Review: Absolute Superman Vol 1 & 2

 I missed all the hoopla when DC announced the new absolute universe, so I only picked up Last Dust of Krypton when I finished Die and the Hoopla recommendation engine told me to check this one out. The cover art looked absolutely gorgeous, so I borrowed it and read it. And then checked out Son of the Demon right after that.

This is an alternate Superman, where Kal-El comes to Earth not as a baby but instead as a young boy. It reimagines the meaning of the S symbol, and this Earth is a hellscape that's evocative of what billionaires on this planet are turning the Earth into. (Krypton is no different, and two books give you plenty of glimpses of what Krypton was like)

The villain that this Superman faces is also different from the traditional Lex Luthor (though Brainiac does show up). It's also fun seeing a different Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen. The Superman cape also literally now has a mind of its own.

The core of the character remains the same, though he's got a lot less power and obviously the science is still missing --- Superman was always a fantasy story, not science fiction. When I think about it, I still think Miracleman is still by far the best Superman-style story ever told, but this version of Superman is at least different enough that I'm curious to see where the writers go with it. At the very least the art was consistently good. Recommended.

June 18th: Saint-Etienne-de-Tinee to Isola 2000

 Waking up in time for the breakfast to be served, we were relieved to discover that breakfast wasn’t entirely devoted to kids. At the very least, their coffee machines worked. The adult guardians of the kids at the field trips would fill giant pitchers of juice from the juice machines, but it was clear they weren’t going to feed their kids coffee.

Over breakfast, we could hear the adults saying to the kids, “Are we ready to have a good time?” The kids would cheer. “So, today, here’s the plan, and we’re going to go hiking!” At which point the kids would go silent. Clearly, they were not fans of hiking!

Departing St Etienne, we headed back up to the main road and climbed a little hill before the road descended furiously towards Isola. Looking on my right side, I could see the bike path, but with light traffic in the morning the road is always faster than the bike path, and what traffic there was behaved well.

Reaching Isola, we stopped to take off our jackets and then started the climb. There was an LED display, but we ignored that. Arturo would text later saying, “The sign at the bottom said there was construction until 12:00pm and the road was blocked until then.” I’ve learned from experience that these closures are more often than not soft—much of the time, there are workarounds or bypasses for cyclists, and the rational thing is to always climb the pass until somebody actually stops you.

The climb goes up steeply, winding its way around a series of waterfalls which were probably engineered if not artificially routed in such a way so that the river wouldn’t flood the road. I enjoyed the coolness of the shaded climb. Sure enough, we saw cars driving up and minutes later saw the same car driving back down. One of the drivers even stopped to make sure we knew that the road was closed. With unshakeable faith, we kept riding until the construction zone. From there, we were asked to stop and wait. The construction worker we talked to didn’t know when we would be allowed through. Well, I wasn’t going to descend and come back up again, so we chose to wait, eating a little bit and drinking. Mark and Arturo rode up. Arturo went to talk to the construction worker assigned to block the road. A police car came up. “He sounded irritated when I told him I was with you guys.”

Sure enough, our wait didn’t even last 20 minutes when the construction workers waved us through, telling Arturo that they were on a smoke break. The work ethic of the European worker had saved us once more! Xiaoqin and Bowen didn’t make this round, but we told them via text message that whenever they were ready, they should just camp out and queue at the blockage for the next smoke break.

The construction block was minor, a short 300m stretch that looked like it was already finished pavement with nary a gravel pebble in sight! The nice thing about this was that after we crossed and they re-closed the construction zone behind us, we now had the road to ourselves with really light traffic. Occasionally there’d be a car that had parked somewhere for hiking or some other activity but those were nicely spread out. With the road being so quiet, we even saw an elk on the way to Isola 2000. Once we cleared the tree line, the sun once again beat down on us, but we saw the EX30 drive past us on the way to the apartment we had rented.

As we approached the ski resort, the signs of commercial life started hitting us over the head. I remembered that in 2011 when I came down the opposite way, all the advertising for Isola 2000 convinced me to stay away from it! Mark had already reached the apartment and got in touch with the owner. “They’re nowhere ready to let us check-in, but we can go get lunch at the supermarket before coming back to check in. They’re letting us park our bikes outside while they get the apartment ready.” We got out of our cycling shoes and walked over to the supermarket. It was a tiny market and about to close. We grabbed whatever sandwiches were available and then went ate outside the supermarket.

