Turkey Sailing Trip

Turkey Sailing

I just got back from a sailing trip in Turkey with Lisa and my parents. Short summary: It's gorgeous, take a look at the photos. Trip report:

Day 1: Got there, got settled on the boat. Found Turkish people and Marmaris sailing (the outfit) very friendly. The boat was provisioned as expected, and the boat very clean. The sight of the Meditereanean Moor filled my heart with joy --- since the meditereannean only has 30 centimeters of tide (1 foot), this type of mooring is unique to the area, and I was excited to get to know it.

Day 2: Met the skipper, Ibrahim, and after finishing our provisioning, took off. Our route was constrained because I had chosen a one way trip. We would mostly hug the coast. We left for a swimming bay, did some swimming and snorkeling, and then sailed on to our final destination for the night, where the local restaurant was happy to send a dinghy out to help us tie the stern line to shore. This was my first exposure to the typical mediteranean crowded moor. We chose to have dinner on the boat, and did a bit of swimming.

Day 3: More swimming in the morning, and then quite a bit of sailing, past Greece, and then back to another Turkish place. We then visited Ogun's place, a moor with a great place for dinner (Ogun's place), where we picked up water, recharged batteries, and got more provisions.

Day 4: We headed over to Knidos, where we docked and visited the famous ruins of Knidos, which once was part of Greece. (The Greek took all the islands between Greece and Turkey during world war 2, so don't feel sorry for them!) While there, we met the Backroads Cycling/Sailing Tour through Turkey, riding through on Backroads supplied Ti bikes. Their ground-only cost was $6000 a person for a 9 day trip (6 days cycling, 3 days sailing). The Piaw cost fot the same trip, $6000 (for all 4 of us, including plane tickets to and from Turkey fromn Munich!). Ah, the price you pay when you have to have a local guide. Oh wait, we had a local guide (Ibrahim)! Makes me wonder why anyone thinks there's a recession going on. We then headed into the Aegean sea, which was nice and quiet, where Ibrahim found a nice bay with just enough space for one more. I did a very salty thing, which was to tie a bowline around myself and swam out to rocks on shore to tie the boat down. Unfortunately, that did me in as well, since I immediately started coughing and sneezing that night and went to bed with no appetite.

Day 5: Ill, I spent most of the day in bed, glad that I hired a skipper for the trip. We ran out of gas, because of some error by the folks who set up the boat at the start of the trip, necessitating a backtrack, and an anchoring while the charter company sent out a mechanic, along with some gas because they were positive that there was gas on the boat. Well, turned out we were out of Diesel, so we refilled the boat and moved on. That night, my Dad swam for the shore instead.

Day 6: I felt slightly better, and asked Ibrahim to do more sailing and less motoring. Fortunately the weather was good enough and we did go sailing! The wind was nice and beautiful, and we ended up stopping for the night at a nice shelted cove, and with Ibrahim's help, I got to back the boat in to dock for the mediterranean Moor. It wasn't easy to control the boat backwards, and I feel like I need to practice like 10 more times, but I at least understood how it was done.

Day 7: A day trip to Cleopatra Beach, and the surrounding ruins. What a beautiful, gorgeous place Turkey is. Every new Bay took my breath away. The water was clear, and the place was very nice. We then brought the boat back to port at Karacasogut, and had one final dinner on board with Ibrahim.

Day 8: Taxi'd back to Marmaris Park hotel, where I had a deal from Expedia for $100 a night per couple all-inclusive (dinner, lunch, breakfast, all included). We wandered the Bazaar in town, enjoyed a final bit of swimming before the next morning's hectic rush to the airport.

Conclusion: Turkey is worth seeing, especially if you're based out of Europe. Everything's cheap. My prices weren't the best that can be found, I'm sure --- I bet a second or third trip and I could probably manage to arrange a 9 day vacation for $500/person including flights from Munich. On the other hand, it's not as nice as the Virgin Islands Trip, where the swimming and diving is much superior. I had planned to dive but didn't get to it because I got sick. On the flip side, Turkey is the only place where the charter companies care about your skipper's license (every other place doesn't care, and just wants you to do a checkout) --- so if you have your documentation, it's easy to fly in and just pick up the boat without a skipper. Nevertheless, I was glad I hired one this time, for the obvious reasons --- I learnt a lot, and it wouldn't be as cheap to do so anywhere else. Highly recommended

Accept no substitutes!

I saw this shop window at the Bazaar in Marmaris. I wonder if the shop owners think it means what it means.

Review: The Snowball

The Snowball (kindle edition) is the official biography of Warren Buffet's life. It arrives at a timely moment, as the world is embroiled in a financial crisis (in fact, there's a tantalizing description of what Buffet & Co are doing as the crisis unfolded, and the approach they're taking is a major reason to buy some stock in Berkshire Hathaway)

Alice Schroeder provides a surprising opening to the book by starting with Warren Buffett's low point --- the height of the dot-com bubble in 1999, when even his shareholders were losing faith in the value-investing approach. She then back-tracks through the years to Buffett's formative years, his discovery of Benjamin Graham, and his first millions.

What does not come across from the primary sources (e.g., his annual letters to his shareholders) is how hard Buffett worked. This was a man who packed corporate ledgers on his honeymoon, who would later come to regret not having paid attention at all as his kids grew up. Clearly, there's a price to be paid for his success, and I am not at all certain many would have been willing to pay it:

As Buffett liked to put it, “Intensity is the price of excellence.” (Kindle location: 5461-62)

We are reminded that mortgage crises are not at all unusual in history:

Out in the countryside, farmers faced with foreclosure on mortgages backed by nearly worthless farmland rose up in civil disobedience. Five thousand farmers marched on the state capitol in Lincoln until panicked lawmakers hastily passed a mortgage moratorium bill. (Kindle location: 853-56)

We also get a good look at Buffett's relationships with his wife, his family, and his circle of friends. Time after time, Schroeder emphasizes how little Buffett enjoyed interacting with people, though in recent years with the death of his wife, Buffett has appeared to mature beyond that. What also comes through the book is how often Buffett was right, and how he reacted whenever he was wrong --- he did not make excuses, and tried to do the right thing.

One thing that came through in this book is Buffett's respect for capital --- he felt that he owed employees a salary, but none of the gains of businesses, and so did not consider profit-sharing plans something worthy of discussion, even in industries as highly talent dependent as the financial industry. The typical stock-option package handed out at Silicon Valley startups would undoubtedly horrify him. I wonder how he would have done as a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, but with the heavy people-involvement needed in Silicon Valley, he probably would have shied away from it as being outside his circle of competence.

Yet for someone who's so obsessed with money as Buffett is, he does not fall into the trap that many capitalists have, which is to attempt to short-change society in the long term (by crippling important social programs and providing essential services, as well as serving as a regulator to prevent people who would otherwise take insane risks from jeopardizing the entire system) in the interest of lowering short term rates --- here as in everywhere else, Buffett proves to be much more far-sighted than the typical libertarian:

If it was pointed out that risk did not disappear, those who participated in the market would explain with a sigh that securitization and swap derivatives “spread” the risk to the far corners of the globe, where it would be absorbed by so many people that it could never hurt anyone. (Kindle location: 13853-55)

All in all, The Snowball comes highly recommended as far as providing insight into what went into making the most successful investor of all time, as well as providing historical context for the current financial crisis. If you have substantial financial assets, you owe it to yourself to read this book.

Doyenz exits stealth mode

Earlier this year, I looked at a bunch of startups, including those from Paul Graham's Y-combinator. My policy with startups is that unlike a venture capitalist, I don't have energy (or the money, really), to go spray a ton of cash around a bunch of ideas and hope one sticks. I'm also relatively risk-averse, compared to those whose net worth is much higher.

Most Web 2.0 startups don't impress me, mostly because I don't see a path to revenue and profitability for most of them. Worse of all, most of them are quite cheap to run, so if you put money in them, there's no resolution for many years while they limp along. What's interesting about the Y-combinator startups is that for most of them, it's their first startup, and it shows --- there's no concern for monetization, and there's not enough "Oh yeah, if Microsoft tried to buy us for $40million I'd be thrilled and be happy to sell."

