The Alps, Day 1: Geneva

In case there was ever any doubt that we were riding what the REAL TdF riders ride, there was real painting on the road to prove it. This is just one example. The climbs were long and they were hard, but they weren't IMPOSSIBLE. The rides in the north east aren't that long, but they go straight up and over a mountain. If the mountain has a 15% grade, the road will have a 15% grade. In France, the mountains were steep, but the switchbacks meant that you kept a pretty constant grade the whole way up. So it hurt, it just never hurt MORE. Unfortunately, my Garmin deleted all the data about grade and elevation profiles, etc by the time I got home. I'm crushed about it, by the way.

Shane and I picked up our Renault Kangoo at the airport where all the EuropeCar employees said they didn't speak English... and then conducted the transaction in decent English anyway, then we packed up the car and hit the road. France was TINY! For some reason I had it in my head that it would take us 24 hours to drive across, like Texas, but in about 6 hours of driving we had crossed France and were driving through the Alps next to the Swiss border.

We were going to ride around Geneva, but then we realized that Switzerland wasn't part of the EU. So rather than dealing with customs and another currency, we just stayed on the French side of the border. We scoped out some nice, hilly stretches of highway, and pulled over on a turnout to sleep in the car for the night. The first thing we realized: We had no utensils. So Shane and I ate pasta salad and cold mashed potatoes using an empty margarine container as a spoon to shovel it into our mouths.

We didn't want to leave the bikes outside the car, so we shoved them to either side of the trunk, put all our stuff (including my bike box) in the front seat, and hunkered down for the night. It was a pretty uncomfy night, I have to admit. The bottom of the trunk was tilted, so I kept feeling like I was sliding down towards the bottom. Also, I'd skimped and bought the cheapest sleeping bag they had at Decathlon: a 15º (celcius) bag, meaning it was no match for the 40ºF night. When we woke up, I was frozen, relieved that I didn't have to lie in that car anymore, and ready to start riding.We rode a roughly 60-mile loop over some small mountains, but when we were getting back into town, we lost the road in a maze of traffic circles. "I think it's this way," Shane said, leading me over a freeway overpass, and then up a one-way street.
"I really don't think this is it," I insisted. This highway was supposed to meet up with the one we were parked on. Why would we have to take a 1-way street? We should just follow the highway down farther!
"Well town is roughly in this direction, so I think we should just see what's down this road..." Shane insisted.
"Alright, we can ride down it, but it just looks like a neighborhood down there. I really think that we should follow the highway a little further rather than getting lost in some neighborhood that may or may not get us to town..." I was willing to play along. I knew I was right, but I don't know why I HAD to make him see that he was wrong. Maybe something to do with how stupid it was to stick to your guns that going the wrong way down a one way street was the way to go.
"Fine, we'll try it your way!" (somewhat angry).

Lake Geneva, before the blow-up. This was going to be our mascot, since both Shane and I hate being in pictures. He only made it into pictures that one day though. Actually, I'm kind of glad. it was a dumb idea anyway.

I was right. We hit town, but then there was another traffic circle. "Now what do we do?" I asked.
"Well there's one of those little bike trail signs. We saw it yesterday, we should follow that."
"Shane, we've been seeing different bike trail signs all day! There are 30 different trails. That's not the same one as we saw this morning. We're on the XYZ trail, and that's pointing towards the ABC trail!" I still knew I was right, and now I didn't feel like him dragging us on a wild goose chase.
"Fine, if you know everything, then why don't you lead us back to the car!" I hadn't been mad until that point, but now I was.
"Fine!" I said, and sprinted off. I was sick of slowing down for him. I shot off west-ish (the sign was pointing south-ish and it turned out that the car was north-ish), but my temper tantrum was hindered by a light, and he caught up to me. As soon as it changed, I was off again, and when I turned around, he was gone. Fuck. I had been right and gotten us to a place that Shane recognized. But Shane had been the one driving, so he knew his way around town while I had been paying attention to maps and tour books, not the roads themselves. Pretty soon I figured out that he'd figured out where he was, and had made a turn, letting me go on and get lost by myself. I was FURIOUS! After I'd already kept him from getting lost twice!

