them. They are indeed very pretty and we’re surrounded by them. Our ride is the 25 miles to Aups and back. I push the pace a bit to get the newcomers hearts started after the flight. It’s the only time I can go faster than them.

Monday, Al arrives, a bit chagrined at the vagaries of modern travel, but game for riding. We take off on an abbreviated “Historical Villages of the Var” ride: this features Entrecasteaux, a lovely little one road town with gardens and chateau associated with a grand French family. Then on to Cotignac, with its vertical cliff backdrop in browns, golds and reds with the once-inhabited caves, and cliffside houses. The on to Ponteves with its perfect hill-top fortress, found at the end of a really steep, very narrow road in the heart of the village. We roll down out of town and take our pictures framed by a lovely alee of plane trees leading up to a chateau. The ride back is on a relatively flat road Sillans le Cascade, passing sunflower fields, vineyards and the Massif Ste Baume in the southern distance. It’s 8 pm when we get back, but the light makes you think 6 or so…35 miles

Tuesday. This is the ride around the Gorges du Verdon. The plan is to start from Moustiers Ste Marie, go to the lake and then around the gorge back to where we start. We get into town in time to park in the village center and then head off for the col d’Illoire which rises up from the river valley on the southern side. This is a tough category 1 climb with big views at the top. It’s the first taste of real French climbing for the group which now features Robert, a Cat 2 rider who is able to keep the pace up on the climb. The gorge is immense and very vertical—this is one of the really, really memorable rides one can take in France; challenging and scenic. What it has on this July day are breathtaking views and heat. I drop back with a digestive problem that doesn’t get resolved until after we’re well along. We ride in fits and starts as I hold up the group but we get back in plenty of time to gather around a wide screen TV in a restaurant and watch the end of the day’s tour stage. Nothing remarkable about the Tour, Lance is going to win and that’s that. 65 miles

Wednesday. This is meant to be a rest day after the Gorge and so it is. Paul arrives later in the day and we both go out for a brief shake down ride. He’s at a B&B on the outskirts of Salernes, it features a small road that goes up into small villages or, when taken into town, a nice 15% ramp to get to the main road. We’re dining at les Cypres, which features home cooked meals, family style complete with wine tasting, olive oil sampling, multiple courses and lots of just lazy French-style eating. The wine doesn’t slow down. The dinners get more complex and bibulous, starting at 8:30 or so and finishing around 11, even later. The focus of the rides turns from performance goals to more touring attitudes, but I can see that people are mentally prepping themselves for the Mount Ventoux climb. 10 miles

Thursday. The Cote d’Azur ride; intended to be a relatively easy day along the coast between Toulon and St. Tropez. This part of the coast is quite lovely with views of a set of four islands off in the Mediterranean. We start from Gassin with Diana riding sag. She’s to meet us at the top of the climb overlooking Lavandou but we pass on the climb after many stops for pictures and a general desire to make it for lunch at a seaside restaurant. We find on that will serve us and take in nice salads, pizzas and a little wine—just a little, you know. Heat and no topless beach. The café is near Lavandou beach where we chat with a guy with a UNC tee shiort. He did his MBA at Duke but seemed to prefer the sky-blue option. We ride back via Hyeres, the town where Diana and I had stayed when we first came to the south of France 8 years ago. 35 miles minimum.

Friday. We try to leave early for Mount Ventoux, but the logistics and the preparation means that we get in the car and on the road at 11:20. Folks are anxious and want to prepare. It’s hot when we start with a ride away from Ventoux to get in a warm up, some of the group are going to time themselves from the start line in Bedoin. Bedoin is full of people getting ready to do the ride of finishing is—most are Americans; a load of them debarked from a Trek Travel bus and they managed with mixed success to get up to the top. It looked like there were a lot of folks at the café at Chalet Reynard who traded the final 5 km for a few beers. Our group did well with times like 1:26 and up.

The debriefing was that this was a hard ride, but not one that was super tough it spots; it just “kept going on”. Margaret had trouble at the first part but soon was passing me in between her breaks from the saddle. I just stuck in there and ground uphill, doing the ride in a bit longer than my two earlier trips to the barren top.

After the ride, we went on to a place I had stayed several years ago. I’d corresponded with the owners trying to rent their nice villa for this year but it was under renovation. They invited us to come along anyway for a visit and we drove the 20 minutes from Bedoin to the Mas au Portail Bleu near the little town of Aubignan. The Tattersalls were very happy to provide us with cheese, bread, sausage, beer and water and show us around their place. Their villa, complete with pool and all the modern conveniences, will be a wonderful spot to stay for folks wanting to ride the Ventoux or the hills to the west, the Dentelles, where there are good steep climbs and nice little places to visit including the wine-oriented towns of Baume de Venise, Vaqueyras, Gigondas, and Seguret. I recommend them highly www.mas-au-portail-bleu.com 37 miles.

