Next Ride, South Tyrol! Giro delle Dolomiti!

On Monday, a national holiday, I did some last minute work on Voyage Voyage to get ready for this summer's main event -- a trip to Europe that starts with the Giro delle Dolomiti (with MOB and his friends from Bremen).  The predicted highlight will be my third opportunity to crest the iconic, epic, spectacular Stelvio Pass, elev 2757 meters, by bicycle, after Transalp 2009 and 2011.

My bar tape was showing its age, and since I will be riding out of Bolzano, Italy, and I remember how snazzy the local heroes looked when I last passed through the vicinity, and now have a white saddle on the bike, some fresh white bar tape seemed in order.

I still have much packing to do, but am already feeling as if I am half way in Italy!

Peace Race 2012 - News From Positivo Espresso London Chapter

If watching Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy got you into a nostalgic mood about the Cold War ... get read for more memories of another era.  This news just in from David Jacob of the Positivo Espresso London Chapter:


___________________________________________


Friends and Bikies, 

On the 4th May I am taking my Dad to Germany to ride the 200km from Leipzig to Berlin. We are joining the 'Peace Race Tribute' ride. The peace race was, in the USSR era, the Eastern bloc equivalent of the Tour de France.

Two riders, Alan Buttler and Geoff Wiles, are riding the entire 2200km route of the 1955 Peace Race to raise money for Diabetes UK. 

Alan is organising the ride as a tribute to his father, Alf, who died of diabetes. Alf was manager and mechanic for many British teams in cycle races over 25 years. His first race with the British team was the 1955 Peace Race. The picture attached below shows Alf (far left) next to my Dad in 1960 on the Tour of Tunisia. My Dad also rode the Peace Race in 1962. 

You can read more here:    http://www.pbw2012.cc/ 

If you would like to support this very worthwhile cause please donate here: https://www.justgiving.com/peacerace 

many thanks, 

David J.

Alf Buttler, far left, and Alan Jacob, next to him in the cool sunglasses.  At the 1960 Tour of Tunisia

Alan Jacob, rated by former British Champion David Bedwell as one of the two most "dangerous men" to face in a sprint.  It is great that we will again have Positivo Espresso riders involved in epic events on two continents during the first week in May.  Stay tuned.

Scene of the Crime

Over the past few days, if I've wished it once, I've wished a hundred times that I had gone back and taken a photo of the site where I went off the bike last Thursday morning in Fresnay-sur-Sarthe. 

Did I just get distracted and tired, fall asleep at the switch for a minute, or was it really a treacherous site?

Today, I thought I would try to pinpoint the spot using Google Maps and, surprise, surprise, there is actually a "street view" photo of the very site.

The obstacle that I hit felt like a "low curb" stretching out directly into the street for some unknown reason ... and it was. 

You can see it just past the pedestrian walkway, after the "Renault Agence LaLouette" storefront and before the Funeraires (grave tombs) shop on the right hand side.  There really is no warning, a sudden end to a lane (which is really a series of parking spaces -- marked only by the yellow line that was not visible at night), an odd sharp protrusion that is difficult to see even in daylight.  I really did go over it, blow out both tires, go sliding onto the lighter stone area past the crosswalk that marked the right edge of the street ... and beyond that, to come to rest at one of the set of marble gravestones.  How appropriate a resting place!

View Larger Map

Of course, fatigue and darkness had a role in this, but at least I can stop wondering if I imagined it.

Paris to Brest to Fresnay-sur-Sarthe -- Lessons from the "Metric Millenium" Ride

As reported earlier, I did not quite make it back to Paris and so DNF'ed from Paris Brest Paris 2011, as I tried to ride over a curb in the darkness of night and then smash my handlebars into some marble stone at the roadside in the town of Fresnay-sur-Sarthe, almost 1040 km into the event.  But I did get to take in almost all of the PBP experience, and wanted to pass along a few thoughts for anyone who might want to try it with me in 2015.  I don't have time to do a proper attempt at an MOB-esque blog post, and I did not take many photos, but at least this should give some ideas.

