First days in Provence

To be fair, this blog is ostensibly supposed to be about the cycling adventures, etc, that I have had. Since this trip however involves both cycling adventures and other travel adventures, the wheels will be a little out of true. Most times they'll wobble over to cycling (obviously), but other times they'll wibble over to travel, more generally. At times it may be about both cycling and travel, because they are one and the same. I apologize for this confusion of focus.

We're staying at 54 rue de Portail Haut, La Roque-sur-Pernes, which looks like this:

It's four stories of unassuming french loveliness.

July 22
The day after flying in to Paris, and driving 8 hours from there to La Roque on the 21st, we were both pretty bagged.

So we spent Wednesday sleeping, putting the bikes together, picking up some groceries, and some spare inner tubes (and meeting Havi and Jerome at Velo Pernes). During the day the temperature reaches the high 30s around here, but by the evening it was 31'C and I had enough energy to get on the bike. So I did. This is what I rode, and I felt pretty good.

La Roque-sur-Pernes to St. Didier to Le Beaucet to Venasque and back

Before the ride, at the local bike shop (Perne Velo) first Havi pumped up my rear tire to 7 bars (90 lbs), and then went over to help another customer while I finished putting the new tube in the front wheel, so Jerome pumped up the second one and told me that I shouldn't inflate them more than 7 bars because of the roads around here - which are not great he said.

He did not know that he was speaking to a Canadian prairie bike rider who knows bad roads when he rides them. He did know that a tire inflated to 7 bars has plenty of pressure to be both fast on hot pavement, and to provide some cushion over the bumps - which are relatively not many at all. The roads are, by Manitoba standards, quite fine. They're mostly well-maintained and, most importantly, the drivers here think that cyclists on roads are completely normal and deserve as much of a sense that they are safe and valued as anyone else. Everybody waves. Everybody gives you space. Everybody can drive. It's a bit of a utopian experience.


July 23
B and R, our good friends from Manitoba, who are joining us for 8 days, arrived in Marseille at 10:10 AM, so we left La Roque at 8:30 AM to drive down and pick them up. Smooth sailing. Everything went as it should, except for maybe a Starbucks Kenyan Latte that, in hindsight, might have caused me some discomfort. That or the jet lag and the heat. Anyway, on the way back everything went smoothly again, until we got into the house.

Then I was tired, and sleepy. So I lay down and would have slept the rest of the day away except that M woke me up around 3 to remind me that if I slept during the day I wouldn't sleep at night, and then everything would stay out of whack. So I got up and shook things off enough to accompany the others in driving to town to shop a bit more and then to head out to the Cistercian Abbey at Sananque. We missed the Thursday night vespers, but still walked the grounds. 

Then we headed over to the village of Gordes to explore further, and then to drive around the countryside to get a feel for things.

No riding on this day. A prudent decision, I think. I did stay up long enough to map out my ride for the next day.


July 24 & 25
At 7:30 AM I was on the bike riding. Though I want to get better at acclimating to hotter temperatures, the mornings are just too nice not to ride. It was 21'C when I got onto the road. On the first downhill I actually felt a bit of a chill. The route I'd mapped out was much like the exploratory drive we'd taken the night before.

La Roque-sur-Pernes to Venasque to Abbey Sananque to Gordes to Lagnes to Fontaine-de-Vaucluse to Saumane to La Roque-sur-Pernes

It's a great 60 km ride, so much so that I rode the same route again this morning (the 25th) (fyi, they'll likely all be great, so I'll stop with the adjectives now, and let the pics and details speak). It begins immediately out the front door and involves 1250 m of climbing, with an average grade of 5% and a max grade of 11% (see the elevation profile in the link above) and sights that a rider from Manitoba doesn't see, like these:

The bottom of the 6 km climb back to La Roque.

The road that winds up, and then down, to Sananque and the Abbey.

The beginning of the climb out of the bottom of the Nesques (river) Gorges.
You can see the Abbey on the left. 

On the 24th in the afternoon, in the heat of a hot day (temps as high as 39'C), with the intrepid M's encouragement we headed off to Fontaine-de-Vaucluse for a kayak adventure (pretty easygoing but the water was cool and overall the experience was ... European) on the River Sorgue.