When we spoke with the Doyenz co-founders they were clearly a cut above. The first thing I liked about the business plan was how focused it was --- they aren't doing anything seriously sexy (though there are technical barriers to doing what they are doing), so it's unlikely that the next Y-combinator startup will try to address their space (and goodness knows, big companies aren't likely to do so), and it's got a path to profitability even in a recessionary environment (which is when people are most likely to want to save money, which is what Doyenz's product does). The founders have done a previous startup together, and hadn't been too shy to sell out and make money when the time came.

So a coalition of my friends and I anted up and put in some money, and here they are, several months later, with a product and customers. What's interesting is that we had the reverse of buyer's remorse after this investment round --- as we looked around and interviewed more startups, Roberto and I ended up thinking, "I wish I'd put more money into these guys. They really are different."

My Commute Got Prettier!

Munich Fall Commute

My commute took an extra 15 minutes today, because I had to stop so often to take pictures! That was a problem I never had in Mountain View, and I feel privileged!

Garmisch Fall Hike/Bike Ride

Garmisch Fall

It was a beautiful fall day today, so we got on the train at 7:44 and rode it to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, famous for the Zugspitz. Our first order of business was to explore the Partnach Gorge in Garmisch, which turned into a 2-3 hour hike as we followed the rivers up and got gorgeous views of the mountains around us.

Then it was a cable car ride back to the Olympic stadium and then a short walk back to get our bikes. We intended to ride over to the Zugspitz Bahn to hitch a ride to the tallest mountain in Germany, but between mechanicals and a general tardiness we didn't make it and ended up riding to the Eibsee instead. Nevertheless, what a gorgeous day!

Roberto's Tour Across France pictures

Tour of the Pyrenees and Juras, 2008

Funny quote w.r.t. Richard Morgan

From Mike Samuel's lips:

Raymond Chandler said, '...If you stopped to think you were lost. When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.' I think Richard Morgan's reply would be, 'When in doubt, have a woman come through the door and have sex with the protagonist.'

Yup, that's Richard Morgan alright. But his Takeshi Kovacs books are still great reading.

Review: Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom(Free Kindle download) is a short novel (really a novella) about a post-scarcity society known as The Bitchun society, a society where the reputation economy has come about. There's no money, there's only the Whuffle, which you get when people like you, or like the things you do, and you can trade that in for favors or things.

The novel revolves around a man who works in Disneyworld for the Haunted Mansion with his girlfriend who gets murdered one day. Since you can back yourself up in this universe and do a restore just as easily, he was soon resurrected, though not without a glitch. As he tries to figure out who killed him, he becomes paranoid and a thoroughly unpleasant fellow, losing his girlfriend, and slowly all his Whuffles.

As with a typical science fiction novel that's really about one idea, that entire plot is an excuse to explain the Bitchun society and the implications thereof. As a novel, complexity is lacking, and the narrator is practically unbelieveable, especially as the plot unwinds towards the end.

As an exploration of a post-scarcity society and the implications of backup/restore, however, the novella does a fine job. And given that it's such a short read, that's enough to recommend it.

Review: Star Guard

Star Guard is the first half of the Andre Norton Ombnibous Star Soldiers (dead tree edition). It's set in a universe where humans as the new species, gets it's inherently violent tendencies channeled into being mercenary warriors for various other species as part of their payment for getting the star drive.

The story revolves around a company of soldiers on a job when they get betrayed, against all galactic conventions to the contrary, and attacked with contraband weapons. The rest of it is one long adventure story, complete with treks across wilderness, alien encounters, negotiations, and all the rest of it. The military aspect is handled quite decently, and the writing workman-like but competent.

All in all, that got me through the first half of this omnibus, but I didn't have the stomach to keep reading to the next book, because the tropes she used are all too common today, so the plot kept feeling predictable. I'm discovering that the Baen library is not quite to my taste.

Review: The Business

The Business is Iain Bank's foray into a novel about corporations and companies. Unlike Richard Morgan's Market Forces (Banks was a banker, while Morgan was an ESL instructor), Banks characteristically builds an Utopian-type company.

The Business is a corporation that's several hundred years old (trust a British SF writer to come up with a centuries old corporation which nobody has ever heard of) that's governed like a democracy --- managers are voted managers by people who have to report to them, and corporate officers are only allowed to buy perks (such as houses, etc) from the company, and on their death, cannot pass such perks on to their descendants.

The story follows Kathryn Telman, an up and coming woman executive in The Business who specializes in technology investments. At the start of the story, she's on sabbatical and spends her free time visiting (where else) corporate locations and investments for fun. We follow her as she flies from one company event to another, spurning suitors, and getting an explanation of how such a business would work, and how she was uplifted from grungy beginnings by a kind Business woman, and various machinations The Business is going through to try to get a seat on the UN.

Mid-way through the book, I realized that I didn't know what Banks was building towards. Then in the last 2 chapters he ties up all the loose ends, even the ones I didn't know were there, and then ends the novel in such a way that I think any feminist would be offended. In any case, I found the ending unsatisfying, so I'm afraid I'll have to lump this in together Song of Stone, though it's far more readable and much more coherent than that turkey was.

Review: The Lion of Farside

The Lion of Farside(Dead Tree Edition) is a cross-world fantasy novel. Like many stereotypes of the mid-west, Curtis Macurdy grows up and marries his uncle's wife, and then discovers that she's from another world (which explains why she stayed 25 all those years she was married to his uncle). Then one day, the other worlders shows up and kidnaps her, and Macurdy crosses over himself, discovers formerly unknown talents he never knew he had in the area of magic and warfare, conquers a country and starts a war to get her back.

There, I've summarized the book in a paragraph, now you don't have to read me. The writing isn't great, the plot is pretty dumb, and this is probably the male equivalent of the bodice ripper I just panned. I guess I really do like the books I actually pay for on the Kindle better than the free ones I find randomly.

Review: Touch of Evil

I'm beginning to think that all the free e-book giveaways that Tor books launched are modern boddice-rippers. What's frustrating, in the case of Touch of Evil is that the authors are actually very readable --- the book flows easily, and there's such seamless collaboration between the authors that I can't see two different authors at work.

The story evolves around Katie, who apparently had her fiance stolen by a vampire woman in the past, tangled with the vampire crowd, and got away with their grudging respect. Katie's a modern woman --- headstrong, stubbornly independent, and unable to rely on anyone (least of all a man), she tries to tackle all her problems by herself, headstrong, so when she comes back from a business trip and is attacked by vampires she goes on a rampage.

Love interest is introduced in the form of a man in distress in this case a fireman who's looking for an apartment to rent in the building that Katie owns. After this, there's a series of reveal after reveal, some action sequences, and an ending that's complete with a count-down and kitschy ending. It's practically a made-for-tv movie.

What I do like about the setting is that it's a world where everyone knows about vampires and werewolves and the like --- there's none of the "No, they don't exist" reactions that you see in many other urban fantasy settings --- the authors truly did create an alternative world and made everything stick. Unfortunately, they didn't take it to its logical conclusion --- after all, in a world where the police knew about vampires and were-wolves, they wouldn't be so woefully unequipped to deal with them.

Logic aside, there's plenty of longing and sighs, and stupidity amongst the characters. This is a trashy novel and doesn't pretend to be otherwise, and I did wish more than once that the authors had decided to tell a better story instead --- there's so much talent here going to waste!

Review: Lord of Light

There's nothing as fulfilling as reading old Roger Zelazny, and Lord of Light is still one of the best science fiction novels written out there. The story starts thus:
His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be a god. Circumstances being wha they were, neither admission could be of any benefit. Silence, though, could.

The story is science fiction, though that's revealed in dribs and drabs, bits and pieces throughout the story. We slowly learn of the planet's past, and the history of the colonists and the crew that brought them to this world. Having overcome the obstacles and successfully established a colony, the crew of the ship have set themselves up as gods, claiming for themselves the role of gods in the Hindu pantheon and rigging up life on the world in a Hindu society.

