Lost

In contrast to most of the cast of the allegorical TV show, I guess you could say we’ve “found” ourselves--we’ve gotten in tune with our inner cyclist here in the mecca of the French Alps.  It would be equally true to say that we’re mostly lost.  Well, not “mostly,” but “daily” would be an accurate enough adjective.

Is it the nature of French roads and signage? Is it our bike-brained inattention to detail?   Is it our guides’ willingness to wing it with the route maps?


These factors may be at work but none of them are adequate to describe our condition. They just don't stand up to close inspection.  French roads do sometimes follow medieval logic and sometimes the numbering system changes unpredictably, but the roads generally have signs pointing to nearby towns at every intersection, and surely they do nothing we don't see regularly in Atlanta.  The Boyz are astute, techno-savvy, travel veterans, and many of us study maps diligently and carry iPhones and Garmins and have a sixth sense about direction.  It couldn't be us.  Our guides LIVE in Europe, for pete’s sake, and speak 5 languages and travel these areas every year and have Tom-Toms in their vans.  And yet, we keep coming to intersections and being thoroughly stumped!  Do we turn left or go straight?

We ARE doing better than last year, as we haven’t been lost for more than 45 minutes in France.  We wandered for about 1:15 hrs. last year in Interlochen, Switzerland.  Guide Mike typically goes ahead and marks intersections with chalk arrows, which works well 1) if he knows the way and 2) now that his arrows are more consistent.  His early arrow attempts were described by one cyclist as “flailing octopi.”

In order to make sense of all this, I’m playing with the hypothesis that a certain amount of “lostness” is key to the zen of cycling.  If every climb is exactly the steepness and length described, and every route map is pre-determined with turns properly located, and every town is arrived at on the hour planned, cycling tends to repetitiveness and predictability, and then it feels less wild and free.  It’s the possibility of lostness that gives us the space to feel our freedom and to practice our self-reliance. 

If this hypothesis fails, I'm left with falling back on the old yin/yang argument:  how will a cyclist know the joy of found-ness if there is no lost-ness?

The Ride of the Flat Tire

Today was a very hard day.  11,300 ft. of climbing, 81 miles, and we’re all beat.  The itinerary was adlibbed this morning since the Galibier is closed.  It seems like most peaks over 2200 m. are still closed due to snow.  Instead we climbed the Col du Glandon, Col de Creux de Fer and Col de la Madeleine.  They were all long with plenty of steeps.

The signature moment came when Markham got off his bike 2/3 of the way up la Croix de Fer to check his flat tire.  He was convinced it was flat.  Except it wasn't flat--it was its normal round hard 100 lb. pressure.  That pretty much describes the day--the mountains saw to it that we rode flat tires for 40 miles.

We left L'Bourg d'Oisans at 9 AM and headed up the valley, then turned off the main road and began the Col de Glandon climb.  It was a picture-perfect day and, yes, the little towns crowding the road the frequent mountain vistas were all postcard-worthy, but we've come to expect it.  Just another day in the French Alps.... .  The descents continue to be fast, technical and exhilarating, and they go on for so long that backs, shoulders and wrists can tighten up.  Our final descent was 25k, lasting over 45 minutes (with a couple stops to regroup and stretch muscles).

At the end, we were exhausted.  We loaded the bikes on the vans and drove the last 40k to our hotel in Bourg-St.-Maurice.  

We got to our hotel at 7:30 PM, to a restaurant at 8:45 PM, and had a repeat of our Le Candie restaurant service experience.  At 11 PM we asked for the check, leaving without the price-fixe menu desserts we had coming—we just wanted to get back to the hotel and into bed.  Tomorrow’s itinerary calls for much the same as today’s, but we’re going to adjust it at breakfast in the morning.  Rain is predicted for one thing; but the main thing is that our legs are fried after Thursday’s race and today’s long, long climbs and we’re ready for an easier day.

Day 5 Plan

May 29, Le Bourg d’Oisans to Bourg-St-Maurice (200 km, 3299 m)

Col du Lautaret, Col du Galibier, Col de l’Isearn

Your ride today is as beautiful as it is hard. The scenery is stunning on top of Galibier, the vast views, the

clear mountain lakes, the smell of pine forests and the laidback atmosphere in the mountain villages give

you reason to slow down and soak it all in. From the Col du Telegraphe you descend into the Arch valley,

where Hannibal might have traveled through in the year 218 BC.