Saturday: Transfer day. Diana gets to the airport for a flawless departure and Al and I go in search of more transportation. We rent another Renault Espace, it seems the kind of vehicle we want is simply not known by the rental people. Al, Robert and Mary are dead set on a cyclosportive in the Alps. The La Madeleine, and it will mean a five hour ride into the Alps with bike boxes and the bikes. They take off, a little later than planned but in plenty of time to get them to the Alps and get a place. Our trip over to the Pyrenees is punctuated by the last chance drop off of a DBRT kit to Leigh Smith. Too bad we didn’t get together sooner, we would have but he’d crashed in a the UFOLEP championships near Toulouse and was not in shape to cope with the crew. The drive for us is very long with a short stop to overlook Carcassone but road ennui has set in and mystical French walled towns can look a little drab after 5 hours on the road.

We get into Agnos at 11 pm after a wild, mid-stream pick up of Chris. This was theoretically from the Toulouse airport—which was complicated by his late arrival, and our being late to get to him. He ran into Geordie, an old friend from the Stephen Roche team and Geordie gave him and his bike case a ride into Lourdes where we picked him up and stuffed him and his bike into the car.

Jay had already arrived at the chateau in Agnos, but just barely. His luggage was lost and he got into Oloron in the early afternoon and then ended up walking the 1.5km into Agnos. His stuff and bike came later that night so he barely beat us into the Gites at the Chateau d’Agnos, a somewhat aging grand home, once a hunting lodge for Francois I, full of antiques and large sitting rooms. We occupied the apartments that were once the stables for the chateau. They were utilitarian, had a working phone line in my “suite” and were a haven for relatively mild mannered flies who must have had some deep insect memory of the horseshit that must still be there.

Sunday, a hard ride up the col de Soudet…which is a few kilometers shy of the Spanish border and the col de Sainte Pierre Martin. Jay and Paul go to the Spanish border an they tell themselves it was harder that Ventoux. An equally proud Frenchman says it is just so. Giordano had slipped past them when they made the left tunr into the little village, the turn that had been pointed out in the map briefing as the road not to take. But that translated into inevitable misdirection. Any way, when I arrived at the col there was Margaret and Chris. The only apparent thing to have happened was that Paul and Jay had gone down from the col. They would perhaps 45 minutes later. Chris has not noticed the road that was not to be taken into the little village. Human perception is strange, what is invisible to some is irresistible to others. 63 miles of riding.

Here’s summary of the week that follows. The gory details are covered in later sections.

Monday. A moderately timely start into Pau. The Directeur Sportif lead the three starting out of Agnos and on their way to Pau, via the reverse of the 2003 Tour route. We hang around for rest day and look to see if there are riders, there are and we do what we can to look cool.

Tuesday. Col d’Aubisque. 72 miles. See the stage over the Aubisque with Cadel Evans leading a suffering group up the climb. We get our picture taken with Lance in the lead.

Wednesday, Start day in Pau. evening ride out to Esquiule, slow with lovely views. We see all the riders, squeeze into the scrummage around the start and have a nice day. 20 miles.

Thursday. The Tourmalet, start at 1130 and do it in the heat of the day. Tough day for me on the bike, drop my chain just after St Marie Campan and struggle up by myself. Return to Lourdes by 6 pm. Long hard day. 64 miles

Saturday. A Bonus Cyclosportive. Riding le Defi Pyrenéen and getting the mayor to give me his jersey.

The col d’Aubisque:

Climb summary:

Distance units: 72 miles (120 Km or thereabouts, my computer battery died so…I don’t know). The climb up to the Aubisque pass is listed as 17 kilometers but it seemed shorter.

Climbing units: 3 happy ascents; the first up to Eaux Bonnes where a refreshing Orangina awaited me at the local boulangerie; then up to the ski station at Gourette where I took on two big bottle of water; then the final 4 kms to the summit. Well, I didn’t take the two big bottles all the way, Robert McConville felt sorry for me and carried my back pack up the final three kilometers. But I was good, I promise you.

Pain units: 0.5; for some reason, after Ventoux, the Illoire and Soudet, (the big climbs of the last week) the Aubisque seemed quite reasonable. Maybe it was the thousand or so cyclists I passed, the growing crowd, the anticipation, the nice weather, the two croissants, the chain wax—whatever it was, I had a good ride up the last col the Tour would climb in the Pyrenees in 2005.

The ride took us from Agnos along the main road up (or down southward) to Spain. The Pyrenees stared straight at us as we moved up the valley of the Ossau river. We took the “back way” avoiding the ride over the col de Marie Blanque, which stopped a few people in their tracks. We took a little road from Lurbe Sainte Christau over to Arudy and the Tour route. This little back road has many pleasant winding turns and a few hills and would be a great ride in itself as it wiggled through a French national forest, but our minds were on the Aubisque and the passing of the peloton in the high Pyrenees.

