What a day. We are now in a rest day in a very nice new chalet about 2,000' above Lake Geneva with a panoramic view of the lake and the mountains. Gwen will provide the professional picture details. We have had time to clean up the bikes, oil the chains, perform some fine tuning and prepare for tomorrow. The weather is gorgeous, temperatures in high 60's here in the mountains, skies blue, near full moon last night, we are in a ski resort that is pretty much vacant this time of year. Chance to get some work done and recap yesterday's trip.
Yesterday was wonderful. Coming from the Tacoma area we are blessed with mountains, which I hadn't seen much of until the last two days. Because weather prevented us from riding much two days ago I was chomping at the bit and well rested by yesterday. Our goal was the 117 mile stretch to Morzine, mostly level with generally downward slope until the last 30 miles when we would hit two very major Class 1 Climbs. We were looking forward to seeing what a Class 1 felt like since we had missed the two Class 2 climbs in Stage 7. Well....things started going downhill (literally) from the start. I discovered just before breakfast that my Garmin had not turned off during the night and was on low battery. I put it on charger and was concerned it would not get us through the day. So far, it had performed almost magically, we travelled through Belgium and France following the magenta line on the map screen, the little triangle representing "us" moving right along. Anytime we veered off track, we knew it within a few hundred feet, sometimes, sooner, and could either adjust back to the route quickly or u-turn and go back to the route. With all the unmarked roads we encountered, the Garmin was our lifeline guiding us along the tour. When we started our ride the magenta line was nowhere to be seen. I thought maybe the low battery was affecting the size of the magenta line (learned later it did not), so we followed the highway that had the brightest colors and which we knew was the start of the Stage. Somewhere about 10 miles down the road, we should have turned left, heading southeast towards Geneva. I had my head down looking at the Garmin - we were going downhill at about 25 miles per hour and enjoying the ride - and we then had another 10 miles of exhilarating downhill with hairpin turns, swooping turns and no uphill. But.....we found ourselves at the bottom in St. Claude, the start of the big climb for Stage 7!! Oh, dear. We had no choice but to turn around and do the major Class 2 climb part of Stage 7 and incorporte it into our Stage 8. We soldiered up, losing about one hour in the process, found where we had goofed, I whacked myself, we congratulated ourselves for having completed a Class 2 climb, and we then continued on to Stage 8.
The countryside was gorgeous, with lots of ups and downs through foothills, one very long Class 4 climb up and over a large hill and then a long swing down of about 20 miles through a mountain valley, complete with all the charming French Alps chalets one could hope for. After one more Class 4 climb, we headed east and into Annemasse, our potential meet up point with Gwen before heading towards the Class 1 climbs into Morzine. We arrived in Annemasse, just east of Geneva, about 3:30, traffic was horrendous, and we got very much stuck in the afternoon commute. Nobody seemed to be holding the highways open for us. Hmmm....And, Gwen was stuck in the middle of Geneva in commuter traffic moving along like a snail. It was obvious that it was just too late to tackle the last 30 miles of the Stage. We had come 85 miles, and by the time we finally met up with Gwen we had ridden another 8 miles around town looking for directions after the "low battery" warning on the Garmin finally ended with a blank screen. You might as well have tied a blind around our eyes. At one point I had to bring out my trustiest tool - my compass (I never go anywhere without a real, genuine boy scout compass) to help direct us. Had our Garmin been working we would have reached our meet up point in 15 minutes. Instead, it took us two hours to get there. It was 5:30 and the Stage Route was packed with commuter cars heading home. Continuing on was out of the question so we headed up North to Lake Geneva and our Serenite Chalet overlooking the lake. We stopped in Evian for dinner, almost all restaurants were shut down, but we found a charming little restaurant specializing in Crepes. We had a lovely dinner, including a citrus to die for crepe for dessert, and then had to rely on our car Garmin to find our way in the dark along very secondary roads up to Thollon and our lodge. We arrived after 10pm to what looked like a full moon, and could see the lights of the lake below. We were looking forward to a day of rest.
While we didn't get to tackle a Class 1 climb yesterday, my goof allowed us to make our first Class 2 climb. It was long, it took some time, but it was quite doable. My shift to a 13-29 rear cassette from the 12-25 was a stroke of good luck and good research. The 27 and 29 rear cogs made the long steep grades very bearable, with the major effort being pedalling higher rpms with very little effort being expended. Any lower gearing would have involved very tired legs. I actually felt rested when we reached the top of the climb. Had we not made this "detour" we still would have gotten caught in Annemasse traffic an hour earlier, our meetup with Gwen would have occurred much later, and we would have completed the day with no major climbs under our belt. As my buddy Candide would say, "All things happen for the best." Tomorrow we have a potentially long hard day from Morzine to St. Jean de Maurienne that is 138 miles and has a Class 5, then a Class 5, then two Class 1 and a Class 2 climb, all in the first 60 miles. That will be the major effort of the day. Should we make it that far, there is a very long downhill and then a very, very long climb that is "unclassified", which means steep, steep, steep. I doubt we will have enough time to complete that climb, given the various time constraints we seem to face every day.
The good news is that Roy and I are both well rested at this point, yesterday's 92 mile ride now seems like a joyous walk in the park. We are well reminded of how those head winds the first day really kick the energy out of you. You feel you should still be able to maintain some speed in the flatter portions of the ride, but you are just constantly having to pedal with force all day long. It really gets to you, and we we were both feeling quite tired after the first four days. We are, fortunately, past that.