Actually, I'm not sure many photos are necessary, if you use your imagination.  The landscape looked pretty much like this:

To this "basic template" photograph of a French field you can add (1) corn, (2) cows, (3) sheep, (4) horses or (5) various grains.  Imagine well-fed, healthy looking farm animals, constantly eating the grasses.  Also, there were some forested areas -- just expand the trees in the distance.  To the sky, you can modify the clouds, either make them much darker, lower and more ominous (most of the time), or add more blue and make the clouds small, white and puffy (for a few hours on Wednesday).  Also, you can add some huge wind power generators at a few places, the ones closest to the route after Carhaix, looming out of the mist on the outbound leg and with flashing red warning lights visible even in the near complete darkness on the return trip.

Sometimes, even often, it felt as if the landscape was more like this (riding from right side to left side of the picture):

There were some completely flat sections, but for the most part it was up or down, 1, 2 or 3%.  And there were lots and lots and lots of little 4-5% rollers that went on for less than a kilometer, and also some shorter 6-8% hills.  The section between Villaines-la-Juhel (221km) and Fougeres (310km) seemed elevated a bit -- always up on a ridge with the fields slipping away to both sides, which made it a bit scary during the intense lightning storm that I experienced there on the outbound leg -- though not as scary as the even-more-intense lightning storm later that evening between Fougeres and Tinteniac (364 km). The section between Loudeac (449 km) and Saint-Nicolas-du-Pelem (493 km) also had lots of hills and elevated sections on back country roads with poorer surfaces.  And there was one "mountain" of 350m elevation between Carhaix-Plouguer (525 km) and Brest (618 km), which felt like a long, long climb and was pretty impressive in the storms and mist on the outbound leg, less imposing or impressive in the dry dark on the return leg.

The last night I saw incredible stars -- the milky way, the big and little dipper, cassiopeia, etc. -- though I could not rest for long to enjoy them.

The locals along the route were great in many places -- with tables set up in front of their houses offering water or other drinks, or even food.  At first I thought they might be selling these items, like the restaurants I saw in some of the first control towns, but in fact they were just trying to help out.  Some kids had strips of paper they were handing out -- I did not stop, but later learned that they were handing out their name/address and wanted riders to send them postcards from foreign lands.  In some places, such a commitment was the price of water or coffee.  Some people had mattresses where riders could rest.  But there were long stretches, in the rain and at night, where there were no locals along the road.  And being in the last start group also doubtless meant fewer people along the roadside on the outbound leg.

Kojima-san, of the Japan team, who I rode with at various times.

There were lots of choices for start times -- 5PM Sunday mass start with 80 hour time limit, 6PM Sunday mass start with 90 hour time limit (though the last group from this start time did not actually cross the line until closer to 8PM, I heard, and so spent hours waiting), a 9PM-10PM "free" start with 90 hour time limit, and a 5AM Monday start with 84 hour limit (the "quatre-vingt-quatre heure" group).  I chose the 5AM Monday start on the theory that I could use another night of sleep to get over jet lag, and based on the organizer's promotional materials which suggested much less crowded experience at the control points, and noted that this group had the highest percentage of finishers in 2007.

The 84ers waiting for the 5AM Monday start.

The line grows longer -- but Monday 5AM was still the smallest of the single road bike start groups.

The point about fewer crowds in the controls for riders with my start time was definitely true.  But I am pretty sure what happened in 2007 is that there was awful weather for the earlier starters, and the weather got better before the 84 hour riders passed through.  This time, the 84 hour group had awful weather for the first 36 hours, while I talked with someone who did the 80 hour start at 5PM Sunday and who made it through the entire event (in under 70 hours) without any rain at all.  And I think I would have done better if I could have ridden Sunday night and all day Monday, then rested at Carhaix-Plouguer (525 km).  Even though I was always on track for a sub-80 hour time, I felt really pressed by the intermediate time cut-offs, which required me to get to the Brest control (618 km) in 38 hrs 51 minutes, but left 45 hrs and 9 mins for the (612 km) return trip. 