We were joined at our place the night before by a small group from Butterfield and Robinson, a cycling tour company that does it in style, going from one high end hotels or chateau to the next pampering their clients with good food and sag wagons to make sure they didn’t lack for water or snacks on their rides. The trouble was, today’s ride was along the Tour route and it was hard to cater for the people who were used to being catered too. We managed the ride (both cols) and dinner before they struggled back in.

Our group is made up of actual racing riders, all have US Cycling licenses and have done at least some degree of high level suffering. This was apparent when Mary rode the La Madeleine cyclosportive the Sunday before and won her division and Robert stayed with the lead group up the Madeleine in the same ride. He got a taste of the European racing culture with neutral wheel cars and motorcycles that led and followed his group and gave out water bottles to those who needed them in the 95 degree heat. He finished in the top 20, not bad for a ride over one of the classic climbs of the Tour.

But that was two days ago; today we were all resplendent in Doughnut Boy uniforms taking on one of the Pyreneean “geants.” I was worried a bit about some of the crew, they had eaten a full Basque dinner the night before: blood sausage, duck confit, fish, wine, and more wine—leaving the restaurant at an early midnight. Not your usual training meal. But the excess of the dinner didn’t figure in the day’s ride.

For those of you who have never gotten up early in the morning , then ridden 25 miles to the bottom of a mountain, then 10 miles up its side to see a bicycle race, this is hard to believe—but, there were easily 100,000 people lining the route on the mountain at altitudes above 5,000 feet with only bicycles to get them to their viewing spot or camper vans that would be stuck there for another two days or they just flat out walked up. It’s amazing to see this transhumance (look it up) and make sense of it. But it happens every summer in the Alps and Pyrenees as the Tour de France makes its way around the Hexagon of France.

We climbed up the Aubisque more or less as a group; I stayed in front of Al and Margaret (for the first time this week) while Jay and Paul went ahead, challenging the locals as they pressed up the climb. We got past the Devil (the guy you see on teevee jumping up and down in his red devil suit with the trident who had turned his moderate mental condition into a career). The devil was no where to be seen, so we pulled up the last three kilometers to the pass and found an ideal spot to watch the climbers as they came up. We were 300 meters from the summit, on a grassy overhang that looked right down on the narrow road. We could see them coming from a distance and then could go up one level as they passed just over our heads. We had gotten sandwiches and enough water to last the three hour wait and were happy to just roll around in the soft grass and the sun. The grass got too soft in places as some of the group realized that the normal inhabitants of the col d’Aubisque were cows.

We traded stories of this or that buff-looking guy we’d passed on our way up or how some skinny guy in a Euskatel jersey had sprinted all the way, or how silly the Trek Travel group looked in their matching drab gear and bikes and why can’t they just get out of the way on the road. Then this guy comes up the hill doing a wheelie—riding on the back wheel alone, and he does it all the way from a kilometer down the hill to the top. Jay remarked that the sight made him feel a little more humble about his own skills.

There were a thousand better riders than any of us and many thousand who were worse. I concentrated on the latter, but the numerical estimate of those worse than me shrank and shrank as a group of elderly blood donors (that’s what their jerseys said—don du sang) came by riding their borrowed down-tube shifter Peugeot bikes and chatting gaily as they effortlessly floated up the mountain

The arrival of the caravan is not abrupt, it sort of dribbles up the hill with some few vehicles selling things (I bought an ice cream cone) then some official cars, then the cacophony of the caravan of floats and decorated cars that make up this unique parade. When you’ve climbed up a steep road to the top of an otherwise deserted mountain, all the stuff in this sideshow is funny. When the flat bed truck with the dancing girls come by, it’s not lascivious, its just hilarious. When some bored woman throws a key chain at you and you dive into the stinging nettle to retrieve it, it all makes sense. In a word, we were Tour-struck.

The helicopters presage the arrival of the tour, they hover in the distance barely making linear progress as the bicycle rides negotiate the many twists and turns up the mountain. Then the leader comes by, in his Lotto jersey. It’s a solo break up the mountain and there’s obviously been some intense suffering in the group as they made their way up. The whole peloton was split up and we got to see ones and twos of riders as they passed. They passed within inches of us as we stood by the road, abandoning the perch on the cliff to get really close.

The only really compact and controlled group was that of the Yellow Jersey and Lance was leading at this spot. This made it a good day for the photographers and gave us a good look at his calm face. He was a big contrast to many of the other riders who were finding 16 miles per hour a bit much up the 10 percent rise in the final 500 meters.

The riders kept coming by in bits and pieces. Some looking calm, others really strung out. Thomas Voeckler, the French rider who, last year, surprised everyone with his gutsy ride, came up really late and when someone from the crowd yelled at him, he would turned and say something. Odd behavior. He was way behind.

No big celebs were in obvious attendance, the race was a peoples’ event and we were happy to be where we were.