Cast in the role of the rebel is Sam, who adopts the persona real life historical rebel against Hinduism, Buddhism's Siddharta. All the technology is couched in mythological terms, right down to the indigenous intelligent beings of the planet.

In any case, the story starts with Sam's reincarnation, and then flashes back, wheel-of-time fashion to past events, and recounts everything that brought the gods to this point. The final part brings everything to a conclusion, and is surprisingly short and quite anti-climatic. On the other hand, perhaps in the modern age, Zelazny would have been tempted to turn this into a 7-book cycle, and one should be grateful that he wrote in an age where one novel was plenty to tell a complete story.

Highly recommended.

Review: Lamb

Lamb (dead tree edition) is admittedly Christopher Moore's bid to answer the question, What if Jesus knew Kung Fu?

The book reveals that Jesus's best friend in childhood was Levi, also known as Biff. Like a true wing-man, Biff goes through life protecting Jesus from his own holy-ness. If there was any despicable act that needed doing, Biff would do it, up to and including adultery, poison, and so on and so forth.

A lot of the humor is really juvenile (up to and including the toilet humor in one scene) in the Farelly brothers sense, and perhaps it would be fun to think of a movie version of Lamb directed by the two of them.

Nevertheless, at the end of a long day of cycling in the Pyrenees, this was a really fun book to be reading. Recommended. Heck, even Scarlet, a much more refined reader than I am, liked it.

Get Rich Slow

With the recent market collapse, I've been literally getting questions and queries from all over the world about what I'm doing, and what's going on.

I've been relatively sanguine about the whole affair --- not just because I'm in Munich, so I'm quite far away from all the noise. First of all, what's happening is a purely financial matter --- if all the banks went away tomorrow, companies will still get things done. Corporations still run relatively little debt, and a little bit of history will tell you that what we have here isn't even as bad as the 1987 stock market drop. The probability of another Great Depression is quite slight. I'd be much more worried if there was another world war

A review of the sample asset allocation spreadsheet I put together in late July shows a 7% drop. (This over-states the losses, since it ignores dividends and interest, but you get the point) While that wouldn't make you a happy camper, it is certainly not something to panic about. In fact, if you invest for long enough, you will have a year with a 30% drop eventually. You just don't know when. It might be this year, but it might come the day before you retire. That's why financial planning is a multi-decade process, and month-by-month posts and portfolio watching is likely to be counter-productive.

I just observed that one of my watched financial blogs pfblog has stopped updating his monthly portfolio reports since July. This is how survivorship bias works --- at this moment anyone who's been successful will be bragging about his results, while failures like pfblog keep quiet. This is why active investing will never go away --- there's too much in human nature flogging it, while passive investing would be very much like a spam e-mail message telling you about how to Get Rich Slow.

Review: Everything's Eventual

After reading Duma Key, I resolved to read more Stephen King, since I found Duma Key so much fun. So I picked up Everything's Eventual (Dead Tree edition) just before the Tour Across France.

Everything's Eventual is a collection of short stories. Nearly every genre of horror is covered, ranging from the meeting with the devil (The Man in the Black Suit) to the haunted room (1408 --- this also appeared in On Writing in draft form).

The stories are quite uneven in quality, but I found Autopsy Room Four, Everything's Eventual, and The Death of Jack Hamilton particularly good. I got my money's worth, but unfortunately, I didn't think this collection was sufficient to get me to run out and buy more King books until I am back in the US and can sample his books using the sample feature of the Kindle. Still, at $7, I got my money's worth, so a mild recommendation is in order.

Review: Zoe's Tale

Zoe's Tale (Kindle Edition) is the latest book in John Scalzi's Old Man's War universe, taking place concurrently with The Last Colony.

Even though Scalzi swears up and down that the book is independent of The Last Colony, I don't think it can easily be read that way --- you would miss a lot of context, and that would lead you to think that this was not a very rich universe. Scalzi agonizes a lot on his blog as to whether he got the teenage girl's voice right, and he does. But I've never been a teenage girl, so I'm not sure I'd qualify to pass that judgment.

Unfortunately, it feels a bit like that's his only goal for the entire book --- there's not a lot of additional story, and while the travails of a teenage girl in a colony who's the Chosen one is entertaining, it strays too much into Buffy territory for me, and unfortunately, Scalzi is no Joss Whedon.

If you like the previous Scalzi books, then you'll eventually pick up Zoe's tale, but I see no reason not to wait for the paperback version (well, ok, I picked up the Kindle edition).

Conclusion

Having ridden the France, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, and Italy, I have to say that the food in France is better, but you do pay a price for it --- you sacrifice 2 hours a day of riding time at least for the food if you go for the fixed price menus that are the best value --- if you just order a plat it can take much less time. Grocery store lunches are fine, but it can be tough to find a grocery store at times.

The scenery in Switzerland and Austria is definitely better. If I were to advise a first time tourist in Europe who was reasonably fit, I would recommend that they start in Switzerland --- the food is good if you know where to go, and with Jobst's Tourof the Alps collection on-line there's no excuse for not knowing where to eat and where to stay in Switzerland. (Some day, I'll go through his logs and extract all the good places to stay and put it up in a wiki) The scenery is spectacular and the drivers very very polite. Plus the Swiss aren't too snotty to speak English to you. French drivers aren't nearly as polite and frequently drive a bit fast for the conditions, though not as badly as the Italians do.

The big problem with riding in France is the trains --- long distance trains are a nightmare as far as bringing a bike is concerned, and the German speaking countries definitely are far more accommodating of bikes on trains. I don't think there's a serious price difference between the countries.

All in all, I'm not surprised that Jobst can tour the Alps year after year for 40 years --- the Pyrenees was fun once, but my next mountain tour in Europe will definitely be in the Alps. Though Mike, Roberto and I are contemplating Japan or Taiwan. It would be nice to tour in a country where I speak the local language for a change.

Review: Exposure Lights Joystick Maxx

When I learned that my commute was going to be 50% unpaved, I realized that my Lumotec/Shimano generator hub combination wasn't going to cut it. Unfortunately, the cheap LED solutions such as the Cateye 301s weren't going to cut it, so I asked Pardo what he used, since he had a fancy, tiny flash-light looking thingy mounted on his bike. His answer was the Exposure Joystick Maxx.

This is a tiny light (18mm diameter), and it's light --- 80 grams! The mount is a simple U-shape mount that the light snaps into, and it claims a 3 hour run time at a 240 Lumen rating, with other modes lasting as long as 24 hours in the lowest beam, and a near infinite lifespan in flashing mode. It also comes with a helmet mount that I didn't bother to test (why mount your light further away from the ground?).

In head to head with the Lumotec light, there's no question. At maximum beam, the Joystick kicks its ass, even though it's mounted higher. At low beam, it's only as bright as the Lumotec. The beam pattern is clearly not as good, but with the overwhelming amount of light provided, it doesn't have to be to provide sufficient light off road for riding.

I then took the light on the Tour Across France. We didn't use the lights much, but it was a test as to whether the self-discharge rate of the battery was low enough that it would last 3 weeks of intermittent use. It went through the tour with flying colors, with the battery indicator indicating that there was plenty of charge left at the end of the tour.

My one big criticism of this unit is that the built-in battery is not user-replaceable. Of course, I hate that, but on the other hand, not having a separate battery pack makes this unit lighter and more compact, and that's why I bought it, so that's really not a valid criticism. It is also expensive --- $240. Then again, Dinotte charges almost as much for a light that's not as compact or as light. Recommended with the above caveats.

Bourg-en-Bresse Rest Day

This rest day composed mostly of us riding around meeting Roberto's old friends, then coming back to the Solers' house where Roberto & Mike did some heavy lifting by moving firewood out of the yard into the garage. After that we moved into a hotel in Bourg-en-Bresse and Roberto treated everyone to a get-together dinner.

Athens Slideshow

The last slideshow I have from Greece. This was the day I spent walking around Athens.