The Loudeac sleeping accommodations.

The temperature was almost perfect for cycling -- cool enough so as not to sap your energy or require massive extra liquid intake, but not so cold as to cause you to get chilled, at least when it was dry.  The rain became a big problem.  I always assume that I will just put on a light rain jacket, but that the rest of my body will get wet, and that has worked fine for me on most rides, including plenty of Brevets and this summer's Etape stage from Issoire to St. Flour.  But it is not easy to ride wet for several days.  Even with a change of bib shorts at Loudeac, my spare pair got wet within an hour or two of riding.  Even with enough chamois cream for 3 days+ of riding, I was chafing badly and needed to "ration" the application of cream on the return route so as not to run out.  And my palms were getting raw from riding with wet gloves for far too long, though I alternated among 3 pairs, two of which were soaking wet by the end of the first day.

Both ankles and my left knee started to ache within the first 200 km.  I raised my seat a little at the next control stop and that helped for awhile, but then both ankles and both knees started to ache.  I really should not have climbed Mt. Fuji one week before this event.

My palms, chafed groin and an aching lower back also gave me various minor problems along the way. ... but everything felt better by the time I had passed Tinteniac (867 km) and Fougeres (921 km) on the return trip, and I realized that yes, I could make it.  My leg muscles never let me down.

If I were to do it again (and I very well may) in 2015:

• I would put in a lot more thought in planning the ride, thinking about where and when to sleep, setting time goals, etc.  If I could I would try to ride to Carhaix (525 km) before sleeping, so as to get a large "savings" balance and be well ahead of the clock even when starting off on the next leg.  I would think hard about how to get in and out of the controls more quickly, since these can take a lot of time to get the food, etc.
• I would arrive on site 2 days earlier, to really resolve jet lag before the start.
• I would choose one of the 90-hour start time, probably the "free" start from 9 to 10 PM.  Even though this would mean more crowds in the controls, and even though I should be able to ride this easily in under 80 hours (and goodness knows, it does not get easier by spending more time on the bike), I think it would be worth it to get the extra leeway in my schedule for sleep.  And I think it is probably more consistent with getting to Carhaix before sleeping -- though it would require getting a long nap the day of the start.
• I would carry larger water bottles.  I no longer have my 1 liter bottle, and need a replacement, or to use a hydration pack.  During the longer, daylight, dry sections, I ran low or out of water, or needed to ration it.  
• Likewise, I would bring more energy bars for my saddle bag and drop bag.  It is nice that they have "real food" in cafeterias at the controls, but the lack of convenience stores means you are otherwise stuck, especially at night.  I really could have used those bars that we brought, and did not need, on Transalp.
• I would use a larger saddle/rear bag.  I tried to put all my heavy items in my rear bag, to keep my small pack light.  But let's face it, it would be better to ride with no pack.  And you really do want to take more gear on this ride than a shorter Brevet, even with the ability to access re-supplies via a drop bag at Loudeac (449 km and 782 km), and even with summer weather (or something that approximates it).
• I would either get a dynamo front light (built into my hub) to avoid the need to change batteries, or just stock up on lithium AAA instead of alkaline AAA batteries, since those apparently last several times longer than alkaline batteries or Ni-Mh rechargeables and sustain their full output much longer.  I was rationing batteries and so did not have both my front lights on at times, and was limiting my headlamp to checking directions, etc.  
• On the other hand, the small lithium polymer "brick" battery/charger I brought for use with my Garmin GPS worked very well.  I did not keep the Garmin on for the full ride, but I could use it when alone and at night with no problem, and replenished the charge twice from the "brick" and once from the wall outlet in the Tinteniac dorrmitory where I slept.
• I would bring at least a two-week supply of chamois cream, so there is no need to ration this either.
• I would do it with some friends instead of alone, or at least try to do some Brevets in the U.S. between now and 2015 so that if I stay with the U.S. randonneurs, I will know more of the participants from before the event.  Yes, I met a few somewhat oddball randonneur types at PBP -- people who have done PBP many times, never use a car, look as if they got a bit too much sun while on the bicycle over the years and have difficulty thinking or putting together a sentence in a conversation with a human being, ride incredibly retro equipment just to make things difficult (but who am I to call others eccentric?) -- but most of the participants were very normal, friendly types and would make good cycling buddies.
• The vibration from the road surface was painful at a few points, including one of the last stretches that I rode.  I went with my bombproof wheels (32/36 spokes, open pro rims) and regular 700/23 Schwalbe tires.  These did fine, but I think I would try a set up with slightly fatter tires, and lower tire pressures (at least when riding these sections) if I did it again, to try to make these stretches less painful.  The Schwalbe Ultremo ZX are great, but they do not quite give the "cadillac ride" that I get from these wheels with Vittoria Open Pro CX's. (My two outside fingers on the right hand still have some numbness 4 days after the event ... not atypical for this kind of really long event).