When I finally found my way back to the car about 20 minutes later (I was only lost for about 5, but then had to climb about 8K up the road back to the car), he was already packing up the car, eating a sandwich and listening to music. I was fuming. I threw my bike on the ground and stormed off. My helmet fell out of my hand. I realized it looked like I threw it. Good! I thought. Let him know I'm mad! I huffed away, and when I'd finally calmed down, I walked back to the car and started pulling my bike apart.
"Are you done now?" he asked, like he was dealing with a child.
"ME?! That was way the fuck out of line, Shane! Don't you ever pull a stunt like that again!"
And then we had a screaming match. Knock-down, drag-out, where things that I will probably never be able to fully forget were said. But what else could we do? We were stuck in the middle of the woods outside Geneva in a place where neither of us spoke the language. We had to stick together. We sullenly climbed back in the car and set off towards Alpe d'Huez.

To see the rout we took and elevation profile, click here.

Next up: Peril and mechanical difficulties on Alpe d'Huez, and what can go wrong when you stick a banana in your cycling shorts...

Paris (and a bit of London), a photo tour

It was a long trip, and I'm sure you don't want to hear about every gory detail. So I will gloss over the day we spent in London as well as our 3 days in Paris in a quick photo tour. Above you can see me sitting on one of Paris's wonderful public rent-a-bikes. Look at me go! (Actually, the bike is parked at one of the charging stations). They were so ridiculous that we just had to take a picture. The fact that we're expected to share a bike lane with "bicycles" like these is just preposterous (not that I don't agree with public bicycling programs).

By the way, these pictures are not necessarily going to be sequential... Bear with me!

Shane and I figured that we spent as much on ice cream as we spent on restaurant meals in Spain. This is the first of many, many, many ice creams at a Ben & Jerry's in London. Shane and I were walking down the street, having a nice conversation when I stopped mid-sentence, stopped walking dead in my tracks, gasped, and pointed across the street. "Whaaa...?" Shane started to ask, when he followed my finger and saw what I was pointing at. "Good eye!" he squealed as we dashed across the street and ran for the ice cream parlor. Here, I enjoy my spoils.

My first night in London I went out to dinner with the bride-to-be, the groom-to-be, and some of their friends. When we got back to the flat, their flatmate was watching TV. I sat down, and my jaw dropped. "You guys..." I said, "you're never going to believe this, but I grew up with that kid!" Sure enough, there was Simon Bird on the TV screen. His father had a fellowship every summer to teach at Harvard, and he and his brothers and sister used to spend their summers splashing around in the pool with us. He even went to our high school for a year, and there he was on TV talking about pubes and masturbation (neither of which were things that he made a habit of joking about when he was a kid, by the way). What else could I do but take a picture of the TV screen to send home to my mom?

Sitting in Gatwick airport at 6 in the morning waiting for our flight to leave for Paris. I was sitting at a Starbucks, drinking a fully caffeinated coffee. I drank caffeinated coffee the whole time I was in Europe, and now I'm really paying for it. But Starbucks IS great. I no longer have any pretensions about the Americanization of the coffee shop.

France. From above.

My girlfriend did a much better job of packing my bike than I did. When I packed it back up 3 weeks later, it was not nearly as neatly packed, and now I have some fresh dings on my frame (although some may have come from a temper tantrum you'll hear about in the next chapter).

The Paris Opera House at sunset. I listened hard, but didn't hear the Phantom of the Opera. Not even inside my mind.

Being on a budget, we opted to see most of Paris's sights from the outside. This was taken outside the Louvre at night. Anyone who's suffered through the Da Vinci Code will groan when they see this pyramid. On the way home at the end of the trip I picked up Angels and Demons, by the way. Same damned book. Same EXACT fucking book, and the writing was just as bad because it was the SAME DAMNED BOOK! Spare yourselves the pain of reading it twice!
Anyway, the Louvre was beautiful. There is so much gratuitous opulence hanging around Paris, but GOD is it beautiful!

"Alright! We took a picture of it. Now can we move on?!"

This is the nasty bruise I got on my hip from carrying my bike box across London and Paris in one day. The photo really doesn't do the discoloration justice. It got bleached against my glow-in-the-dark skin! I would show you a picture where you can see the bruise better, but I look fat in that one. You get the idea...

"What the hell is that?! It's like a cathedral pooped right in the middle of the street!"

We were pretty excited about this relief in Notre Dame. I call it, "Woman Feels Up Mary."

We were walking around Notre Dame at finishing our Starbucks before we went inside when the bells struck noon. I couldn't help myself. I put on my best Quasimodo voice and moaned "The bells! The bells!" I'm so funny!