Note you can view the high quality version by double clicking on the video and going to the Youtube website directly. The pictures look a TON better there!

Remuzat to St. Julian en Vencors

We woke up in the morning to consider whether or not to go over to Rosans to attempt Col de Pommerol (1072m). On second look, not only was the traverse to Rosans a red road, it was also a climb in itself, and I didn't know if we had time to do 4 climbs today, so we headed North on D61 while the day was windless, riding through la Motte-Chalancon and Bellegarde before the road went over Col de Premol (964m). The descent from Joncheres was pretty enough, but at the bottom we had no choice but to head North on an unpleasant main road in the area, D93 towards Die.

That in itself wasn't too bad, but the road headed directly into a painful headwind, lending only morbid amusement to the phrase We are going to Die! Even with moderate pace-lining, my legs weren't what they should have been by the time we entered Die for a light lunch and some grocery shopping.

Then we began the climb up Col de Rousset (1367m). This was a tough climb, not because it was steep, but because several places in the climb, I was blown to a complete stop. I got to the point where I had to draft Roberto while going uphill, which was a pain in the neck, something I only had to repeat before in St. Christophe in 2005. Near the top of the switch-backs, the wind helped up some sections, but I got hungry so I stopped to eat a banana. Roberto would say that this was the first time he'd ever see me stop because I was too tired to keep going, but I guess the previous times I'd done it he wasn't anywhere near to see it.

Col de Rousset ends in a tunnel, and we zipped through that with a tailwind, and immediately stopped on the other side to put on everything we owned because it was cold! We descended D518 down towards La Chapelle-en-Vencors, but fortunately, there was not much wind there. At St. Agnan-en-Vencours, we chose to take D103, the scenic white road towards St. Martin-en-Vencors, and scenic it was, running along a babbling brook, with farmland to the right, and a hill on our left.

In St. Martin-en-Vencors, we found that the only hotel in town was under reconstruction, so we had no choice but to ride on past Herbouilly and St. Julien-en-Vencors, where the hotel in town was fully booked. However, the owner was kind enough to call around, and found us a B&B named The Tranquil Coin. By this point I was bonking, and despite chewing through a couple of gu packets still wasn't quite myself. But The Tranquil Coin wasn't too far, so by the time we got there it wasn't too bad.

Nevertheless, we had a complication --- the owner had an event at 7:30pm, and wasn't intending to serve dinner. We asked if there was another restaurant nearby that was open, but when she called it, it wasn't open. Looking at us in pity, she immediately offered to cook us dinner at 6:30pm, which we promptly accepted and then had the fastest 4 course French meal we'd ever had!

Exhausted by 109km of headwind, and 1831m of climbing, I slept like a log that night.

Orange to Entrechaux

We woke up to a breakfast buffet that was satisfying, and then started riding North to Entrechaux. A stiff headwind blew in from the North, which I took as a good sign, despite the presence of clouds overhead. Riding into a stiff headwind is no fun, even though I had Mike and Roberto to paceline behind much of the time. Since we were heading North-East, and a big mountain was directly to the East of us, we soon faced a headwind, which made pacelining impossible given that we couldn't use the full width of the road.

At Rasteau, we finally had to head south for a little bit, and the relief was immense. Then we rode through Vaison-la-Romaine, where I realized we should have headed the day before, since there seemed to be plenty of lodging in this town. A stop at the bike shop to search for a replacement center-set screw for the one that had fallen off Mike's bike yielded nothing. Riding out of Vaison, however, Mike suffered another front flat, which once again proved to be a glass shard.

Riding into Entrechaux, we spied a castle on the hill, but in town did not find a tourist information center except a map with hotels listed. Calling the first hotel yielded no answer, but the second hotel answered and we made a reservation and rode there to find that it was actually a vineyard near St. Marcellin. We booked a Demi-Pension and then went in for lunch.

After lunch, it was 3pm, and the overcast clouds started to threaten rain, so doing Mt. Ventoux was out of the question. I rode into town instead to get more batteries to feed the GPS, some snacks, and some soda, and got rained on a little for my trouble, but the rest of the afternoon and evening was uneventful.

A super short day, with only 48.7km and 432m climbed, though the stiff headwind made me glad to finish.

Long Term Review: Custom Frame from Carl Strong

I first got my custom frame in February, just before moving to Munich. Since then, it's seen almost daily use, whether on my commute, or on long tours through Germany or France. It's seen a lot of rain, wore through 2 chains, and wore through a tire. It's seen century/day rides, and slow plodding days. It's seen mountain days in the Pyrenees and flat days in the Salzburg Lakes.

The bike's been everything I wanted, and my only regret is not buying it years ago when I started touring the alps. The Tektro caliper brakes work much better than cantilevers ever did, while surviving wet Munich relatively well. (I'm almost through one set of Kool-stop Salmon brake pads)

The bike has a dual-personality. With 25mm tires, it rides as nice as my old Fuji, with a little less immediate responsiveness on out of saddle springs and climbs, but with a little more give here and there (which I didn't believe until I observed the fork flex during braking). With wide tires and a load, it behaves as well or better as the Heron Touring frame back when I was using one, with the supreme advantage that the brakes don't suck.

Things I'll change about the bike in the future: ditch the spoke holders --- they only serve to interfere with the chain. I would also raise the brake bridge a bit (to 54mm) so I don't have to file down long reach caliper brakes to get the pads to square with the rim.

But otherwise, all I can say is that all bikes should have this geometry. I see no reason to change! Thanks, Carl!

Review: Traffic

Tom Vanderblit addresses a problem as old as the first cities --- traffic. Each chapter of this book (Kindle edition) is relatively independent, and addresses just one or two topics, making this an easy read for those who are frequently interrupted. Topics covered include: social interaction on the road, and why bad drivers never get better.

One of the most fascinating points the book makes is that most of us never get feedback about minor carelessness or infringement --- that's because most of our weaknesses don't cause accidents most of the time. So if you're a bad driver, there's no feedback telling you that you're a bad driver, so you just get more and more reckless and worse and worse until you finally crash.

Another interesting segment of the book is the section on traffic calming --- it turns out that things like bumps and traffic islands don't do a lot of good, but making the street clearly different from an inter-city highway changes things dramatically.

There's also another section on varying culture's approach to traffic. For instance, Americans happily accept that 30000 people will get killed on US roads every year, 10 times that of the September 11th terrorist attacks, yet everyone seems to think that there's nothing you can do about it. The opposite approach is Sweden, which at only 60 deaths a year, wants to reduce it to zero.

Even stuff I knew about, like Risk Compensation is covered well and the book is in general well written enough that I was always happy to read "just one more chapter before going to bed."

Recommended for both entertainment and edification.

Equipment Review: Vibram Five Fingers

When one of my colleagues mentioned that he used Vibram Five Fingers as his touring shoes, I was intrigued. These shoes looked like they compressed very well, and they looked like they might well be comfortable. For my last 2 or 3 bike tours, I had made to with only wearing cycling shoes every where, and while it was OK, cycling shoes do have a tendency to dig a bit here and there, and after a day of cycling in them, the prospect of having to wear them for dinner puts me off a bit.

So I gritted my teeth, ordered a pair for me and a pair for Lisa, and had Roberto send them over.

First of all, they take a bit of practice before you can put them on fast. The trick for me is to spread my little toe a bit and slide that into the pocket, and then pull on the rest of the shoe. Otherwise, it can be a bear! You also have to be careful not to snug up too much the strap, or you can end up cramping your toes.

The shoes have no padding at all. Let me repeat. Zero padding. You walk in them and you can feel all the texture of the ground beneath you, whether it is grass (pleasant), cobble (less pleasant), or asphalt. It really does feel like walking barefoot, which means that as someone who's not used to running around barefoot outside my apartment, I am actually a slower walker in these than in my cycling shoes! And of course, they don't take orthotics. There's all sorts of debate as to whether that's good for you or not, but I figure I didn't walk enough in them to make much difference. These are, after all, off bike shoes. They do look like they'll be great for sailing, so I'll try them for my next sailing trip. But would I use them for long distance hiking or running? No way.