The day was still too early to check-in when we were done, so we decided to go for a hike. At 2000m, the weather was cool, and we walked out towards the ski lift. On the way there, we saw the restaurant Le Gavouts. Arturo walked in and asked if they served dinner and when they replied in the affirmative, made a reservation for 7pm.

We then walked up the mountain, following the signs for Col de la Lombarde and came upon a huge picnic after encountering a huge herd of cows wandering about. When asked what this was about, they replied that they’d been walking the cows over from the Italian border for the past 3 days. There were probably inns or villages in between, as I did not see any camping gear that they were carrying, though apparently, they had a number of support vehicles that could conceivably carry tents. This was the end of their journey and they were celebrating.

Further up the trail, we came across a hotel with the UAE minivan parked outside it. We would later confirm that we’d found the Isola 2000 base camp where Tadej Pocagar would do his altitude training after finishing the Tour de Suisse, which was happening right now. Walking further up, we found signs to various other hiking features in the area, which were quite extensive. Boen got fed up of hiking and decided to walk back down on their own while we walked up until we could see further and spot the pass. We found an alternative way back to the village and told Boen to head down to where the UAE van was.

The sky had darkened and it was about to start raining but we still couldn’t find Boen. He’d missed the UAE van and walked all the way back to where the cow party was. Xiaoqin and I eventually found him, but it started raining in earnest. Fortunately, we spotted a woman get into her car just then and start driving down the road. We stuck out our thumbs and she stopped, unlocked her doors and gave us a ride back to the hotel, where Mark had managed to get the bikes into the bike shelter. We quickly moved all our luggage inside while Arturo and Bowen ran into the apartment building all wet. We always made the comment that Boen is always lucky, and this is one illustration of it. By getting lost he’d gotten a car ride and avoided the rain!

The place was quite cozy for 4 people, but it was well equipped. We had to pay for sheets, but the place came with coffee. We knew we had to shop for breakfast the next morning, but we first took showers and waited for the rain to abate before Arturo and I headed to the supermarket to buy breakfast. The supermarket was clearly not prepared for an onslaught of 6 people shopping for breakfast because we grabbed all the bread they had left! Arturo would tell us later that they baked the bread onsite.

We got back to the apartment and started charging the car, noting that it needed enough charge to get not just to Cuneo the next day, but all the way to Ivrea where the train connection from Cuneo would take the cyclists. We also had to account for the regenerative braking from the top of Col de la Lombarde, since an EV with a full battery would give less braking since the battery would be too full to absorb energy from the descent! Clearly, driving an EV brought all sorts of addition thought processes you needed, but between the 6 of us we have 8 or so computer science degrees, so it was well within our capabilities.

The storm had almost completely dried up by the time it was time to make our dinner reservations, so we abandoned emergency plans to buy dinner as well and just walked over to the restaurant, which turned out to be quite good, so much so that Mark and I both ordered additional dishes.

The downside of the rain was that our stuff wasn’t going to dry overnight, but it would at least grant us a cool morning climb the next day. We looked at various options in Ivrea to verify that there was plenty of lodging availability but deliberately did not book any lodging. We wanted to be on the train and be assured that we would make it all the way to Ivrea before committing ourselves to anything.

Review: Rise of the Dungeon Master

 Rise of the Dungeon Master is a recounting of the history of D&D, told in comic book format. It is short and easy to read, something you can finish in less than an hour. The art is crude but effective, and one of the most interesting properties about the narrative is that it alludes to D&D but speaking to you in the second person, occasionally giving you choices.

The story provides very minor biographical details about Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and does a good job of avoiding siding with either side when their relationship turned acrimonious, mostly because Gygax left Arneson out of the company he started. It's clear that as a businessman, Gygax was way out of his depth (the guy was a high school dropout, and had lots of other things on his mind), and lost control of his company despite his success because he didn't keep a handle on the CEOs he brought in to help run the company.

Don't expect great detail about the various editions of D&D or even the business battles that went on behind the scenes, many of which were covered by NDA anyway. But for a short quick read that doesn't waste your time I can recommend it.