All in all, PBP is well worth doing, and it is a part of cycling history that I wanted to join -- and I may very well want to join again.  But I think they are right to hold it only once in 4 years.

PBP - next time need stronger handlebars

Well, after a dry start I got to the 140km checkpoint with a 30kph average moving speed (including some ups and downs), ...  the pace then slowed a lot. From late morning we had rain and some incredible thunderstorms, complete with drenching downpours and lightning strikes too close for comfort, the remainder of the first day and overnight into the second morning.  The storms and lingering jet lag set me way back, so I took a first sleep break at Tinteniac for 3 hours instead of going to Loudeac or beyond ...  I somehow went from having 5 hours already "in the bank" and the prospect of more, to a constant game of catch-up to meet the deadlines at each control point.

There were lots of high and low points (figuratively and literally) along the way, but for now, here is the result:  I made it through the 1009 km control point at Villaines-la-Juhel but not to Mortagne-au-Perche at 1090 km.
About 30 km into the leg, at 2am in the dark, zipping through the town of Frenay-Sur-Sarthe, I hit a low curb (that looked like another lane of the street, not a curb, to me) and went down on my right side, hearing the hiss of exploding tires and then the hard clatter and a bang as my bars slammed into some kind of marble, solid memorial stone.  The carbon handlebars gave way to marble.

Anyway, just some minor road rash and bruises, I think, but no way to continue on.

Paris-Brest-Paris 2011 Day -1 and Day 0

Jerome -- old school, as he visits the Relais de Voisins, my temporary base.

I arrived Friday evening at St. Quentin-en-Yvelines, the “start suburb” for Paris-Brest-Paris.  I’m staying in a hotel about 3 km South of the start/finish area in Voisins-le-Bretonneux, another similar town.  This is a very nice, prosperous looking and highly “planned” area of the Paris region, with lots of greenways, bike lanes, well-marked cross walks, and a mix of low rise multifamily and detached single family housing.  The gardens are neatly kept.  There are flower pots hanging from the street lamp poles.  It is the kind of place that wants so badly to stay clean that they give away the plastic bags for dog walkers to gather their dog’s shit from little dispensers on the street corners.

Voisins-le-Bretonneux

Doggy bags

So far, I’m very happy with the hotel I reserved through the American travel agent (Des Peres Travel) that has dominant market share among the U.S. randonneurs, and also happens to arrange hotels for a large group of the Audax Kanagawa riders.   

The hotel is on a quiet tree-lined street, has nice grounds, basic rooms and is reasonably priced.  There are maybe 50 U.S. riders staying here and a few others (a Taiwanese group was here yesterday, but most seem to have just been stopping by).  At least 3 others here selected the 5AM Monday start, as did I, instead of the more popular Sunday afternoon and evening start times.