This is the Bastille. If you ever go looking for it, don't be fooled. This is it. Mr. European History Major and I went to go see it, and once we got out at the "Bastille" subway stop, we consulted a map to see where it was. We walked round and round. How to read a map was beginning to become a bit of a point of contention, since I had no faith in Shane's ability to do it anymore. Shane: "Where the hell is it?"
Claire: "The map says it's supposed to be right there."
Shane: "But all that's here is a boat dock."
Claire: "Well it looks like it's right fucking there on the map."
Shane: "Whatever, I'm over this. I want to go get some ice cream."
Claire: Begins to get sullen, like losing the fucking Bastille is HER fault. The map says it's RIGHT where that damned dock is.
Claire (the next morning): "Shane, it says here in the tour book that they tore down the Bastille 300 years ago. That's the reason why it's so famous, THEY TORE IT DOWN!" Shouldn't a European History major have known that?
I did NOT lose the Bastille.

That's right, folks! Pope condoms! I'm not quite sure if the message here is that the pope reminds you at the last moment that you're not supposed to have sex, or that you're not supposed to use a condom. Or maybe I'm missing the point entirely?

"Stop! This here is the empire of the dead!" The entrance to the catacombs. This was the only attraction in Paris that Shane and I actually paid money to see. It wasn't what I expected, but it was worth every penny.

I expected to see decomposing corpses on something like book shelves, but what we found were just millions and millions of bones piled on top of each other. They had taken the time to arrange the bones along the path, making walls of femurs with designs made from skulls, held together by mortar. But behind the front row there were just bones piled pell mell to the ceiling and stretching back 10 or 20 feet to the back wall.
A picture taken over the top of one pile of bones.

I know, I know. I just HAD to!

I did not go up the Eiffel Tower. I am very, very, very afraid of heights, and the Eiffel Tower has many, many open spaces to fall through. Some observations about the Eiffel Tower:
1. It's short. Shane and I saw the top of it over some trees and I said, "Is that the Eiffel Tower?" We decided it must be a radio tower because it was too short and industrial looking. But it WAS the Eiffel Tower.
2. It's ugly. I know, I know, you're supposed to think it's great. But come on! It's a giant, brown, iron thing that looks like a radio antenna squatting down for a pee.
3. It's kind of tacky how they light it up at night like a giant billboard or something.
4. It's a death trap. I'm sure of it!

Crotch shot of the Eiffel Tower from underneath. Even though it was shorter than I expected, it was still really frigging tall, and since I have anxiety attacks on the roofs of 8 story buildings, there was NO WAY I was going up this. Still, as with anything that scares me, I was fascinated. I couldn't take my eyes off of it. I watched people going up the rickety elevator that went DIAGONALLY (that can't possibly be safe). I watched people wandering around the two observation decks, that looked like one could easily fall off of once the Mystical Maleficent Force that Sucks People Off Buildings started doing its thing. And then I saw the people coming down... STAIRS. And not just any stairs, the wire kind where you can see through them and there are big, gaping holes between the individual steps. Know what happens in those holes? The Mystical Maleficent Force that Sucks People Off Buildings reaches through between the steps, grabs your ankles, and pulls you through. It's a very gruesome death. All this time I'm staring at these people I'm saying over and over to Shane, "There is NO WAY you're getting me to go up that thing! You would have to airlift me off because I would lie down on the floor to increase the surface area of my body touching something solid, hug whatever I could, and refuse to let go!"
"I never once suggested we go up it!" Shane kept pointing out. I didn't even have to go up the damned beast to have an anxiety attack about the vertigo. I was having one right here on terra firma. But come on, look at the picture. Look at all that wide-open space between the iron bars. You could get sucked through ANY ONE of them!

And what do you think "Safe Ice Cream" is?

Weekly Race Report with a Tropical Twist

The project from hell is finally over at work, I have my weekends back, the doldrums of winter are dragging on, and I needed to get away, goddamnit! So a couple of weeks ago I got on cool running and looked for races that would be happening in warm climates during my next rest week. I checked California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. There was a half marathon in Mesa, AZ, some trail thing in Waco, TX, and a 15k trail run in Tampa, FL. I've been to Waco, and believe me, you do NOT want to go to Waco. I figured weather might be a problem for flights to AZ, what with having to fly through the mid-west and all. Pack your bag, kids, we're going to Florida! Somehow I convinced Angry to come down with me and the two of us flew down from our respective lairs on Friday night to terrorize Tampa for the weekend.