My wife has asked me to not describe the descent back to Laruns, but I can say that people pay big money for the kind of thrill and apparent danger I flung myself into. In my case the oncoming cars and swerving camper vans and wandering walkers were all too real. But we all managed to avoid each other and we made it back in time for an early (8:45 pm) dinner. My cod was delicious, served in a soup bowl with potatoes and nice things; others were yum-yum-ing at their salmon or lamb shanks or geziers (my goodness, these look like gizzards!). The owner of the restaurant cum Pelote fronton (really!) managed to put some candles in an Ile Flottante for Margaret’s birthday and then cut out the lights for dramatic effect and we all sang the Happy Birthday song and sank deeper into the banquette finishing our Jurancon sec.

Good night all. Into Pau tomorrow for the stage start.

How to start a bicycle race:

First you take over a moderate sized city and shut down all its main thoroughfares. Then you construct a small city within the city made up of tents and little fenced off areas. Then you invite huge trucks to come in and set up television studios. Then you have 180 bicycle racers come in huge busses and lots of gaily colored cars. Then you bring in a while lot of snappy new bicycles that everyone wants to touch and photograph. Then you ask everyone in town to come and try to squeeze into an area that gets crowded when a couple hundred people congregate. The you start playing up-tempo music over loudspeakers. The you get an energetic Frenchman to start announcing the names and riding histories of everyone (all 170 or so) of the racers and several guests and past champions. Then you get everyone excited to see the big champion in his yellow jersey by hiding him in a nearby bus, then roll him to the start line at the last minute and then…they all leave for the next town to do it all again.

A Tour start is an athletic, snake-oil, campground, hallelujah-hollering festival. The locals get excited, the traveling fans get excited, the host town mayor and town council gets excited, the radio and Teevee announcers get excited—but the teams look bored. Nevertheless, they have to get excited because they’re going to ride 5 hours in the hot sun.

The people who didn’t get excited were the four motorcycle guys who were having coffee next to me on the terrace of the Palais Beaumont overlooking the hoopla below. Those guys have to weave in and out of crowds, avoid running down the bike racers, navigate through all the traffic calming things that the French have installed on their roads, and carry some lunatic photographer hell-bent on just THE shot. What a life. They all were hefty blokes with handlebar mustaches and leather riding pants and they smoked the French way, which was with a vague disdain for the habit, never putting down their cigarette.

The Doughnut Boy group got into Pau just as the pre-race hoopla was ramping up. The teams were all there and the introductions for the “signatures” was 30 minutes away. The small square just outside the Palais Beaumont in Pau was packed. The start village was filling up with “invitees” and the various Tour operatives were milling about. We had come up from the river bank to the Boulevard Pyrenees and pressed into the crowd.

The game at a Tour start is to get into the inner circle where the teams are and then, if you’re really good, into the start village (Village Départ). Half our crowd got into the teams areas and got to finger the bicycles and talk to the riders. Chris asked Bjarne Riis is he could ride in the team car. Riis looked at him quizzically and said “No!”, mentally asking himself if the security had completely fallen apart. Jay was snapping pictures of bikes and riders. Iban Mayo was chatting with his friends and Chris joined in the conversation. Chris has the look of a pro cyclist, almost gaunt and relatively short so he gets the attention of people who wonder who he rides for. A slightly drunk fellow had asked for his autograph the day before as we rode into Pau for the rest day. He gave it to him.

I had brought my bike so I could get around the perimeter easily and found the back way into the Palais Beaumont. This new “convention center” served as press headquarters and the place where several of the medical and support services were headquartered. There’s nothing more boring that watching people pre-write stories in a room full of computers, so I wandered out to the restaurant terrace and remained there drinking juice and coffee for the duration. The others in the group moved from place to place checking out the confusion and chaos, pressing closer to the ideal photo spot at the start line. That’s where you can actually get a picture of all the riders as they stay still and have looks on their faces that do not suggest they are in extremis. We got really good pictures of Floyd Landis yucking it up with his buddies and Bobby Julich wandering into the start line.

Lance gets special treatment. He comes for the sign it to much applause and crowd compression towards the barriers then retreats back to the Discovery bus which is given a privileged position close to the sign-in. He won’t reappear until just before the “Départ Fictif” which is the roll out of the center of town. That’s not the start of the racing, but a parade through whatever place has paid for the privilege of starting the stage. The real racing gets underway 15 minutes later in the suburbs of Pau at the “Départ Réel”.

Jay is positioned perfectly for pictures of the arrival of lance and his usual very brief teevee interview, but, his battery gives out right at that moment so he’s got pictures of everyone but Lance.

The race gets gone and the stage ends up being a corker. We watch the corker in a bar in Arudy, a very nice village in the foothills of the Pyrénées. We had to check out several places before finding a bar which showed the Tour. There are millions of people who strangely don’t care about bicycle racing. Must be the Swedes on holiday.