What I was not prepared for, however, was the kind of attention these shoes would get me. My first clue was when I tried them in the office and walked around in them. First of all, women notice shoes. The very next day, I had women from the office ask me where I got them, how they felt, and can they try them on if Lisa's pair would fit them? The cuter and more fashion-conscious the woman, the more attracted they seemed to be to those shoes!

My next clue was when Guy Kawasaki visited Google. He derailed his talk for 3 minutes to talk about those shoes!

Then in Bordeaux, while wearing those shoes out to dinner, I got so much attention from the women on the tram that we took to and from the restaurant that I felt, for the first time in my life, as though I was attractive to women. (I was not --- but my shoes definitely were!) Then in Argeles-Sur-Mer, a beautiful blond approached me while I was doing the geekiest of all activities, playing Air Hockey with Roberto. All because of these shoes.

All I can say is, if you're a single man, get yourself a pair of these shoes right now, before they become so popular that they become common! Your guy friends will make fun of you, and call them Monkey Feet, but you will be a hot person for all of the time it takes before the novelty wears off. And if you're a dorky guy like me, that's a novel and strange experience, and well worth the $70. (Heck, if you're not a single guy, buy a pair for yourself and your girlfriend... then you can be hot together)

Assling-Chiemsee-Grafing

 

With the weekend forecast to be sunny, I wanted to do a ride, but not something painful, since we'd just come back from the Tour Across France. When Radina suggested a ride to the Chiemsee and back, using her newly discovered method of using the MVV ticket on the Deutsche-Bahn, I agreed. Radina, Mike and I met at the Munich main station at 9:20 for the 9:40 train, which arrived in Assling at 10:15am. Meeting us there was Frank Spychalski.

Since it was Radina's route, she led the ride, though occasionally from behind, as Mike and Frank seemed to be feeling strong today. It was cold and overcast, surprisingly so, and I found myself in need of food as soon as we crossed the bridge at Rott-Am-Inn. Riding with a 1:75000 map, we still occasionally got confused and found ourselves lost every so often. Nevertheless, as we approached Gstadt-am-Chiemsee, the sun finally broke through the clouds and we got ourselves a little warmer at lunch.

After lunch, I saw Mike putting on sunscreen --- an optimist! I myself kept my arm and leg warmers on, and eschewed the sun. We rode off along the Chiemsee for a bit, with beautiful views to the left of us --- it was quite windy, as evidenced by the number of sailboats out with sails full, but with the wind behind us it was much nicer than having the wind in front of us. Nevertheless, it still felt chilly in the shade.

Past Rimstim, we rode towards the Simsee, but missed a turned and climbed a purely gratituous 9% grade before turning around and riding towards the Simsee for more beautiful views. At that point we got lost trying to get to Vogtareuth, and ended up at the local airport. Fortunately, a local pointed us in the right direction, and soon we were along the Inn river bike path, and then crossing the bridge.

Once over the bridge, the GPS took over and we navigated quickly towards Grafing, but Frank chose the direct route back to Assling. The sun was now low in the sky and we were treated to gorgeous sunset views of the surrounding houses and landscape --- Germany at its best. Unfortunately I'd forgotten my camera and Radina's camera wasn't good for shooting on the move.

We rolled into Grafing Bahnof just as the S4 pulled in, so we boarded in the nick of time at 6:00pm. A surprisingly beautiful ride at 1134m and 108km of riding.

Pictures of my feet on Guy Kawasaki's blog

Guy Kawasaki visited Google Munich on the day of my departure for the Tour Across France, so he caught me wearing my Vibram Five Fingers and was so taken with them he derailed his talk for about 3 minutes. (I don't know if his talk's up on YouTube)

He also took a picture of Mike Samuel's Smoothie ES because of his cowbells:


I'll post a thorough review of these weird shoes later as part of the Tour writeup.

Equpiment Review: Bagman Saddlebag Support

After years of using a saddlebag without saddlebag support (and wearing holes in my Nelson Longflap as a result), I finally gave in this year and bought one, mostly because I had switched away from my beloved Brooks B-17 in favor of a plastic saddle that won't go bad in the rain. (This also saved a ton of weight)

Bagman saddlebag supports are apparently quite hard to find, but a call to Wallingford Bikes turned one up. I ordered one without the quick release (because Ti versions weren't in stock), but the one that showed up turned out to have the quick release feature instead (which weighs a bit more).

The support snaps onto the saddle rails with an allen screw, and installation takes no more than 3 minutes, even if you loc-tite the assembly. However, the Bagman has a fatal flaw, which is that the struts supporting the bag proper are mere rods that slip into a hole in the saddle attachment, which is then held entirely with friction by a couple of small screws (about 3mm in diameter) and a bolt.

Whoever designed the Bagman has never done a major bike tour involving rough roads or rough stuff, because even though I applied loc-tite to all of these screws, after about 15 days of rough riding (or 3 months of daily commuting on my Munich Commute) and the rods would slip out. The first time this happened it was in heavy Munich traffic, which was quite disconcerting. Fortunately, the design is such that you won't lose the small screws if that happens.

Since then, I've tightened the screws periodically, and just before any long tour. Even so, during this past tour, my bagman came loose in this fashion not once, but twice. The proper solution is to undo all the screws, mark the rods, and then put in divots in the rods to prevent this sort of motion in the future. But seriously, it's poor engineering to expect the customer to put in fixes for obviously bad design.

The quick release feature also turned out to be quite a bit of a mixed blessing. First of all, it truly is only a quick release --- putting the bag back in is just as laborious as the pins aren't precise enough for you to thread it through and already looped leather strap --- or at least, I can't do it. Secondly, the pins are basically tied to a screw tip which pushes back against springs. Guess what --- they unscrew themselves with sufficient bouncing on the saddle, and come off. If this happens during a tour when you happen to drop the pins and the springs, good luck! So on a tour you have to check these pins for tightness and periodically tighten them.

I cannot therefore recommend the Bagman for serious cycle tourists who are not mechanically savvy and willing to perform the modification. This is a pity, since I still think saddlebags are a better solution than panniers for light touring, but given my need for CPAP therapy, perhaps my days of light touring are past. The search for a better solution continues...

Luz-St.-Sauveur to Arreau

From Screen Captures

We had shopped for groceries the night before, so we ate breakfast in the hotel room, and got ready for an early start for the Col du Tourmalet (2115m). The climb started out gently enough, and in fact never really exceeded about 8% grade throughout the entire stretch, reminding me a lot of Sustens pass in that respect. It was, however, wild and desolated as promised, with relatively little traffic except those of the van-supported 6-day Pyrenees riders.

The summit, however, was quite cold, and when I got there I immediately put on arm warmers, leg warmers and a jacket. Mike had been waiting for quite some time, and by the time Mike and I got into the cafe and placed our orders for lunch, Roberto had just shown up. We had a nice meal in quite a reasonably priced restaurant, then put on everything we owned before starting the fast and extremely steep descent on the East side of the pass. Whatever else I can say about the Pyrenees, the descents on the East side of the passes are as rugged and fast as anything I've encountered anywhere.

At the bottom of the hill, we looked for water at St. Marie-de-Campan, but the only fountain in town had an Eau Non-Potable sign attached to it. We went ahead and started climbing Col d'Aspin (1489m) anyway, trusting on faith that we would find something. That faith was justified a little later when I saw a man in a driveway pulling his bike out of his car. I stopped and asked if he could give us water --- even though my French was next-to-non-existent, as soon as I pointed to my bottle he knew what we needed and proceeded to fill up our bottles.

After Col du Tourmalet, Col d'Aspin felt like a really short climb to me! We wound around some hill sides, seeing paragliding lessons being given to a few clients by a local outfit, and then into a line of long, lazy switchbacks that eventually led us to a beautiful overlook which turned out to be the summit. What Aspin lacks in height, it makes up for in scenery --- it is really beautiful, with long views down into the valleys in the region, as well as good looks at surrounding peaks. While the Pyrenees aren't as spectacularly pretty as the Alps, they have their own beauty that makes them worth a visit.