Saturday was quiet. Highs were in the low 60s and winds were at a gale force (what the fuck?!) so it wasn't a very good beach day. I insisted on going down to the beach anyway. We trudged our way down the deserted beach with the wind sandblasting Angry's bare legs. I took off my shoes, rolled up my pants and waded into ankle-deep water for exactly long enough to run away from the first wave that might get my cuffs wet, and ran back to where Angry was waiting. Okay, I'd put my feet in the Gulf, we could move on to other things now. We spent the rest of the day exploring Largo, Clearwater, and St. Petersburg. When we figured out that there was really nothing to do, despite all our looking, we went back to the hotel and took THE greatest 3.5 hour nap, ever.

Race Morning

Daylight savings was ending, and we had to spring ahead and lose an hour's sleep. Stupid farmers! I hate Daylight savings. But if you think I'm cranky in the morning, you should see Angry! Homeboy is the worst waker-upper I've ever met. I tried turning on the light, I tried coaxing, insulting, tickling, throwing shit, and ditching him in favor of breakfast.

We hit the road and enjoyed seeing sun rise over Tampa as we drove across the bay to Thonotosassa (try saying that 5 times fast!). When we arrived at the race venue we were surprised to see way more runners than we were expecting. "Oh shit, I hope it's not too competitive," I said to Angry. As we walked to the registration table I settled my fears about coming in dead last. "She's got a fat ass, I can run faster than her. She's wearing soccer shorts, I can run faster than her. She's old, I can run faster than her."
"She's got stupid hair" Angry said, pointing to a girl with a 6" puff of hair sticking straight up off of the top-most part of her head. I was surprised he'd torn his eyes off a female posterior for long enough to look up to the top of her head.
"She's got stupid hair, I can beat her," I said.

"Do I have to do this?" said Angry as we came up to the registration table. Originally he had agreed to do the 15k, but that was downgraded to the 5k when, a week before the trip he hadn't run yet... at all, ever. Now it appeared that Princess Angry didn't want to lose his Brooks slippers, or soil his Under Armour gown on the filthy Florida trails. I agreed to let him DNS without giving him a hard time if I could call him a pussy for the rest of the trip. Deal!

Angry is a pussy.

So while I went off to the bathroom to listen to Floridians talk about how cold it was (in the mid-60s), Angry went to the car to get the paper. Then we walked over to the starting line. "Oh my God, that chick's naked!" I said. Well, okay, she wasn't naked, but she was as close as you could be in public without getting arrested. I have underpants that are looser-fitting and lower-cut than her shorts were, and on top she was wearing nothing but a sports bra. It was a skimpy sports bra, if that's possible. She sure stood out in a crowd where most were in jackets. Like fleece jackets.
"You can beat her," said Angry.
"I sure hope not," I said. "There is no excuse to dress like that unless you are going to win."

The start line was at the bottom of a berm. Berm is a word I didn't even know I knew until I saw one. It was a steep embankment about 20 or 30 feet tall between one pancake-flat terrace of land and another. Yep, that there's a berm, I thought right before I hurled myself down to the bottom of it. At the bottom all the Floridians were complaining saying, "Why couldn't we start at the top? Are these 50 feet really that important?" It was steep, but I mean, come on, it was only about 50 feet long! These people don't know how good they have it! When the whistle went off I was to the top of it before I even had a chance to get out of breath.

After the monstrous "hill" (berm) we ran into the woods where it was flat, flat, flat. There wasn't even so much as a root to run over, so I turned my attention to the sides of the trail and kept an eye out for alligators. I imagined heroic scenes where I pushed competitors into the gaping jaws of lurking alligators, but I didn't see any alligators.

I'd forgotten my Garmin in the hotel room, and there were no mile markers, so I was running entirely based on feel. My legs were stiff from not doing anything the day before, and I probably took it out too fast trying to overcompensate. After about a mile I figured that I probably couldn't hold this pace and started thinking of my competitors as pace bunnies rather than alligator snacks. Hey, I could always throw them to the alligators in the last 5k if I felt good. But despite my best efforts to hang back, I wound up passing the pace bunnies too easily and picked off several without really wanting to. As I pulled ahead of a peroxide blond (read: obnoxious) she yelled, "How ya feelin'?"
She was already behind me and there were several other women around that I thought maybe she was with, so I didn't say anything, but then when no one else answered I said, "Are you talking to me?" She was. I did a quick body scan: my legs were loosening up, but I was feeling a bit dizzy and seeing... not stars, but patterns. My stomach was upset. "O-kay" I said.
"You've gotta say 'great', even if you're not feeling great!" she said. I was glad this woman was behind me. Meaning, I'm glad this woman wasn't going to catch up with me. Where were those damn alligators?