T-t-t-tourmalet=terror

The plan was for the group to get over to Lourdes fairly early and then do a loop that goes from Lourdes to Bagnerres de Bigorre, then up the valley of the Adour River to Sainte Marie de-Campan and then make the right hand turn to go up the climb to the col de Tourmalet. That would be followed by a thrilling descent into Luz Saint Saveur, a sharp right down the Gorges de Luz into Argeles Gazost, a hop over to the flat bike trail and then into Lourdes then watch the final part of the Tour stage.

The starting from the chateau got delayed as usual, the need for coffee the arranging of bikes, the getting together of bits and pieces made it so we got away after 9 am. That meant our departure from Lourdes would be after 11 and that meant the heat of the day. While the heat in France isn’t like the hot southern summer North Carolina is experiencing, it does mean direct, hard sunshine that heats up anything it strikes. It melts the road tar when the air temperature is only 90 F. It fries the brain if you’re up at altitude and we were going to be at altitude--up to 2115 meters.

I picked a parking lot on the edge of the river that runs through the center of Lourdes—the Gave de Pau—knowing that it had a public rest room and was occupied through the day with the busses and cars of the pilgrims to the grotto. Not a likely place for a break in, so we could keep things in the vehicles. What the folks didn’t know was that the little lady sitting at the door was charging for the use of the facilities and it wasn’t long before Jay came over with a slightly urgent look on his face asking for 20 euro cents. His impeccable sense of pre-ride timing was interrupted by the toilet tariff. Al was a bit more forceful and managed to take his repose on credit. He came over looking for spare change with a slightly more relaxed look on his face.

The route would take us clockwise from Lourdes over to Bagnerre de Bigorre, then up the valley to St. Marie de-Campan, then a right turn onto the climb over the Tourmalet, then down to Luz Saint Saveur, then down the valley of the Luz back to Lourdes. Just outside of Lourdes we first had to go over a road that as being paved in the ship-and-seal fashion. That meant we rode through 500 meters of fresh tar and small bits of sharp gravel. It wasn’t long after we rolled back onto smooth road that the inevitable flat happened. That was the second and last flat of the whole trip over pretty rough roads. The rides covered more than 4,000 cumulative miles for the group, not bad service.

There’s a testing climb on the way over to Bagneres and it told me that the day wasn’t going to go well for me, I was well behind the others and even though I caught up and went through Bagneres, Beaudean and Campan with the group, I knew I was in for a long, hard struggle. I didn’t know how long and hard.

As we came into Sainte Marie de-Campan I shifted into my 30-tooth ring, or tried to, and dropped my chain, the others rode off and that would be the last glance I got of them until the summit. When you’re facing a big climb and you’re rolling, you don’t want to give up any altitude gained and we had been climbing steadily for 12 kilometers up 2- then 3-, the 4-percent grade just to get to the big climb.

The Tourmalet is the highest pass the Tour de France crosses in the Pyrénées and it is feared and respected by the pros. Now I know why. The start of the climb is benign enough. No jump-up a ramp out of a town like the Aubisque, no surprising turn into switchbacks like Ventoux, no “15%” sign in the first kilometer like Soudet, just a nice gradual rising of the road as you pass a gas station and some skiers hostels. Then we get a “Gripp” on things as the road passes through a place of that very same name. After Gripp there is a sharp left then right and both feature grades well above 10%. Then it sets in, kilometer after kilometer of averages above 9%. Slog, slog slog. The good thing is that I am not constantly passed by people. In fact, there’s two guys ahead of me and I can pass them—one day. I gain foot by foot on the two who are obviously overgeared (ah, the macho instinct). The pass, when it takes place, is a languid affair, that is, it is slow and conversational. “Bon Jour” say I, “bon jour” says the first guy. We ride together for maybe five minutes until my wheel gets past his and then the next five minutes gets me even with the other guy, “Bon jour” again, then silence for another five minutes as I inch past.

“Wow! I’m ahead.” For some reason this makes me feel better and I get away from them by quite a bit, actually pedaling with some degree of alacrity. Then there’s la Mongie in sight, way, way up there. I just put my head down and try not to count pedal strokes. I’ve already made the calculation that I’ve got 7,000 revolutions to go. The last bit up to la Mongie is brutal. You’ve likely seen it on teevee. Armstrong being led by Heras, Pantani grimacing as he entered the snow shelter tunnel, Ullrich trying to keep the pace up as Armstrong lags a bit only to jump back on his wheel. That tunnel you see on the television shots would put me in the saving shade, but it’s on the left side of the road and there’s two-way traffic right now and I have to stay in the really wide part of the road inching up to the ski station.