Today, the 25th, I rode the same route as the 24th and cut the time of the ride from 2 hrs, 24 mins to 2 hrs, 20 mins. Mostly I think I just rode the downhills faster.

When I got back M, B, and R were still around (I had expected they would have already have headed in to town), so we all went in and spent time at the Saturday morning market in Pernes-les-Fontaines the town nearest the village we're in. We had to buy more food and wine. Of course. When in France ... !

Then, in the evening, before supper (get it? before supper - so French!) we headed out for a marche (a walk) on the trails south (I think) of the village. We found a borie (also see below), and a restaurant fine-looking (of course, it's French) restaurant, which looked good enough for us to make reservations for Sunday dinner at 8 PM (soooo French!)

After a late supper (soooo French!) we did the dishes and went to bed. Well, then I blogged, and then I went to bed. That is, now I'm going to bed. It's 1 AM. We're heading to Avignon tomorrow and even though my legs are feeling good, I'm going to give them a rest from the bike on the day of rest.

The day before 50

The dropbox folder that contains the following photos is labelled "pre bday ride - GeeVs 2015". So on May 9, 2015 GeeVs and I headed out on a father-daughter ride which would, for me, turn out to be the longest ride of the year so far, and for GeeVs just another day at the office.

We affectionately call this the Walhalla loop (though this time we lengthened it to include Cavalier) and it's a treat to ride those American roads because (sigh) they're better, there's less traffic, and the drivers are more considerate and courteous to cyclists than your average southern Manitoba bible belt Mennonite. Sad but true.

The wind was a steady 20 km/h from the North so we flew down to our first stop at the Walhalla supermarket averaging 38 km/h.

From here we headed south on the No 32, climbing up out of the valley (a 3% climb that's more than 2 kms long counts for something around here - at least it's fun) and heading down to the No 5 where we detoured West to climb another 3 km hill with an average grade of 3% (have mercy!) and then descend it (the warm-ish air seemed to rush up in our faces making the descent more or less energy neutral - not fast at all).

Still, there was terrain other than flat prairie on the ride, which is enough to get the mind and body bliss on a bicycle thing going for me. 

Anyway, as I said, for me these 140 kms (4 plus hours) on the road made for the longest ride of the season which, for the last 30 kms or so really started to show. For GeeVs though, cheerful and chatting while holding an easy cadence into the wind, it was just another training ride. For me it was enough to keep my head down and use her draft and occasionally say "Uh huh" or "Yup" just to prove that I was still there. 

But it sure is pretty damn clear now that the kid has surpassed the "master". Easily. So it goes. Good times though. Really good times.

Epica 2015 report

When we rode off from St. Malo Arena at 8 AM it was -29'C with a North wind blowing at around 20 km/h. Windchill was below -40'C but the race ran anyway, because there was some promise that the temperatures would rise some, and the wind would abate some. These two things did happen, but not until well into the afternoon.

We started out in a bunch, but it didn't take long for the pack to stretch.

At the first checkpoint in St. Pierre Kim Mitchell caught me with an ice goatee.

In Niverville the perogies and bacon were good and necessary, even while wearing creepy latex gloves.

With Ian about to leave Niverville. Still cold at this point. Thank you Lyle for the pogies!
I will be gettin' me some o' dat. I'm not sure how it would have worked without them.  

Finished! With Ian and Charles at 6:22 PM! About 10.5 hours total.

My "tracker" data looked like this:

St Pierre -            CP1 in 9:52 

                            CP1 out 9:55

Crystal Springs - CP2 in 10:58

                            CP2 out 11:27

Niverville -         CP3 in 13:06

                            CP3 out 13:41

St Adolphe -        CP4 in 14:32

                            CP4 out 14:48

UM -                   CP5 in 17:14

                            CP5 out 17:17

Forks                                 18:22

It went well. The ride was 2 hours and 14 minutes faster this year. I was on the bike for 8 hours and 35 minutes. I also screwed up the last cue (of course) and missed the turn onto a path to get down to the river, so I rode around along Churchill Drive for a while trying to find it. Maybe that took 10 minutes? I'm not sure. Time and space go funny on a ride like this. Even when you're fed and watered your brain can get away on you. 