Difficulties with the car Garmin and it's battery linkage have been frustrating Gwen's abilities to navigate strange roads in a strange land. The maps aren't as useful as we would have hoped, due to lake of signage, so we are all really dependent on the two Garmins. We have made some corrections during this rest day, and I am hoping that navigation will go more smoothly during the next week as we travel through the mountains of France.
What a day. What a trip.
Yesterday was wonderful. Coming from the Tacoma area we are blessed with mountains, which I hadn't seen much of until the last two days. Because weather prevented us from riding much two days ago I was chomping at the bit and well rested by yesterday. Our goal was the 117 mile stretch to Morzine, mostly level with generally downward slope until the last 30 miles when we would hit two very major Class 1 Climbs. We were looking forward to seeing what a Class 1 felt like since we had missed the two Class 2 climbs in Stage 7. Well....things started going downhill (literally) from the start. I discovered just before breakfast that my Garmin had not turned off during the night and was on low battery. I put it on charger and was concerned it would not get us through the day. So far, it had performed almost magically, we travelled through Belgium and France following the magenta line on the map screen, the little triangle representing "us" moving right along. Anytime we veered off track, we knew it within a few hundred feet, sometimes, sooner, and could either adjust back to the route quickly or u-turn and go back to the route. With all the unmarked roads we encountered, the Garmin was our lifeline guiding us along the tour. When we started our ride the magenta line was nowhere to be seen. I thought maybe the low battery was affecting the size of the magenta line (learned later it did not), so we followed the highway that had the brightest colors and which we knew was the start of the Stage. Somewhere about 10 miles down the road, we should have turned left, heading southeast towards Geneva. I had my head down looking at the Garmin - we were going downhill at about 25 miles per hour and enjoying the ride - and we then had another 10 miles of exhilarating downhill with hairpin turns, swooping turns and no uphill. But.....we found ourselves at the bottom in St. Claude, the start of the big climb for Stage 7!! Oh, dear. We had no choice but to turn around and do the major Class 2 climb part of Stage 7 and incorporte it into our Stage 8. We soldiered up, losing about one hour in the process, found where we had goofed, I whacked myself, we congratulated ourselves for having completed a Class 2 climb, and we then continued on to Stage 8.
The countryside was gorgeous, with lots of ups and downs through foothills, one very long Class 4 climb up and over a large hill and then a long swing down of about 20 miles through a mountain valley, complete with all the charming French Alps chalets one could hope for. After one more Class 4 climb, we headed east and into Annemasse, our potential meet up point with Gwen before heading towards the Class 1 climbs into Morzine. We arrived in Annemasse, just east of Geneva, about 3:30, traffic was horrendous, and we got very much stuck in the afternoon commute. Nobody seemed to be holding the highways open for us. Hmmm....And, Gwen was stuck in the middle of Geneva in commuter traffic moving along like a snail. It was obvious that it was just too late to tackle the last 30 miles of the Stage. We had come 85 miles, and by the time we finally met up with Gwen we had ridden another 8 miles around town looking for directions after the "low battery" warning on the Garmin finally ended with a blank screen. You might as well have tied a blind around our eyes. At one point I had to bring out my trustiest tool - my compass (I never go anywhere without a real, genuine boy scout compass) to help direct us. Had our Garmin been working we would have reached our meet up point in 15 minutes. Instead, it took us two hours to get there. It was 5:30 and the Stage Route was packed with commuter cars heading home. Continuing on was out of the question so we headed up North to Lake Geneva and our Serenite Chalet overlooking the lake. We stopped in Evian for dinner, almost all restaurants were shut down, but we found a charming little restaurant specializing in Crepes. We had a lovely dinner, including a citrus to die for crepe for dessert, and then had to rely on our car Garmin to find our way in the dark along very secondary roads up to Thollon and our lodge. We arrived after 10pm to what looked like a full moon, and could see the lights of the lake below. We were looking forward to a day of rest.
While we didn't get to tackle a Class 1 climb yesterday, my goof allowed us to make our first Class 2 climb. It was long, it took some time, but it was quite doable. My shift to a 13-29 rear cassette from the 12-25 was a stroke of good luck and good research. The 27 and 29 rear cogs made the long steep grades very bearable, with the major effort being pedalling higher rpms with very little effort being expended. Any lower gearing would have involved very tired legs. I actually felt rested when we reached the top of the climb. Had we not made this "detour" we still would have gotten caught in Annemasse traffic an hour earlier, our meetup with Gwen would have occurred much later, and we would have completed the day with no major climbs under our belt. As my buddy Candide would say, "All things happen for the best." Tomorrow we have a potentially long hard day from Morzine to St. Jean de Maurienne that is 138 miles and has a Class 5, then a Class 5, then two Class 1 and a Class 2 climb, all in the first 60 miles. That will be the major effort of the day. Should we make it that far, there is a very long downhill and then a very, very long climb that is "unclassified", which means steep, steep, steep. I doubt we will have enough time to complete that climb, given the various time constraints we seem to face every day.
The good news is that Roy and I are both well rested at this point, yesterday's 92 mile ride now seems like a joyous walk in the park. We are well reminded of how those head winds the first day really kick the energy out of you. You feel you should still be able to maintain some speed in the flatter portions of the ride, but you are just constantly having to pedal with force all day long. It really gets to you, and we we were both feeling quite tired after the first four days. We are, fortunately, past that.
Difficulties with the car Garmin and it's battery linkage have been frustrating Gwen's abilities to navigate strange roads in a strange land. The maps aren't as useful as we would have hoped, due to lake of signage, so we are all really dependent on the two Garmins. We have made some corrections during this rest day, and I am hoping that navigation will go more smoothly during the next week as we travel through the mountains of France.
What a day. What a trip.
No comments:
Post a Comment