Now you get a bit of almost flat before your 33 km climb up Iseran begins in Lanslebourg. However, only

400 m will be climbed over the first 19 km (with the exeption f a short stretch), but after Bonneval sur Arc the

real climb starts and you concer 900 m over 13 km, some of it will hurt, usually the last 2,5 km with its 8-

11%.

Maybe you can beat our 1h 52 min record….

That was the plan--but actually we didn't do any of this.  The day's signature climb, Col du Galibier, is not yet open as the top is still clogged by snow, so Howie, Rich and Nel caucused and ad-libbed a new route.  While we were flattered by the fact someone thought we could actually ride 200 km and climb 3300 m on the day after Race Day (which, on the ground experience has taught us, usually amounts to 20% more climbing due to the ups and downs of the "flat" sections of the rides), none of us really thought we'd do the full route.  We're good at changing plans on the fly, responding to leg and heart conditions.

We did not get cheated by the revised route.  We climbed the following 2 major profiles, which belie the steepness of many shorter sections on these climbs.

  

After the Race

We hung around the top of L’Alpe d’Huez long enough to swap stories, refuel and buy a souvenir or two.  The town of Alpe d’Huez is surprisingly uncharming, a ski town sprawled across a barren slope, very un-French in its lack of planning and mish-mash of shops, condos and parking lots.  After a while, we coasted back down to hairpin 6, then turned and took a one-lane road through a few buildings crowded hard against the edge of the mountain and then winding down the mountainside with stunning views out over the valley.  We’d cycle 200 yds, stop for photos, cycle another 200 yds.  Eventually we unstruck our awe enough to make our way back to L’Boug-de-Oisans for lunch.  

It was noon and we had cycled only 25 miles, but the racing up L’Alpe (1100 m. vert) had whupped several of us—me, for sure—and I was thinking of lunch, beer, a nap and an easy afternoon at the hotel.  Some of my boyz were leaning the same way.  The discussion at lunch turned to a road Charles had seen carved into the edge of a mountain above our hotel, and another road twisting down the other side of the same mountain.  Charles had studied a map of the area the night before and, while this wasn’t a regular cycling route, it looked like a cool adventure and the two roads were connected by a dotted line at the top of the mountain.  The beer took hold and after an hour, we decided to forego naps and check out the road.

 

It was, of course, single-lane, cut into the rock, longer and steeper than we had thought, and included 3 tunnels, 2 of them curved and pitch black since you couldn’t see the other end.  It was also so stunningly beautiful that we hardly noticed we were, in essence, climbing Alpe d'Huez a second time both in steepness and length.  At the end of the road, high on the mountain, we arrived at a small hamlet named Notre Dame-du-Something, with a small café that said “Biere.”  There was also a sign pointing up a narrow lane that struck out across the rolling top of the mountain, apparently to another hamlet.  A sign at the lane said “Obstructed,” and this was, presumably, the dashed line of the map.  

While we had a biere, we asked the cafe woman for details.  She told Nel that the lane was gravel, it was 4 km to the next town, it was rolling and would add another 100 m. vertical, mostly guys on mountain bikes crossed it but occasionally a road bike would come through.  It was impassable by car.  Meanwhile, the sky had clouded over, the wind was gusting and it was clearly raining in the direction the lane headed.  I was tired, really tired, and ready to head back down the way we had come up, but once again my more courageous comrades--excited by the unknown--prevailed and we set out across the moor-like mountain top.  

It was exactly as advertised except for the vert. meters, which we estimated as closer to 200 than 100.  The first km was hard-packed and fairly easy to navigate on skinny tires.  Then it got more interesting.  Small glaciers encroached on the lane in 2 locations, releasing rivulets of water across our path.  Shale scree was scattered over the surface, puddles and muddy patches dotted the way, a sheer bank dropped from the lane’s edge and the clouds began to spit light rain.  And it was absolutely beautiful, one of the most exhilarating and top-of-the-world experiences we could imagine on a road bike!  We managed to ride the lane for the most part, walking a place or two where loose shale made balance impossible, and ultimately we came to a hard-packed gravel road that led to a paved road and down the other side of the mountain, just as the map had predicted. Amazingly, at the very top where the loose shale met the hard-packed gravel, was parked an old pickup truck and a solitary man with a hoe was working in a garden plot—all by himself on top of the mountain.

The descent was as exhilarating as the climb and crossing, with smooth pavement and the tightest hairpins we had ever ridden, and only 2 cars seen in 10 km.  We sailed over a bridge and up a short grade to a main road where we stopped to regroup, huge smiles on our faces.  "THAT was QUALITY!!!" enthused Rich, and we all laughed, filled with the thrill of an adventure that went right.