The pitch in this part gets to 18% if you take the best route. If you wander around on the big paved road that doubles as parking lot, you can hit 20% in spots. In the endless mental conversation I’m having with myself, I take solace in the fact that we agreed more or less to take a break in la Mongie before the final 5 km. But there’s no sign of the crew! I want to stop badly, but if they didn’t stop then I can’t. My mind starts wandering; what else is happening? My phone rings. Goddam cell phones. I think it might be the rest of the group telling me that they’ve spotted me and that I am to turn this way or that. I fumble with it still grinding up the hill. It’s in a little plastic bag and I can’t get it open with one hand. So, I tear it open with my teeth, take a deep breath and get a nice plastic snack. I manage to fumble to the “last call” button and the other end answers. “Hey, I love the earrings you got me!” sings out my wife. Arrrgh, I pant that I can’t talk and that I’ll call and stuff the phone back in my jersey pocket, no plastic bag. I hope it corrodes to dust.

Then the mind games begin. “Oh no!” I think, she’s calling because it’s her birthday and I forgot. “Oh God, I’ve got to call. I’ve got to stop and call. I’ve got to stop pedaling, I’ve got to get shade.” This is not so easy. I’ve passed la Mongie and there’s nothing but sheep-bitten grass, a beautiful view and a cruel road snaking up to the pass, way up there in the distance. I spot a big camper on the right and it has enough shade on the downhill side to tempt me. I lurch into the shade and unclip and pant for a while then call back. The return call number is busy. “Did she call from her car?” I call that number but it gives me the beep and I leave a message: “I’m so sorry I didn’t call earlier, I’m climbing the Tourmalet and I planned to call you from the top. Happy, happy birthday.” To be sure, I call her office and get her voice mail there and leave the same message. “Oh god I’m going to get it,” it’s the third time I’ve been on a bike in France on her birthday and forgotten to call.

The thin air had gotten to me. Guilt drove me up the hill. The last three kms are just brutal, 10-11% up open switch backs with the col constantly in mocking, tempting sight--surrounded by busses and cars and day walkers and lots of people and … where am I?

Then the two guys I passed pass me. My mental anguish had slowed me as my mind worked harder than my legs. “This will not happen” said I to myself and then picked up the pace and blew past them (over the course of perhaps two full minutes). They couldn’t hang with a guilt-ridden husband and I made it to the top in another 15 minutes, lurched over to the others who were gaily calling out to me things like “bravo” and “good job;” but it all sounded like “you filthy skunk, you forgot your wife’s birthday.”

I acknowledged their shouts with a pitiful wave then lurched into the bar at the mountain top restaurant and ordered a coke and some water. “I’ll fortify myself before I call,” I muttered to myself, or thought I muttered to myself, because the barkeep asked “comment?” “Rien, rien” I certainly am rien, nothing.

I downed the fluids quickly. Then went out into the sun where the folks were sitting and made a bit of conversation before I took out the phone to call my wife Yes, there’s cell service at the top of the Tourmalet.

I got her to answer at the office number, feeling certain that this was way too late to call “Happy birthday” I blurted. “I bet it will be” she said, “tomorrow’s going to be great, my mother’s coming over and taking me to dinner.”

Tomorrow? What day is this?

The guilt unburdened, I relaxed a bit and the group talked about how cruel this ride was. Then took each others’ pictures under the col du Tourmalet sign and then headed down. Fast, bumpy, with lots of cars and busses, but downhill. We stopped at the Champion super market in Luz. A couple from Washington DC we talked to at the top suggested it as a rendezvous spot and they joined us on the descent. He was a very fast downhill person, she was the climber. They were going to be happy together in life.

We got back as planned but 2 hours later than anticipated. No matter, we’d done the Tourmalet and gotten in a good 65 miles doing it.

Le Dernier Parcours

We planned out a ride of 40 or so mile miles from Oloron to Navarrenx and back by the little road on the edge of Basque country. On the way out, I missed the turn to get across the river so we took the main road to Navarrenx, a fast highway with medium traffic, but it let us air out a bit at 23 mph on smooth road. We got to Navarrenx, a walled town on the pilgrim’s path to Campostella and had a brief stop at a café. The waitress was a nice person who catered to our strange café whims, ordering at the bar and then taking a table outside, a minor no-no in France, but tolerated for sweaty cyclists.

The ride back was a very scenic affair. This featured a beautiful, car-free descent on a back road, a ride past some lovely little tourist hotels and many farms, a turn to the left and then a 3 km climb up to Barcus. The reward is a final panoramic view of the high Pyrénées and then a mostly downhill ride into Oloron The only problem was that Al missed the turn. The three strong riders had gone ahead on a hill up to the last left to Oloron and I went through the corner too far for Al to see me and he took the long way home via Maleon. I shouted back as he passed, turned around to chase him and saw that he had just gone down a rather steep incline and was out of sight. I chose not to chase and turned back on the D24 toward Barcus and ground up the climb to get the view of the Pyrénées and then mostly downhill back to Oloron and Agnos. This was a nice 50 miles, 60 for Al who wasn’t especially amused at getting dropped in the middle of France, but he figured it was his final test for cycling boot camp. He passed.