Jerome was stopping by his father’s house Friday night/Saturday on the way back from his week in Pau and the Pyrenees (with Stephen Coady).  On Saturday morning, he borrowed an ancient bike with a lugged steel frame (maybe MOB is familiar with the manufacturer – France-Loire Cycles, of St. Etienne?) from his father’s neighbor and came over to my hotel from Gif-sur-Yvettes, his home town.  We took a nice spin, saw where my son stayed with the family of a friend of Jerome in 2009 in Chevreuse, and I now have visited the house where Jerome grew up and his father still lives.  It is a nice area, lots of green, plenty of up and down for cyclists – including a short but steep hill at Chateaufort – and easy access to Paris by RER train.

The street in front of my hotel.

Today, I took another morning spin, riding around and then through Versailles, just to the East of here.

North Entrance of Versailles gardens

Photo op in front of Marie Antoinette's play-peasant village

This afternoon, after a big plate of pasta, I and others who start tomorrow morning cheered the riders who had starts between 4 and 6 PM.  I wore my Audax Japan jersey and waved the Tohoku charity fundraising bandanna that I got yesterday at registration.  Many waved back.  Now I get one more night of sleep, get up very early for a 5AM start, and ride 1230 km.

Bookends

I started my trip with a day alone in a largish European city (Munich) with no plans except to relax, recover from jet lag and look around, before MOB would join me and we would head for Sonthofen and the start of Transalp.

I finished the trip with a day alone in another largish European city (Lyon) with no plans except to relax, recover from Sunday's event and look around a bit -- time to kill before a flight out to Frankfurt the next morning and on to Tokyo. 

I would be on the same flight, but 24 hours later than those other remarkable athletes returning back to Tokyo -- the "nadeshiko" Japan national women's football (soccer) team, fresh from their World Championship victory in Frankfurt.  Okay, okay, the use of "other" in that last sentence was a bit over the top.  Still, I had a great trip, and I cannot wait for Paris-Brest-Paris!

Etape Race Preparation - Compare and Contrast A Day with Jerome and a Day with a Tour Operator

The morning after Bastille Day, Jerome, Didier and I headed for Clermont-Ferrand and the Auvergne region, site of many small, extinct volcanoes, and also of Act II of Etape du Tour, the stage from Issoire to St. Flour.

We had today, Friday, and tomorrow, Saturday, to prepare for Act II.  I wanted to enjoy Friday with Jerome and Didier and then rest on Saturday with my tour operator's group, get two good nights' sleep and be ready for a big day on Sunday.

On the way into Clermont-Ferrand, we drove right past the exit for the hotel where my tour group was staying and instead went straight to the center of town to pick up their friend Isabel at the train station. Isabel is a longtime French resident of Japan, temporarily living with her sister in a town near Avignon, post-Fukushima.

Isabel at the start village's Michelin exhibit, where Didier got new tires and tubes.
Michelin is headquartered in Clermont-Ferrand.
We saw lots of Michelin men in the region, some much larger than this.

Next we headed to Issoire, registered, ate some sandwiches, and enjoyed the atmosphere of the start village exhibitions. Didier got a new rear cassette (adding a few extra teeth) and some Michelin tires. If Clermont-Ferrand was lacking in character, Issoire looked like a very nice, large and relaxed town in the countryside.

Registration Friday highly recommended - not crowded, and a very relaxed mood.

Produits du terroir.  We skipped the sausages, but enjoyed
sandwiches on very nice artisanal bread.

Jerome in his touring garb -- horse drawn carriage available from central Issoire
to registration.  Much classier than the buses up the hill in Valfrejus last week.

My fellow travelers told me that Auvergne is the "real" French countryside, and that I should be prepared for a big and tasty meal tonight.  The mood was very festive -- and felt much more authentic than around the start village at the ski town in Valfrejus the previous week.

KTM top of the line model in orange and black. MOB's next bike?