I also learned that on this ride I'd rather have more cold than more snow. The tough spots of last year's ride - the slogging through drifts of knee- and hip-deep snow and over fields of snowdrifts - were, for the most part, completely rideable this year. And in the cold, as long as you keep moving and don't get too warm or too cold you're good. I had planned to do a full top layers change twice, at checkpoints 2 and 4. I changed at Crystal Springs, which was necessary, but then I didn't need to for the rest of the ride.

Speaking of your brain getting away on you, before a race starts I've got all this nervous energy that can completely misguide me. I start wondering and having doubts and making insignificant changes or coming up with some new adaptation, probably just to manage the nerves. Anyway, at the time, in the moment as it were, I'm quite convinced that these adjustments are strokes of genius, rather than well-intentioned stupidity. 

Yesterday I had one of those moments. At the pre-race meeting on Friday night talking Ian about sweat and vapour barriers and managing moisture he said that he's heard that some guys strap diapers to their chests to both keep out the wind and to manage the sweat. In fact, I had wondered about doing something like this myself! I wasn't about to buy a package of Pampers to try it out, but I thought about some makeshift way to make something like a diaper for the ride. 

In the morning on the shuttle ride from Winnipeg to St Malo I had a breakthrough! I dreamed up a way to create my own diaper! A complete makeshift innovation! I cut a plastic bag in half and pinned my folded into quarters cotton hanky to it. Then I wrapped it under and around the straps of bib knickers to keep it next to me, and then put on my layers. Genius right!? Right. Well ... at Crystal Springs I once again (see an earlier post) had a clump of ice in the middle of my chest again, and I couldn't get the zipper of my jacket open. Pete helped me pull it off. Every layer above the diaper was completely soaked, and so was the hanky that was the diaper proper. No advantage. In fact it made things worse. No breathing, no drying.

On the whole the rest of the race went really well! The planners and organizers and volunteers of Actif Epica are first class! Supportive, caring, and helpful. Some might be able to do this ride without the food and encouragement at the checkpoints, but there'd be a whole lot less fun in it. Thanks guys!! I expect I'll be back at it next year. 

Bunyan Velo Story

A story I wrote about last year's Actif Epica race has been published in the latest issue of Bunyan Velo. It's a beautiful magazine about two-wheeled adventuring and I'm honoured to be included in it.

You can find the issue my piece is in, here at http://issuu.com/bunyanvelo/docs/bv05 at no cost, but please consider purchasing a hi-res pdf version of this issue and the four previous issues of the magazine. They're only $5 and it will help a small but vital publication keep working! We want these sort of "nice things" so sometimes we should be prepared to pay a little, don't you think?

Also look for a great piece by Mark Reimer about his and Graham Madden's summer Muerto ride. The cover features Mark's shot of Graham.

Winter's a time for learnin'

So I heard from this tall, super tall, bike-riding guy who knows (as far as I can tell) of what he speaks and generally doesn't just make shit up that a mutual friend of ours who also generally knows his winter biking shit from shinola that it might be a good idea to try this. You take a garbage bag and cut holes in it for your arms and your head/neck and wear it like a t-shirt overtop of a thin layer, and then you layer up overtop of that.

Huh, I thought, when I heard that. Maybe I'll try it. I sweat a lot (like, a lot) so maybe that'll help control the moisture. You know, like when you wear latex gloves inside your mitts to keep the mitts dry and your hands warm and which, for the most part, works pretty well. For me anyway. 

And the opportunity arose this past Saturday to ride toward a supper date with friends in Mitchell (100 ish kms from N-town). After a morning of other necessary toil I would gear up, hop on the old steed and see if I couldn't make it to St. Pierre (75 kms from N-town) there to be picked up by my beloved and taxied in to supper. 

By 12:40 pm on Saturday I was out the door and on the bike. It was a chilly one - about -22'C with a 15 - 20 km wind from the NW. If I was going to make it to St. Pierre I would be heading 40 kms north and then 35 kms west. Maybe, I thought.  Dinner was for 5. Maybe I was being optimistic, but it was worth a try. Any excuse for a ride.