The departure from the Chateau d’Agnos was not without its little problems, a missed flight for an arriving spouse, then relay driving to Toulouse for Chris. Muddled schedules and awkward bike boxes, but all seemed to get done. Jay and I did breakfast at the Chateau the next morning and were regaled by the owners with tales of how the building was a hunting lodge for a friend of Francoise I and that it had a hidden tunnel no one has found and that it was a great thing for Desmond the husband of the couple to keep up. Then the question: “you wouldn’t know anyone wanting to buy a French chalet would you?” Heather was serious. So, if you’re interested in a working B&B with 12 bedrooms and a three apartment gite for 1.2 million euros. I’ll give you the number.

Oh, the Tour de France. Yes, nice exciting stager finishes. The teevee people have been trying to make it all exciting, but Lance is in and its just the fight for minor prestige from here on out. “What will happen after Lance?” asks l’Equipe. The final day is for les dauphins—the successors to the king says the paper.

Yes there’s food in France

But sometimes it’s a bit different…even strange. This became apparent right from the start when Margaret and I stopped for a lunch in Sillans. She inquired as to what “Gambas” might be and I explained that they were large shrimp versus “crevettes” which would be small, usually, really small. She ordered and was a bit taken aback when the Gambas came arranged brilliantly on the plate with their inquiring beady eyes staring from their intact heads. The flambé treatment didn’t help the unnerved would-be diner; the whole affair took on the quality of a grisly immolation `a la Joan of Arc. But the shrimp, when ordered in France will all have their heads on, big or small. One even more interesting seafood dish that comes complete is scallops, or coquille Saint Jacques (often shorted just to Saint Jacques). They come with the body of the scallop attached to the adductor muscle, the latter being the part we eat in the US. This makes scallops a bit more of a meal when you get just 6, since the body of the bivalve is usually larger than the muscle. Anyway, scallops (noix de St. Jacques) is what I had tonight at a newish 3-star hotel in les Baux, back in Provence. That was the starter, the main dish was rougets, little red fish, in a nice sauce accompanied by haricot verts (green beans—but nicer than what I get out of the can; they’re in season right now so there’s a lot of them added to almost any meal)

But back to cycling…

All but one of the surviving DBRT cycle tour crew remained. Jay stayed on in Agnos after everyone else had left because he wanted to do a cyclosportive. On Sarturday after breakfast in the Chateau with Desmond and Heather, the proprietors, we went the 40 miles over to Bagnerre de Bigorre to take part in the “le Defi Pyrénéen” cyclosportive. There were two rides on offer, a “master’s” and a “cyclosportive.” Jay opted for the 104 mile “master’s” version that took him over the col d’Aspin and the Horquette-de-something or other; while I did the 115 km (75 mile) version that avoided those two cat-1 climbs and rewarded me with the very steep but short pas de Payolle.

Doing a cyclosportive is not quite like doing the “Blood , Sweat And Gears” in the mountains of NC although the latter is just as hard or harder. A cyclosportive in France is an event of some proportion and, in Bagnerre de Bigorre it’s big enough to attract sponsorship from many local businesses and even the mayor come to ride.

We registered on Saturday and had no trouble, just hand over 30 euros and tell them what size tee-shirt you want (ell? Ou, eeks ell?). They had rather ugly “le Defi Pyreneen” cycling jerseys for sale, but they were only 10 euros each, so we both bought one. We got energy powder, magazines, and other little bits of stuff in our bags along with the timing chips that went around our ankles and would record our start and finish times

The next day after a rather noisy night in the hotel, and after Jay had started the long ride at 7:30 a.m, I wandered around the town a bit before lining up at the start in the parking lot of the Bagnerre Casino hard by the hot springs that is the feature of the town. I recognized the mayor because he gave a short speech prior to the start of the other ride and he was constantly shaking hands with folks around him. By chance I had lined up next to him. I conjured up some of my best “sounds like French but may be Welsh” conversation, and tried to point out that I had come a long way to visit his town and ride in this fine “manifestation.” Shaking off the surprise, hizzoner, Roland Castells, was downright welcoming and went on about how many Canadians and Americans and foreigners in general came to Bagnerre. It had been a start place for the Tour and is often on the route, so he was used to crazy Americans. He noticed my Doughnut Boy jersey and inquired as to exactly what kind of patisserie it might be featuring. He had tentatively guessed at patisserie. Despite the careful detail on the figure on the front of the jersey, it could be chocolate covered squid rings for all anyone knew.

I explained that the “beignet au chocolat” was sort of a “blague” – a joke – and he immediately understood; I was clearly in the joke category as far as riders went. But he continued to be friendly and give me lots of advice about how to ride the course, which he described as “dangerous.” I said that I enjoyed danger and he then offered me the shirt off his back. Actually, he said that since I had come a long way, after the ride we could exchange jerseys.

Soon enough the conversation ended and we were off. A cyclosportive has lead riders on motorcycles, cars with flashing lights and road closures to the degree that the locals can manage that. It was all very exciting looping through the streets of Bagnerre at 20 mph on a bike ,rushing past the folks trying to set up their antique market or early shoppers headed to get groceries for the day.