June 17th: Jausiers to Saint-Etienne-de-Tinee

 We woke up and had breakfast, fried eggs, yogurt, a mix of bread and meat and granola. This was going to be the highest pass of the entire trip, with an additional side trip up the Cime for what is referred to as the highest paved road in the Alps. There’s a higher paved road in Spain, but that’s not in the Alps, and Arturo explained that the Spanish road wasn’t open to private cars, only buses (and obviously, bicycles).

We got onto the road at 8:42am and started the climb immediately—the warm up flat section was at most 500m, and the climb was a steady profile with very few grade changes that I could remember. While it was already warm, we knew that if we climbed at our standard 300m per hour of vertical ascent pace, we would be out of the heat zone in by 11:00am. What really helped were the shaded spots on the road. Once out of the direct sun we could climb with vim, and climb we did.

At the promised 12km mark, I spotted a sign that said “Water 500m ahead”, and that sign was very much needed since a descent started and we would have been tempted to zoom past our last water fountain if we had not been suitably forewarned.

One enemy that we had been facing since we started were flies. While houseflies were just annoying, occasionally I would feel a bite and it would be a horsefly taking its lump of meat off me. This annoyance did not go away until we hit 2200m or so, whereupon we felt a breeze and suddenly they disappeared.

You can see Cime de la Bonnette (the bonus climb) far away, and it’s intimidating since it’s a 9% grade and obviously steeper than the col climb.  There’s obviously a short cut since the Col itself is significantly shorter, but once you’d made it there you were going to do the Cime. Boen and I had a quick stop at the Col for pictures and then proceeded to climb hard up the Cime. We passed a couple of ebikes that were obviously throttling so that they wouldn’t use up precious battery on the excursion. (Ebikes do not have regenerative braking so the descent wouldn’t give them any power back)

At the official Cime summit we stopped where Mark had been waiting for some time. We got the requisite pictures, and then proceeded to hike the Cime proper. The scenery was amazing, since we were well above the treeline, and hence could see for miles around. We could see the ribbon of the road we had climbed up link up with the ribbon of road we would have to descend, and the descent would be pretty long, since St Etienne was at 1100m!

Once we were done with the hike, we ate some food and started the descent together. It didn’t take long before Arturo had fallen out of sight, since he didn’t have the mass to keep up with the tandem. Mark and I leap-frogged each other, taking turns taking photos of each other descent through this amazing scenery, which led us through abandoned World War 2 fortifications. While traffic was light, we soon caught up to a slow RV which was driven by a driver who was willing to pull over to let bicycles and motorcycles pass.  With him behind us, we could take the entire road with confidence since cars would have to negotiate around him and motorcyclists were usually competent enough to give us plenty of room, but that limited our photo stops, since every time we stopped for photos, he would catch up and we would have to get going again so that we wouldn’t have to do the work of overtaking him again!

On the way down the pass, we passed a single refuge with tables and serving lunch, but the descent was too fun to stop, and we kept going until at the Cascade de Vens parking lot we spotted the Volvo EX30. Clearly Xiaoqin and Bowen had gone for a hike. We kept going down to St Etienne until we found La Rabouns, but the hotel’s reception wasn’t manned. There was a phone number, but it wasn’t answering. A janitor walked by and told me it wasn’t open until 3:00pm. A check of the booking app told us that they would charge us for earlier check-in, but I got no response even after replying in the affirmative. Well, it was still lunch time, so Boen, Mark and I went back downtown to Restaurant de la Poste, which served a strange version of duck confit, a burger with black buns, and most importantly to Boen, a fantastic Crème Brulee.  After that, we waited half an hour at La Rabouns before the receptionist showed up. A bunch of kids obviously on some sort of school field trip also showed up, but apparently their adult guardians weren’t organized, so they checked us in first, putting our bikes in some sort of auditorium.

The rooms were similarly sort of like kids’ summer camp lodging, with lots of beds, and an integrated shower/toilet. The whole thing was strange. I would have thought that I hadn’t read the booking description of the building carefully enough, but later at dinner I could tell that other “hotel guests” were similarly nonplussed.

Xiaoqin and Bowen showed up, and we did laundry and got showered. Xiaoqin asked if this place was an orphanage after seeing all the unsupervised kids running around!