Having fed all the women in sight to the alligators, I was kind of in no man's land for a few minutes and then, up ahead, I saw a river. Specifically, a river intersecting the trail. Oh shit! I did not agree to this! I thought. There are probably alligators in there. I took a quick look around to see if there was a way over it. There was a foot bridge, but it was taped off. I would have still taken a few extra seconds to duck the tape, but the bridge was going off in one direction and looked like it might be going to another trail. Oh fuck, well here goes nothing, I thought as I picked up my knees and sloshed through the knee-deep water for about 15'. Once on the other side my legs felt significantly heavier, my pants were stuck to my calves in such a way that I wondered if my pants would fall down, and my shoes were going "squelch, squelch" with every step. I still had 5.9 miles to run.

After the river a couple of guys passed me on the way up an even smaller berm than the last time (as the Europeans would say, a berm light). We began to run on a gravel path on the crest of the berm, where we stayed until the 10k mark. As we passed the starting line and picked up the 5k course, a spectator yelled to us that we only had 5k to go. "Already?!" I said. I looked at my watch: 52 and change. "That can't be right," I said out loud.

The last 5k was much more trail-like than the first 10k. This trail was much windier, had more roots, and went closer to the water (and the gaters). I was starting to run out of steam and I'd been nauseous since about the second mile. But it was so flat, I couldn't even feel sorry for myself. The miles just kind of fell out of my legs, whether I was feeling crappy or not. Suddenly, right in front of me the trail was taped off. "What the fuck?" I said (out loud). To my right was a 15 foot tall pile of dirt with a deep groove in it. Apparently, this was the second big climb of the day. So I climbed up the 15' gully, back down it, and went back to running. Phew, thank god that's over, I thought facetiously. I've run over curbs that are higher than that.

I was all by myself, playing little mental games to keep myself going when I heard a runner coming up behind me on the single track. "On your left," he called. I gladly pulled off to one side, hoping to have a pace bunny, and eventual alligator food. "Thanks," he said as he blew past at a 6 minute pace. What the...? Then another one passed right on his heels. Well that sure was weird, I thought, and picked it up just a little bit. It seemed like the thing to do when you're with the 6-minute-milers in the last tenth of the race. A minute or two later 3 more guys passed me running a blistering pace, and then another. I figured they must have turned around to do a second lap after the finish. Well that sure was depressing. And I tried to push the pace a little bit more, just in case there was an alligator back there. You don't want to be the slowest one when an alligator's behind you.

When I saw the finish line up ahead I bolted. I knew I couldn't break 1:20, but maybe I could get in under 1:21. I finished in 1:20:54 and they handed me a finisher's cup. Not like a trophy, like a mug. As soon as Angry caught up to me I said, "Gotta keep moving, I'm gonna hurl."
We walked around for a few moments and then stopped. Angry asked, "Are you gonna puke now?"
"I will if we stand still, gotta keep walking."

Once my stomach had settled down Angry filled me in on what I'd missed. The naked chick had won, she was something like 4th overall. He also filled me in on the other posterior chains that had come through before me. I asked him about the speed demons who had passed me at the end. "I couldn't help but overhear you," interrupted a guy with a crew cut. "A bunch of the lead guys went off course. Like way off course, almost 3 miles off course."
Well that explained it. "That sucks. It sure was disheartening being passed like that," I said.
"Believe me, it sucks a whole lot more if you were one of them," he said and walked off, miffed. Oops. I didn't realize he was one of them. He looked more like a lacrosse player than a 6-minute miler. And how the hell could you go off course? This was the best-marked course I'd ever seen, and there was TAPE blocking off all the possible wrong turns. Oh well, I would be pissed if I'd gone off course following a blind retard too.

Hats were supposed to be awarded to the first 25 men and women overall, so we stuck around for the awards ceremony. Up close we saw that the naked chick was NOT in fact hot. She probably weighed in at about 95 lb of solid muscle, but was painfully skinny, except she had a fat face. Like, a really fat face. She had an American Dad chin. Sure, she could run a 15k in an hour, but at least I'm not naked alligator bait with a fat chin. They never gave out the hats though, and I was quite upset when I found out that I was the 19th woman.

But it gets better! Not only did I win an invisible hat and finish right behind the 6 minute milers, I won my age group!!! Really! Given, there was only one other chick in my age group, but I beat her. Actually, the naked chick was my age too, but since she won overall, she wasn't counted in the AG results. So, I won my age group! The only other time I've placed in my AG (under similar circumstances: by default) was the race in CT where I met Angry. I think that Princess Angry is my good luck charm.

Up next: Princess Angry and Claire go to Disney World.