However, the mayor’s power reached only to the city limits and outside the city the traffic was not held back. The peloton of 400 or so for my ride alternatively filled both lanes of the single road out of town then squeezed into one lane when oncoming traffic dared to express their automotive rights. This all was happening as we ramped the pace up to 25 mph-plus. Hairy.

The left off the main road 10 km down got us to a quieter part of the area and the group began to split up as we took on a 3 km hill. I felt good and was able to cut my losses to where I dropped back to a third group that stayed in sight of the leaders.

We were headed back to Lourdes on the reverse of the route the DBRT group had taken to get to the Tourmalet, so I had some sense of the scale of the climbs and that I could use some of my gravity advantage at times. We passed through the outskirts of Lourdes and then headed up the valley of the Luz on the opposite side from where we’d gone three days earlier. In the rolling hills along the way, I managed to stick with the third group and was rewarded with a sharp left turn onto a 15%, 100 meter climb up to Boo—yes, that’s the name of the place. These little ramps moved me from one group to the following and then I’d try like mad to catch on to some pacelines to get back up. That worked a little until we hit the climb to Juncalas and since that went on for a few kilometers, I slipped back to where I belonged, middle of the group.

The descents were, as the mayor warned, dangerous. My rear tire lost traction twice in sharp descending turns, but I stayed up. There were several crashes but none serious and I stayed upright the whole time, but just.

Jay’s group followed the same course but went through it earlier and then they headed out to the big climbs that go the other way from the Tourmalet. For cyclists, this area is just a funhouse of pain. Our group started up the col-d’Aspin but took a sharp turn onto a tiny road to Payolle. This started as a 15-17% ramp but then moderated and stayed at 4-6% for the 6 km it took to get to the top. We were warned that there would be no “ravitaillement au vol” meaning handing up bottles to riders as they passed by and it was apparent why. The first feed stop was in a tight corner and the second, at the top of the Payolle, was in the middle of a donkey and cow rest area; the road was once paved but now lived up to the sign that said that “la route est en maivais etat”--that the organizers had set up as we got to the top of the hill. I passed up the first drink stand but stopped at the second, where they also noted your bib number to make sure you did the whole course.

The descent was thrillingly terrible; the “mauvais etat” (bad state) of the road continued and I took caution getting down. Then the little road switched back to a main road and it was downhill all the way to the finish. Wow, was it downhill, I caught on to some of the long-ride riders who were passing me and held on, then caught my breath and used my gravity edge and we got to speeds of 55-60 kph as we headed down to Campan and the Valley where Bigorre was. We managed a good group of 10 or so with three of us working at the front and this got me into the finish at 3:50, well under the time limit for a “gold” diploma for the race. I found later that I’d finished 218 out of 345, 43^rd of 83 in my age class.

When I go through the finish, gave up my electronic timing chip and got through the mess of the welcome, I thought of the mayor’s threat and prepared to find him. I saw Jay across the way, he had finished in 5:06 for the long ride and was also a “gold” diplomate (He was 61^st of 282 and fifth in his class). We decided to ride our bikes back to the car and then drive back to the finish where they would be serving food and hopefully giving out these diplomas. We went back to where we were parked near the Casino, changed in the hotel where we stayed the night before (the Glysines, meaning wisteria—not recommended) and rode back to the finish area. Jay was dead set on getting his repas and I was dead set on finding the mayor. I had an extra Doughnut Boy jersey in the back of the car so I grabbed that and set out to wander looking for the chief magistrate. Just then the announcer began a loud and fawning encomium to the arriving mayor, who had just rolled into the finish area. I spotted him and went over with the jersey. He was being interviewed by a reported for Cycling magazine and after a decent wait on my part I jumped in and offered up the glazed pastry shirt in all it’s purple grandeur. The mayor remembered his pledge and there and then stripped off his jersey, number attached, and gave it to me. The reporter got out his camera and clicked away. I kept my shirt on.

Jay was happily downing his two-course meal plus dessert ( a nice apple tart) and thought about trying to swap his DBRT jersey, but there was no other likely elected official in attendance (that we could tell). Jay had done well, staying in the second group, which had its own motorcycle escort for a while, and finished well up among the 300 or so who took part in that ride.

Unfortunately, the timing people were having some trouble getting the diplomas done up so we left without them. I needed to get to Marseille and Jay was to stay in Pau for a day prior to getting an early flight out of that town. If I’d stuck around a bit, I might have run into the Mayor who was looking for me to give me a “Medaille d’Honneur” of the town. He missed me, though, but I got the very handsome medal in the mail a week later with a nice note from Monsieur Castells. I think we’ve got to go back to Bagnerre and ride the Tourmalet again—or maybe the col d’Aspin.

For the record, I watched Lance win his 7^th TdF while sitting in a vibrating chair in a truck rest stop outside of Toulouse—it was the only unoccupied chair in the TV room. Unforgettable.