We hung out there at the summit for about 15 minutes admiring the view, before deciding to brave the descent to Arreau to spend the night. The descent was fun! At a steady 9% or so, great sightlines, dry roads, and few motor-vehicles, we all hit speeds in excess of 55kph. In Arreau, the tourist information service pointed us to only two hotels. The 3 star Logis de France place was far too expensive for us, so we took a room at the other spot.

With plenty of time left in the day, Roberto & Mike visited an internet cafe while I bought some groceries for breakfast the next day. Dinner was at a local restaurant where we met some British cyclists who were there for a few day rides and then a drive to see a stage of the Vuelta. Using discount airlines and good timing, their flights were cheaper than our train tickets! But then they had to rent a car for their entire trip of only a few days, so it was probably a wash.

A relatively short day at 62.4km but with 2037m of climbing.

Cycling Culture Differences

Sitting in the office cafeteria the other day with Sara-the-Intern, we had the following conversation:

"I don't like cycling."
"But why do you bike to work?"
"It's faster than walking, and cheaper than transit."

So there, there are many women in Germany who dislike cycling, and yet ride their bikes to work. Conversely, there are many women in Mountain View (an arguably better place for cycling year round) who won't even consider cycling to work.

When asked why, most women would say that it's just too dangerous, even if they lived close enough to work to do so. But Munich is just as dangerous --- the bike paths have intersection conflicts that will drive most American League Cycling Instructors wild.

The big difference is in perception --- very few utility/commuters in Munich wear helmets. Cycling to the average person, is no different than walking --- you wouldn't wear a helmet to walk, even if the statistics tells you otherwise. (In fact, if you believe the statistics, you should wear a helmet when driving your car --- head injuries are a common cause of serious disability in car accidents!)

The minute cycling perception shifts to: it's so dangerous to ride a bike that you must wear a helmet, then most women give up cycling. Not just because it's dangerous, but also because wearing a helmet will screw up your hair, which many women know is a no-no, even if they refuse to admit to that little bit of vanity. The resulting reduction in the number of women cycling (by darn near 100%, if you compare the number of women cyclists on the road in Munich versus women cyclists in Mountain View) does eventually make cycling more dangeous, because the easiest way to reduce cycling accidents is to make cycling more popular!

I've heard this opinion articulated before, but living in Munich has really driven it home to me --- it's not uncommon here to see a woman go out on a date on a bicycle --- complete with high heels, making up, and dresses, and of course no helmet. By making cycling seem dangerous, cycling safety advocates and helmet advocates have really made cycling more dangerous for everyone, even those of us who do wear helmets. The irony is rich, and I wish I knew what to do about it.

Bielle to Luz-St.-Sauveur

We woke up this morning excited, because we were to climb none other than Col d'Aubisque (1709m), a storied climb that had seen many famous battles in the Tour de France. We started this morning with a detour onto a dirt road, however, looking for a beautiful place to photograph the mountains coming out of the surrounds. Then it was off to Laruns, where I ignored my pre-plotted GPS route in favor of following a few other cyclists up to the official start of the climb onto D918.

The initial part of the climb switched backed around the area, granting us a view of the Laruns area that reminded me of the climb up Alp D'Huez 3 years ago. However, past Gourette, the scenery takes a dramatic change that's all unique. You rise steeply up along the ridge, and on a sunny clear day, which that day was, it granted outstanding views of the valley and the roads below. At the summit there were 3 gigantic bicycles, one for each color of the Tour de France winner's jersey (overall, sprint, and mountains), and big groups of cyclists taking photos of themselves with the various memorials in the area. We ate a small lunch at the summit cafe, omelettes and bread, and looked forward to more riding.

If the Col d'Aubisque climb was beautiful, the Col du Soulor (1474m) climb was even prettier --- after dropping down through two tunnels, gentle winding climbs along a ridgeline, with fog or clouds blowing through, you arrive at a beautiful intersection with a steep and fast descent down towards Argeles Gazost. When laying out this ride on Garmin Mapsource, I had taken the trouble to wind the route through small roads which also stayed as high as possible before getting to the Gorge de Luz. The net result was that this was one of the prettiest rides through the area, with short climbs interrupting middling long descents next to rivers, falls, and staying out of high traffic areas in a way that I wouldn't have been able to do with paper maps alone. The GPS unit definitely paid for itself that day.

At the bottom near Villelongue, Roberto got a glass flat, which took quite some time to fix. Looking at the map, it looked like Luz-St. Sauveur was at the bottom of the gorge, so I told Roberto we could stop there if he liked. "I like." came the reply. Unfortunately, I had lied about the height of Luz-St. Sauveur --- it was at the top of the Gorge, but since there was a massive tail wind blowing us along the road, I didn't complain --- it wasn't very steep, and even the two tunnels were not very threatening. Nevertheless, tailwinds help me more than they help Roberto, and when we got to Luz, he was lagging a bit. At an intersection, I asked Mike if he thought Roberto would kill me if we kept going up the hill. Mike said, "There's no if about it."

So we stopped, even though it was only 4:30pm. It took a couple of tries, but we found a nice hotel in a relatively quiet area, and ate dinner near it. This was when I learned that French dinners could take not just 2 hours, but could easily be 4 hour affairs. It was becoming clear that the Amazon Kindle is an essential French dining accessory, if only because of the long waits between services.

With only 74.5km covered and 1762m climbed, we looked forward to the highest point on the tour, Col du Tourmalet the next day.

Day 3: Oschagavia to Bielle

Despite Roberto's protests, he seemed quite recovered the next day, but in the interest of trying to cover some ground, I gave up on the idea of attacking the triple climbs Portillo de Lazar (1129), Portillo de Eraice (1578), and Col de la Pierre St. Martin (1760m). I will admit that part of that was driven by the desire to escape from Spain as quickly as possible.

The alternative, Port de Larrau (1573m) and Col d'Erroymendi (1362m), was marked as scenic on the michelin map, and indeed it was quite pretty, but for most of the climb we were dogged by a large number of flies which whirled around our head creating an annoying buzzing sound. As we neared the summit of the climb, we saw the reason for them --- there were lots of horses, goats, and sheep on the road (no cows, though), and the fecal matter on the road was substantial. Once we got through the summit tunnel, however, we were exposed to a North wind that got rid of most of the flies and descending speeds meant that no flies could keep up with us.

Past Col d'Erroymendi, the road got really steep, and the descent was amazingly fast. Even Roberto admitted to pulling on the brakes out of fear at some points during the descent. In Larrau proper, Roberto asked for a lunch stop, and we treated ourselves to a two hour French lunch after the anemic Spanish equivalents the evening before.

Unfortunately, French lunches take no less than 2 hours, and it wasn't till 3:00pm that we ste off again down D26 towards Tardlets-Sorholus. Once we got to the intersection with the minor road D759 at Atherey, however, I couldn't resist the white road and chose to head towards Haux and Montory instead, which took in the minor pass Col de Serra (368m). That dropped us off on D918 where a minor climb to Lanne-en-Baretous led us to a descent towards Aramits, then Arette, and the major road towards Escot and the Col de Marie-Blanque.

It was at this point that we first encountered the official Raid Pyrenees groups --- unloaded cycle tourists who'd committed to doing 18 cols and 720km in 6 days. Being unloaded meant that they could do longer distances a day, but having to have support meant that they couldn't decide which hills to do on a daily basis, since the Raid Pyrenees organization decides which Cols must be done. They passed us in a maze of color, and we watched them go buy, knowing that we were paying half their costs by carrying lugguage ourselves.

Co de Marie-Blanque (1035m) was our first tough pass, averaging between 10-13% grades almost the entire way from about 300m or so. Coming in at the end of the day, it was a fun challenge, but the overcast skies made the climb quite enjoyable. Light traffic meant I could eschew my helmet in favor of my cycling cap, and made me feel like I was really touring. I was hoping to get to Laruns that day, but by the time I got to the summit, it was nearly 6:00pm, which made that unlikely. Fortunately, I ran into a French cyclist at the summit who knew the local hotels, and he called and made us reservations at a hotel in Bielle, though apparently the hotel was not serving dinner that night, so we'd have to go elsewhere to eat.