I got to St Joseph (13 kms) in less than an hour and stepped inside the COOP to regroup and take a drink (Riding with a full face mask complicates the drinking thing. Another detail to sort out.). This is not speedy I know, but in the cold things slow down, quite a lot. My speedo told me I was averaging 15 km/h into the wind. I felt okay with this. It seemed sustainable to me. Huh. (That's foreshadowing. Do you see the long shadow of the bike?)

The bike stayed outside.

Another 7 kms north down the road I crossed the 14.

Did I mention that it was cold, and the wind was from the north?

After 7 more kms north I could finally turn east toward St. Jean at the double dip (there's a ford crossing going north, and then another one going east).

Looking south at the ford on the north-south road.

The slow dip (ford) heading east toward St. Jean. 

After a km or so of on and off again hike-a-bike I rode gravel in to St. Jean at 3 pm and stopped at the grocery for gatorade and jamjams.

Looking out the front door of the St. Jean grocery. I should have taken a pic of the jamjams
but looking back now I think was not at my sharpest just then. 

I left St. Jean after one large bottle of gatorade, some water, and two large oatmeal jamjams thinking that I'd fueled up right, but not thinking about how useful it might be to stop and take stock of the garbage bag liner experiment. My core was, in fact, feeling good. It must be working. Why unzip the unlayer only to discover what I thought I could feel? So I set out, more intent of keeping the stoppage time down and the riding time up. After all, I had to meet M in St. Pierre. 

Within minutes of riding away my arms felt stiff. Not muscularly stiff, but frozen like ice kind of stiff. I knew what this was about, but I determined that I'd keep riding, heat up again, and all would be well. Things would work out. Sometimes you've just got to grind away at it. That's one of my mantras I think. Like Boxer I keep thinking that if I just work harder, it'll be okay. Huh. 

A mile east of St. Jean I headed north for 7 kms again on the River Rd. 

Looking south along the river, the day was slipping away.

Looking east, the bike looks ready. Me? I'm having doubts.

The agreement between my beloved (the one with the car who was going to try to get us to dinner in Mitchell by 5 and who was assuming I'd be in St. Pierre to meet her at around 4:30. At this point, looking east to Hwy 200, 11 kms away, at 4 pm, I had to admit that St. Pierre was not going to happen. At least not by bike. So thank the lord for cell phones I texted M that I was heading for the intersection of the 200 and the 23, 14.5 kms away. 

Riding more or less with the northwest wind was better, much better. I could manage 20 km/h, but I was running out of gas. Some days you have it, some days you don't, some days it's cold, some days you decide to try something new. Sometimes that new thing you try doesn't work. 

We rendevoused at the 23 at about 4:35. After 56 kms in 3.5 hours (4 hours total time) I was done for the day. In the car I tried to unzip my wind layer, but I couldn't. The zipper stopped at the clump of ice the size of my fist in the middle of my chest. My wool jersey was welded to the wind layer by a ball of ice! What the hell! I broke off a piece of it and tasted it, thinking that it must be spilled Gatorade. Nope. Just water. Not even salty or sweaty. Just water - ice actually. 

I had expected that the garbage bag liner would reduce if not eliminate this sort of thing, but now I see that what happened was that the plastic liner kept my core temperature high which caused condensation to build up between it and the wind layer, which was not breathable enough to let the moisture out. It built up and froze. Huh. Makes sense now. Trap water between to vapour barriers and then let the -33 windchill have at it.

Lesson learned. No more double vapour barrier for me. The garbage bag liner may work for some, but for this sweat drippin' rider, it's no answer. Whatever the problem was in the first place. 

Epic-winter-ride-eh?!

The noughts trailed off into space like bubbles. His father had told him that astronomers had worked out that the total number of atoms in all the millions of stars they could see through their giant telescopes was ten with ninety-eight noughts on the end. All the atoms in the world did not even add up to one single googol. And googol was the tiniest little scrap of a thing compared to a googolplex. If you asked for a googol of chocolate-covered toffees, there wouldn't be nearly enough atoms in the universe to make them. (The Daydreamer - Ian McEwan)

As hopes his wont, his blessed imagination, his escape-from-the-spinning-wheel-domestic, FJR emails me early in the week to ask whether my Friday's open for a ride. (Let us make verbs where no verbs have verbed before; in our own image we will make them.) Could be, I ether back.