As usual, traveling with Jerome things happen a bit spontaneously, without all the advance planning that some might think such a trip requires.  Didier had booked a hotel room for himself and Jerome for Saturday night in the small town of Saint-Nectaire, but they had no room for Friday, and none for Isabel, who they hoped would stay both nights (and could drive the car from Issoire to St. Flour, avoiding the need to spend Saturday in a shuttle operation).  I had my hotel room waiting back in Clermont-Ferrand, about a 40-minute drive away from Issoire, further from Saint-Nectaire.  So we headed toward Saint-Nectaire to scout out the situation and see if lodgings were available for them Friday evening.

At the hotel Didier had booked for Saturday, after much back-and-forth with a clerk, who was eventually overruled by the manager, it seemed they could only get one room for Friday night and no more than their current one room for Saturday.  The other hotel in town was also fully booked.  At least we got some recommendations for restaurants in the neighboring towns, having realized that everything was a bit further apart than we had thought -- further from Issoire to Saint-Nectaire, further from Clermont-Ferrand, and further on to La Bourboule, a town up the valley where we had been told there was a great place to eat.  We would keep looking for lodgings, but in the worst case Isabel could have the one room and Jerome and Didier could crash in my room back in Clermont-Ferrand.  (I had a double bed, and the camping mat from Transalp Camp).

Saint-Nectaire as seen from in front of its Romanesque church

Murol, from the chateau above

Jerome surveys Murol from the chateau

Isabel rests as the rest of us climb to the chateau.

We strolled up to the chateau above Murol, then finally drove to Lac Chambon and our next destination, the restaurant Le Grillon (The Cicada), overlooking the lake.  It was a meal memorable for the setting, the company and the uniformly high quality food in a simple eatery.  Of course, we tried the delicious local cheese.  Jerome profusely complemented our waitress on the food and as she was heading away across the room loudly pretended to place a call to a friend "Edouard" (being Edouard Michelin, founder of the Michelin Guide) and tell him to come over straight away and be ready to assign some stars.  After dinner, we stopped by the bar/pizzeria down the street where a live music band was playing out front.  I was amused to see that after our restaurant had closed, the waitress (who must have been in her late 50s or early 60s) also had made it down the street and into the bar for the live music and drinks.  The whole town was there, music wafting out across the road and over the lake.  Of course, if you lived nearby, you were subject to all the noise, so you might as well come join the party!  It really started hopping after 11PM when a group of 20-30 college students came in from some event and each ordered a meal.

The patron of the establishment came off the dance floor and behind the bar briefly, to get himself another drink (definitely not his first of the evening), and Jerome asked him about lodgings in the town.  He said he would check and headed back outside.  We saw him 10 minutes later, dancing away.  When he finally returned, he apologized, but said the one place he was thinking of was closed for the night, and he did not have a key (as it was not his place).  He did suggest a place down the road in Murol that we might try -- the Hotel du Parc.

We made it back to Murol where, miraculously, the immigrants who ran the Hotel du Parc were still awake and accepting guests to fill up their last few rooms.  It was not the best of accommodations, but at least we had someplace, and it was pretty clear there was no way I would get back to Clermont-Ferrand that night.  Didier was my roommate.  He snored, worse than MOB, so I slept with my iPod on.

Roomies.  I thought I was done with that after MOB headed back to Germany ..

In the morning, I noticed that the only "art" in the hotel were old posters of cyclists, local heros from the great duels of the 1960s between Anquetil and Poulidor.  Anquetil won the Tour 5 times.  Poulidor defeated him in many one-day classics, and was a perennial second or third in the Tour, but never managed to wear the yellow jersey.  He was the son of a farmer and a self-taught natural talent as a cyclist, an incredible story of someone who lost his greatest battles, but (or perhaps because so) remains incredibly popular to this day.  Poulidor and Anquetil had their greatest battle on the Puy de Dôme, the 1500 meter tall volcano on the west edge of Clermont-Ferrand.  Relationships within many families suffered as people chose sides, Poulidor vs. Anquetil.  And on Sunday's stage, mixed in among the the fans' painted slogans on the roadway left over from the Tour a week earlier, as we climbed the Pas du Peyrol, among markings for "Sylvain" [Chavanel], [Thomas] "Voeckler", "Andy" [Schleck] and others, I laughed out loud when I saw someone had written "Poulidor", still cheering him on in large white painted letters, only 40 years too late.