When everyone arrived at the summit we started the descent. Given the fading light, we could have gone fast but the descent was so pretty that we slowed down often or even stopped to take pictures. Not that photographs could have done the scenery justice --- the descent was gentle swooping curves overlooking a valley, with pastures and beautiful houses to the side, and an occasional rise so you could see how much more descending you had to do and how high you were with respect to the valley.

The hotel was a Logis de France operation, and pointed us at a restaurant in Castet a good 3km away, so we had to drop our lugguage, put lights on our bikes, and ride to the restaurant for dinner. All in all, a good day with 97.9km, 2116m climb, as respectable as a day in the Alps.

Appendix B: Tour of the Pyrenees Statistics

We totaled 1649.7km of riding over 28331m of elevation gain. The spreadsheet with daily breakdowns show that while in previous years we had many multiple days exceeding 2400m, we had none this year. We also had no days exceeding 113km, while in previous tours we usually had one or two days in excess of 150km.

Most of this was the result of us being out of shape at the start, but part of it was due to the French lunches --- at 2 hours per lunch, it really cuts into your riding time. Our longest days were the days when we chose to forgo a sit down lunch and went with a grocery store lunch instead.

The short riding days and the small amounts of elevation gain make this the easiest single bike tour in the last few years, even though I at least felt the difficulty more, showing that condition is by far the biggest variable in what makes a tour easy or hard, rather than the actual physical distance covered or elevation gained.

Day 2: St. Etienne to Ochagavia

We woke up to cloudy overcast skies. Roberto felt that the pace yesterday was a little too much, and asked for a shorter day. I didn't point out that some of the excess miles were due to a language misunderstanding rather than a desire to drive hard and exceed 2000 meters the first day. Using the GPS to guide us, we rode to St. Jean Pied-de-Port and proceeded immediately up D953 to Col de Ibaneta (1057m), our highest point so far, passing a couple of recumbents and a group of elderly cycle tourists. Roberto had brought a Pizza and I had brought an Apple, so we ate that at the top of the col, and then proceeded down the relatively short hill to NA 140 towards Alto de Remendia (1040m).

The day was quite warm, and we had to fill up with water any chance we got, and the scenery reminded me of California desert --- low shrubbery, but with quite a number of streams that told us that this place got regular rain. At the top of Alto de Remendia, Roberto asked if there was a lot more to go, and I said that there might be a retro grade between here and Ochagavia, but that was about it.

Well, there was a retro-grade, and then a swift descent past quite a bit of construction. Uncharacteristically, I descended ahead of both Mike and Roberto and waited at the intersection at Ecaroz where the road turned uphill again towards Ochagavia. We arrived there at 5pm, got a map at the tourist information, and then proceeded to discover that the hotels, B&Bs, and other tourist places were either closed or not responding to visitors knocking on their doors. This experience soured us badly on Spain, and we made it a point not to stay anywhere in Spain for the rest of the trip.

We ended up backtracking and finding dormitory accomodations at the campground outside town, which served mediocre food and a passable breakfast. We only covered 78.8km and climbed 1765m, but judging from Roberto's noises, it still wasn't considered easy.

Introducing Piaw Routing

I own a Garmin GPSMap 76 CSX, and used it extensively on the Tour Across France. One of the things that made it really useable on a bicycle tour is that you can set the driving speeds, which leads the Garmin unit to route roads the way a cyclist would --- small streets are best, and the smaller the street, the better the cycling. The results have been nothing short of astounding --- I would never have found many of the roads the GPS unit found, since my Michelin maps just aren't detailed enough. The routing software ignores elevation information, so frequently we found ourselves on beautiful, isolated nice climbs that only locals would know about. In a fit of egoism, I'm going to call this set of settings "Piaw Routing".

"Piaw Routing" is not perfect. Sometimes, it leads the unit to route you in a loop for some perverse reason, and occasionally the main road is traffic free so if you're in a hurry, Piaw Routing is not for you. And of course, you have to like hills, since frequently the smallest roads are on hills. (Piaw Routing once put us on a hiking path --- it was gorgeous and ridable but steep!) But you should never use your GPS unit blindly --- you always have to think anyway, so for the judicious user, Piaw Routing in addition to the other tips on using the Garmin unit, makes a Garmin GPS unit (and appropriate maps) not just a nice toy, but an essential tool for cycle touring in a foreign land.

Note that I only have a PC with MapSource --- I don't know how to change the settings on the Mac, so if you're a Mac owner, you're on your own.

Day 1: Hendaye to St. Etienne-de-Baigorry

From GPS Tracklog

We caught the 7:10am train to Hendaye from Bordeaux, a splitting train which forced a last minute scramble to switch train cars before the train took off. That part of France being flat, the train moved relatively fast, and the train even had a bike car, though with only two bike spots. I ended up having to put my bike on the disabled parking spot. Roberto found a Frenchman to practice his French on, and in the process found out that there wouldn't be much competition for lodging --- most people ended their holidays a couple of weeks ago.

Arriving in Hendaye, I immediately turned on my GPS and loaded in the first part of my pre-planned route. But first, a ride to the coast to ensure that we started at sea level was in order. The route out of Hendaye wasn't too bad, with traffic being left behind relatively quickly on a Sunday. When we came to the first pass, however, excitement caused me to opt to go up Col d'Ibardin instead of doing the two shorter Cols that the RAID Pyrenees route selected. That turned out to be a mistake, since the top of Col d'Ibardin was in Spain, and was indeed a border town where Frenchmen went to shop for goods at a discount.

The weather was warm and humid, it having rained the night before, and by the time we reached the top, it was time for an early lunch. The descent into Spain was relatively traffic free, and the ride over Col de Lizuniaga unremarkable but pretty. That brought us back into France again, followed by another isolated climb over Puerto de Otxondo, followed by another pass (Col d'Ispeguy) back into France to spend the night.

In St. Etienne-de-Baigorry, we found a hotel but it was a bit expensive, so we rode on. As we rode through town center, a man playing a strange squash hybrid with his son stopped us and gave us help in finding lodging. Arriving at the hotel, however, through a misunderstanding, Roberto thought the hotel didn't serve dinner as it was after 7:30pm. I pointed out that it was only 6:00pm, but he was too impatient to try to sort things out so we ended up riding back into town for Pizza and a really excellent Gateau Basque, a really excellent local cake. It was only after we returned to the hotel that Roberto realized that he was mistaken.

Nevertheless, a good day with 98.5km and 2026m climb.

Tour Across France 2008

At the end of August in 2008, Mike Samuel, Roberto Peon and I toured across France, starting in Hendaye on the Spanish border, and then riding across the Pyrenees to the Mediterranean coast. There, we took a train transfer to Montpellier, and then rode North through Languedoc, Provence, and the Rhone Alps to Bourg-en-Bresse and then Geneva. The journey totaled
1047 miles with 92949 feet of elevation gain . This post will gather all the information about the tour, from photos to GPS tracks, and of course, my day-by-day trip report.