How about riding from N-town out toward St. Jean and Morris? he says, pelting his phone screen with fingertouch stain.

Could work, I hedge. Then, thinking all the while, Yes, I tap out back. Let's tap out. Let's bleed out into the white.

(I check the forecast afterward. Imprudent to be sure, but necessary. I mean, it's going to be a loop so it's going to be tough sometime, but when, and how much, that's the question. There could be sand anywhere.)

Next day FJR enthusiasms back that we could do an N-town - St. Jean - St. Malo - Dominion City - Roseau River FN - Letellier - N-town loop. About an Epic-eh worth of kms - 130.

Well all right then I shillyshally back. But I am in. It's a good idea. I just have to accept that it wasn't mine. I'm like this with FJR and his ideas.

And that's it until he shows up at the appointed time (8 am yesterday) and we ready ourselves. By 8:30 am we are on the bikes heading North, the wind from the SE.

20 kms or so in it becomes clear that doubling up on the booties is not going to be enough to keep FJR's feet in the way they are accustomed. I offer some chemical heat packs so we stop atop the Plum Creek.

At 10:30-ish we pull in to St. Jean to find our dream of a late morning poutine brunch dashed by the holidays. We settle for felt footbed liners from the COOPs, and cinnamon buns, Nutella, and coffee from the generous and incredulous women at St Jean Foods.

You can cross the Red at St. Jean without a bridge in winter. You can even stand there in the middle of the river changing the battery to your finicky/damn-near-useless VDO computer.

You cannot ride in winter without looking the lion - and hornifying all those you meet
(even with your reflective vestments).

We pulled in to St. Malo at about 1:15 and found the bar. Nice digs. (At least compared to A-town's public offering.) A good chipotle steak wrap with a side of poutine along with sudz of choice seemed right.

Dryclad and laded with the fruits of the earth - steak and potato - we lumbered out of town at 2 to find that the road to Arnaud said otherwise. We found the sand again, for the sand was, and the sand was in us, and the sand was god. We pushed through just the same, head down, legs rising and falling. 

Overtop of the Red this time, just west of Roseau River FN, we were feeling good.

Heading west two miles south of the 201 ...

... in imminent dark strobing snow ...

... low travellers among fanning monoliths ...

... winding on even so ...

... eyes flashing bright for home 

9-1/2 hours later, at 6, we were back inside in N-town, smelling T & M's sausage homefiring on the stove, we perogy-sizzled our toasted Guinness down-which we washed. 130 kms later. 

Hallelujah we are bums. 

Admitting that our lives are shaped by fictions may give a kind of freedom - possibly the only kind that human beings can attain. (The Silence of Animals - John Gray)

Winter creek rides are the sweetest

It's been winter now for a day or so and it's still raining. It's starting out like one of those winters where you ride creeks and rivers and you don't get cold. You slip around a bit and you follow the snow over the ice and when that disappears you take it straight and easy on the ice.

Today was one of those days. Temperature hovering around zero. Mist and rain and sleet in the air. A light Northeast wind. Perfect. "We should ride the creek!" That's the standard line around here these days.

The "creek" is the Buffalo Creek, a near river/field drain in Spring and Summer and a cycling haven from the wind as soon as it freezes over. Some winters, when there's a regular amount of snowfall, the creek riding season is short - that week or so when it's cold enough, but there's not much snow. Some winters, like this one so far, it freezes over hard, there's a sifting of snow - enough to coat the ice for some traction - and then you can ride it like a wind sheltered, traffic free, winding road with the occasional trail section, and the occasional walk-a-bike through the reeds section.

Today it looked like this as we rode North from town until the creek devolved into a cow pasture.

You can see how happy we are, standing out there in the schtruck.

Along the way the creek will at times narrow down to this, and narrower. Sometimes you're riding on a bed of cat-tails hoping the creek shows up again. Sometimes you're thrashing along a two-foot wide canal with cat-tails and reeds whacking you in the face. 

Creek-riding at its most awesome.

Smooth and hard and fast and tacky snow. Sweet.

We rode about 30 ks on the creek - see these links (Going North from A-town we then doubled back and went South from where we dropped in taking gravel back into town.) for our route, with help of the folks at daftlogic.com and their distance calculator.