Raymond Poulidor -- the local hero -- rode for Mercier his entire career

Anquetil = Lance Armstrong
Poulidor = Jan Ullrich, but with personality, and without the career-end disgrace

True to his word and feeling a bit guilty about not getting me back to my lodgings on Friday night, Jerome treated me to the hotel, awoke earlier Saturday than he probably would have liked, and drove me back to Clermont-Ferrand.

Jerome enjoys (?) an early Saturday breakfast.
The waitress is the same woman who checked us in late last night, back at work.

Back in Clermont-Ferrand, I could sleep some more, in a noticeably larger, cleaner bed, and had none of the distractions of the French countryside to interrupt my race preparation.  In fact, in order to maximize our chance of success on Sunday, my tour operator had thoughtfully booked our group at a faceless Hotel Kyriad (somewhere between a Motel 6 and a Days Inn), in the middle of the Zone Industrielle du Brézet, just off the highway exit and near the little-used airport.  No distractions at all as we tried to focus on our race plans.

Zone Industrielle du Brézet.  No distractions. Nothing at all of interest.
I took a short warm up ride ... actually, not so short,
to try to find the nearest supermarket.

We had really crappy food for dinner -- pasta without sauce that must have been cooked for at least an extra 45 minutes -- but that would not cause us any digestive problems.  I did not see or hear any live music or other entertainment nearby.  Great for an early night to sleep for the big race.  Not so great for a visit to France.

I must say that while the two guys from the tour operator who interacted with us -- Sébastien and Vitor --  were really nice, the tour organization left something to be desired. They need to learn to post (or email) written explanations, instead of depending upon word of mouth for passing on crucial information like what time the bus leaves, from where, and how to meet up with them after the finish, etc.  (they were supposed to meet riders at the finish of Act II ... but failed to do so for anyone I spoke with, leaving us cold and wondering where we were supposed to go for our clean clothes we had deposited in the bus and the promised showers).

But the crappy food, even if barely edible, did not make me sick.  And the breakfast was tolerable -- hard to mess that up -- and they had us to the start line well in advance, with plenty of extra time in which to get cold.  Maybe the lack of distractions, fun, culture, or interesting food is why two of our group placed so well -- 25th and 40th, out of the thousands who rode?

The contrast between Friday and Saturday was almost too much.  With Jerome, Didier and Isabel, I had seen a vibrant countryside that was authentic, with rich colors, delicious flavors, warm smiles, healthy animals, and a beautiful sky. On Saturday, I was in an industrial zone in a Motel Six-clone.

In Issoire, we had seen a rag tag local marching band as we left the registration area.  My fellow travelers did not seem impressed, but for me they will symbolize the quirky, slightly disorganized and charming side of Issoire and neighboring towns that I saw.  I could not get the tune out of my head as I lay resting on Saturday in the Zone Industrielle.  I don't think there is much risk if you watch this sketchy video of part of the song, but be careful, if you do get hooked, it could require a trip to the Auvergne.  Just let me know -- I can lend you some maps I picked up and am saving for my return.

Issoire Marching Band from David Litt on Vimeo.
As we climbed up to the Chateau Murol, we passed two women who had just finished their show with birds of prey and were walking the birds down the hill.  I thought these two might have fit right in with the band.

Badges

A famous brand requires its own special mark.
Cervelo has its é.
Apple has its ... apple, with a bite taken out.

In German, Austria and Italy I saw all kinds of cars and bicycles.  In France I saw all kinds of bicycles, but three brands of cars still seem to predominate, immediately recognizable by their hood badges.

The Peugeot Lion -- Jerome's rental

The Renault diamond -- Chez Bouhet

The Citroen double chevron -- Chez Bouhet

I did not see them anywhere outside of France.