Pictures

• Piaw's Photo Album
• Roberto's Photo Album

Tour Report

• Day 1: Hendaye to St. Etienne (August 31st, 2008)
• Day 2: St. Etienne to Ochagavia (September 1st, 2008)
• Day 3: Ochagavia to Bielle (September 2nd, 2008)
• Day 4: Bielle to Luz-St. Sauveur (September 3rd, 2008)
• Day 5: Luz-St. Sauveur to Arreau (September 4th, 2008)
• Day 6: Arreau to St. Lary (September 5th, 2008)
• Day 7: St. Lary to Tarascon-sur-Ariege (September 6th, 2008)
• Day 8: Tarascon-sur-Ariege to Gincla (September 7th, 2008)
• Day 9: Gincla to Argeles-sur-Mer (September 8th, 2008)
• Day 10: Rest Day (September 9th, 2008)
• Day 11: Montpellier to Causse de la Selle (September 10th, 2008)
• Day 12: Causse-de-la-Selle to Ales (September 11th, 2008)
• Day 13: Ales to Orange (September 12th, 2008)
• Day 14: Orange to Entrechaux (September 13th, 2008)
• Day 15: Entrechaux to Remuzat (September 14th, 2008)
• Day 16: Remuzat to St. Julien-en-Vencors (September 15th, 2008)
• Day 17: St. Julien-en-Vencors to La Tour du Pin (September 16th, 2008)
• Day 18: La Tour du Pin to Montagnat (September 17th, 2008)
• Day 19: Rest day (September 18th, 2008)
• Day 20: Bourg-en-Bresse to Nantua (September 19th, 2008)
• Day 21: Nantua to Geneva (September 20th, 2008)

Appendices

• Appendix A: Piaw Routing
• Appendix B: Trip Statistics
• Appendix C: Bagman Long Term Review
• Appendix D: Vibram Five Fingers Review
• Appendix E: Long Term Review: Carl's Strong custom frame
• Appendix F: Exposure Joystick Maxx Review
• Appendix G: Conclusion

Tour Across France Pictures

More Greek YouTube Videos

Well, I know no one likes looking at a gazillion pictures, so I decided to just YouTube the best of them. The first is a collection of food pictures I take...I absolutely adore eating so I try to make a picture roll of them wherever I can.



The second video is about the people I met.



Watch the high quality version if possible!

Enjoy!

Nantua to Geneva

From Screen Captures

90.9km, 1467m climbed

We left at 9:15 and immediately started to climb to Le Replat at around 900m. Unfortunately due to a navigation error we climbed the wrong hill, turning right onto D55c towards Col de Belleroche (1056m) instead of towards Col de Berentin (1144m). By the time I figured it out the others were so far ahead of me I could not catch them before the next intersection. Fortunately it was a really gentle climb with beautiful scenery, so we all enjoyed the climb.

So we descended from 1044m and went up first Col de Berentin (1144m), which was a pass surrounded by forests, then descended a bit before climbing Col de
Curvery (1178m), our last col of the trip, which was a bit desolate but not too windy. Then it was a scenic descent to Bellegarde (420m), which would have granted us a grand view of Mont Blanc if it wasn't so hazy and muggy that our visibility was restricted.

In Bellegarde, we ate a lunch at a Boulangerie before starting towards Geneva via the road to Collonges, which had an annoying amount of traffic before we turned off onto the secondary road, which was straight but also quite hilly. Just before the merge back to the main highway, I told my gps to navigate us to the train station in Geneva, and lo and behold, it gave us a series of small pleasant roads to ride on (with some climbing) by crossing into Switzerland early and winding around some roads. The moment we crossed into Switzerland I knew right away because the road
immediately got smoother!

There was any occasional headwind but only the last 5km were in nasty city traffic and we got to the hotel with no problems. The tour total was 1047 miles, which was not too bad. We had 5 flats in total, 1 shredded tire, one broken saddlebag loop, loose chain ring, loose crank, the center adjustment screw came loose off Mike's brake, the shifter came loose on Mike's bike, and his saddle bag leaned against the barrel adjuster tightening it (forcing a shim from a plastic bottle to keep the bag away from the brake)), a buckle on Roberto's handlebar bag broke. Roberto's improvised fender, however, held up for thye entire trip.

Bourg-en-Bresse to Nantua

From Screen Captures

From Bourg-En-Bresse, it was a short ride today, though we first did a a brief tour to see folks we had stayed with one last time before departing --- first to the tourist information center, where we met Doriane, and she got us a reservation at Nantua, then over to the Soler's in Montagnat so I could pick up a tube of moisturizing lotion that I left the day before.

Mr. Soler had told us the day before that even though the road to Geneva on N84 was a red road on the Michelin map, there was a freeway to Geneva that paralleled it, which meant that N84 was actually worth riding. And so it proved true --- we had light traffic on rolling hills until past the river L'ain, where we were faced with 10-15% grades up from 350m to 780m over about 3km to Col du Berthiand (780m). The sun came out, so even though it was cool, we had clear views and of course, the cool weather made for nice climbing.

Mike's saddle bag hoop detached from the saddle and his right shifter came apart but both were fixed --- the saddlebag strap was attached to a seat rail instead, and Mike disassembled and reassembled the shifter. All our bikes are creaking, clicking or making strange noises that they didn't make at the start of our tour so it's just as well that our last serious day of riding was tomorrow.

We descended from the Col into Nantua, arriving at 1:00pm, in time to have a 2 hour lunch, and then a relaxing day by the beautiful lake, either walking around or shopping for groceries since the hotel we were in had expensive breakfasts. We made a reservation in Geneva for the next day, and slept well.

Not bad for 49.7km, 939m climbed, since it would let us to more riding tomorrow.

La Tour du Pins to Montagnat

From Screen Captures

We woke up in the morning to a beautiful clear day. Having bought breakfast so we could eat in the room, we checked out in record time and proceeded to ride out. Unfortunately, record time was way too fast, since I ended the day with the hotel key in my pocket! My problem today was that as we moved away from the highlands into lower areas, I was running out of scenic roads to ride, and it would be a challenge to keep us away from the big roads. We first rode out towards Morestel, and then from there headed towards Creys Mepiu.

After that, the problem became to get across the freeway and bridge near St. Maurice de Remens, so I ended up setting the GPS and getting it to do the navigation. This was Piaw Routing in action, and I was impressed by the result --- it picked a really hilly route that dumped us North of where I expected us to end up, which was not a bad thing at all, since it got us closer to the Bourg-en-Bresse. We had a quick pizza lunch, mindful of the need to get into Bourg-en-Bresse at a reasonable hour so that Roberto could find his old friends.

From there on, it was a straight shot to Bourg-en-Bresse along the river L'ain, which despite the looks of the map was not a flat road at all, but rolled up and down. Finally, a zig and a zag along D109 brought us to Les Rippes, 5km away from Bourg-en-Bresse, then we were forced to ride on the National Highway for about 2km, before turning off onto a quiet road into Bourg-en-Bresse, arriving at 3:15pm.

At that point, Roberto took over and navigated into a neighborhood where someone shouted out his name and came over and hugged him. That was how we met Mr. Soler, who led us to his home, and then together with his wife, graciously invited us to stay over for the night. We accepted.

105km, 938m climbed.

St. Julien-en-Vencors to La Tour du Pin

From Screen Captures

After yesterday's all day battle with the headwind (109km, 1831m climbed), we woke up to nearly calm weather, albeit quite a bit of fog. We started the morning descending to Gorges de la Bourne, which then led to with a gentle climb up Col de Romeyere (1074m). The light was beautiful, with sunlight filtering down through the clouds, lighting up the hills with patches of light, and on occasion as we rode up the pass, the light would come down at just the right place to light up a church, a village, or a building. As we rode up the pass, however, we were soon into the fog, and could not see much past our headlights. We even turned on our tail-lights, just in case, but the traffic was so light that we didn't have to worry very much.

At the top, we started a descent down the Route des Ecouges, and it was wonderful. We first descended in the fog and then hit an intersection which gave us views of a gorge below. We then entered a 400m long unlit tunnel (single lane only), which put us on notice that we were in for an exciting adventure! After that, the road was lined with waterfalls, sharp dropoffs, and views that might as well have come out of.a Chinese painting. Then at the bottom of the hill in St. Gervais, we found a beautifully paved bike path along the Isere river which took us to Tullins for lunch, which was much needed by then because I was so cold!

The rest of the day was filled with gentle rolling hills, a lake (Lac de Paladru) and then more hills till we got to La Tour du Pin at 5pm. La Tour du Pin looked like a nice place to stop, despite it being only 83.6km with 1067m climbed. Looking at the map that night, I saw that we would make Bourg-en-Bresse tomorrow if we got an early start and did not eat a long lunch.