We arrived back at our hotel with our cyclometers showing 50 mi. and 2200 m. of climbing for the day—all of which seemed impossibly inadequate to describe what we all agreed was the greatest cycling day of our lives.

Haute Cuisine and the Cyclist

The restaurant at Le Candie, our chateau in Chambery, is among the finest in Chambery, and our tour guides took advantage of this fact by arranging for us to have dinner there on Tuesday night.  It featured traditional French haute cuisine with 2 entrée options for the menu du jour—rabbit et al, and a fish (dorado) et al.  After a beer on the gracious patio, we moved inside for dinner at 7:45 PM and began with a tiny twisted glass cup, featuring the chef’s espresso bisque as an appetizer, and a single roll, without butter, carefully placed on our plate by the waiter. About a half hour later, our second course arrived, which was a shot glass-sized portion of quail egg in broth and a small tumbler of a custard.  Some of our group opted for 3 pieces of white asparagus topped by a thin piece of salty fish instead.  We finished this course in 3 minutes, and about 15 min. later the waiter, sensing our restlessness, came back to offer us another roll.  At approximately 9:15 PM, the entrée arrived (see picture of dorado--it's the dark strips alongside the two cheese raviolis).  At 10:00 PM, Rich discovered a basket of bread in the adjacent room, and we commissioned 19 year-old Nick to deliver it to us.  He received severe looks from some native French diners in the room.  Perhaps hastened by the purloined bread, the waiter delivered course no. 4, the fromage selection, at 10:15 PM, and at 10:30 PM a number of us gave up on course no. 5, dessert, and retired, our appetites tempered but not satisfied, to our rooms.  We heard later that dessert was tiny but excellent.  The price was 80 euros/person, which included 3 half-glasses of wine matched to each main course.

 

Apart from providing a quintessential  French experience and a favorite talking point for the next couple days, we find the main value of the meal was to impress on us the misfit between cycling and haute cuisine.  Cyclists want food, lots of food, in a hurry.  Healthy, well-prepared food is even better.  Then we go to bed.  Now, as we travel through France, we put a premium on beer, pizza, salad, frites and 10 euro plat du jours from cafes and brasseries, food that arrives fast and reloads the tank fully.  

Official Race Finish Results

1. Nick Enthoven      1:00:44
2. Markham Smith    1:01:37
3. Jack Honderd        1:02:58
4. Howie Rosen        1:03:38
5. Rick McConnell    1:05:10
6. Rich Enthoven      1:05:20
7. Charles Brewer     1:09:37
8. Todd Rich             1:12:00
9. Chris Meyer          1:30:40

Race Day!

L’Alpe d’Huez has beautiful scenery from it’s open-sided switchbacks over the grand Romanche River valley.  It has a famous ski resort at the top.  None of that seems to matter to cyclists though, because for them it is first and foremost the greatest cycling race course in the world.  Everyone knows their personal time up L’Alpe, as well as Lance’s time (38:01) and Marco Pantani’s time (37:25).  It's also the site of Lance's famous "The Look"--a 'catch me if you can' stare back at Jan Ulrich in 2001. 

We are not immune to this particular cycling fever so it came as no surprise that the Ride Commish declared our climb up L’Alpe “Race Day.”  This means that a bunch of old farts, and one 19 yr. old kid,  would redline their hearts and scorch their legs—just like any Le Tour rider—for the 15 km of 8, 9 and 10% slopes.  We lined up at the official start line, which includes permanent timing equipment, and Nel gave us a “GO!”  Each of the famous 21 hairpins has a monument announcing its number and other pertinent data, with hairpin no. 21 at the bottom progressing to no. 1 near the top, and we churned our way up the mountain cursing the slow count of the hairpins.  The short version is that Nick, the kid, surged ahead at the start and maintained his lead all the way up to the top, challenged only by Markham near the end.  Nick finished in 1 hr., 44 seconds, and Markham came in at 1:01:31.  I followed Markham across the line at 1:02:58 to ensure 2 of the 3 podium spots for Team Atlanta, aka The Swiss Cows.  It wasn’t quite the podium sweep of last year for the Atlantans, but still a respectable showing for old guys.

Detail:  Nel recorded our official time at the “Tourist Top,” which is 1 km below the Le Tour Top.  So add 5 min. to our times to compare!