Dinner was similarly weird. We basically got served the same meals the kids got, with only minor adjustments to make sure that we got adult portions. The meals were really unappealing, unlike all the hype you got about French school meals if you read media in the USA. There was a piece of pizza, some salad thingy, and then pasta, and unsatisfying dessert. No wonder it was “such a deal!”

We ate as quickly as we could to escape the choruses of little kids. Walking around town, we discovered that unlike booking had said, there were other hotels, mostly at the edge of the town, near the entrance we had used, though they looked pretty busy. There were also signs pointing to rooms available for rent. In the future, I think the answer is to be brave and show up and visit the tourist office or check at the hotels, rather than booking.com.

We found the first zipline playground of the trip. However, the kids did a couple of runs and it was clear that even for the kids the zipline kind of sagged onto the ground with their weight.

We decided that Isola 2000 was a suitable goal for the next day after today’s effort, booking apartments at the ski town. Google maps showed that there was a supermarket open, but it had only started operating the week before, so we understood that we were getting the “pre-summer ski town” experience. Nevertheless, it looked like there would be food, and worse came to worse, we would have the car and could drive down to Isola village proper for more groceries at the cost of an hour or so. Staying at 2000m up would give us cooler climate before the run across the border into the lowlands of Italy, which we were dreading in this unprecedented European heatwave.

We went to bed, noting the breakfast time.

June 16th: Napolean Refuge Vars to Jausiers

 We started the morning at breakfast eating as though we hadn’t had dinner the night before, an indication that the touring load had depleted what bodily reserves we had. The climb up to the col was unremarkable. There, we met Xiaoqin and Bowen and went for a very short hike to get some nice views that wouldn’t be available from the road.

From there, the descent down to Jausiers left no impression on me other than the ski resorts which were mostly closed except for the occasional hotel. While higher than Jausiers, we did not stay there because those places demanded extra climbing and did not offer the services we wanted (Barcelonnette was the major town in the area, and we needed resupply). It dawned on me that I had never ridden Col de Vars before either, having skipped it for one reason or another my previous visits to the area, mostly in favor of Col du Parpaillon, a dirt traverse that’s no longer feasible without a lot of hike/a/bike as they’ve sealed up the summit tunnel, forcing a bike carry for any intrepid cyclist that wanted to do the route.

Arriving in Jausiers, we turned left as though going up the Col de la Bonnette, passing the display indicating that the tour had last visited there in 2024. After that monument Boen said, “Wow, are we staying there?” Our apartments were said to be next to the castle, and indeed we soon turned off the road and headed up to the apartment. Once there we saw that while the apartments were next to the castle, they weren’t actually part of the castle, which was strictly off limits.

Getting off the bike, we exchanged messages with the apartment managers and got instructions that we were not to checkin but we could use the swimming pool. Once again, there was that rigamarole about having to get linens, but at least we got access to the garage and the swimming pool worked and we could swim!

By the time we were allowed to move in, it was after lunch. Xiaoqin got out her bike to go for a ride, while Arturo, Mark, Bowen, Boen and I headed to Barcelonnette to grab lunch, get the car charged, and buy more cycling food. The fast charger was next to a supermarket, and indeed, by the time we bought food, ate them in the parking lot, and then bought breakfast for the next day, the car was 80% charged.

We then went to the bike shop to buy more cycling food. None of the usual American brands were available, and the substitutes were expensive. We experimented with various SIS energy chews and bars. Of those, the Beta Fuel gels were the best, but were extremely expensive. The bars were simply not as good as the American equivalents. Boen bought a new helmet, Mark bought a new electric pump after having seen mine in action. His new one had a gauge and an auto-shutoff at the correct pressure. I bought new spare batteries for the Garmin power meters, and would later discover to my sorrow that I’d actually stripped the hex socket on the power meter battery on the right side so I couldn’t even change the battery either. Garmin would replace both pedals (out of warranty) for $200 after I returned from the trip, but when the right side battery ran out my Garmin turned into a single sided power meter, which wasn’t the end of the world.

We returned to Barcelonnette’s downtown parking lot and proceeded to walk around downtown Barcelonnette after buying much needed shave ice to cool ourselves down from the heat. After showing Bowen where his mom and I stayed, we visited one of the central churches (a habit that Arturo has from his Catholic upbringing), and then went back to our apartment where we did laundry, relaxed, and I got in a second swim. Arturo made a reservation at La Sonnaille, a casual dining place with decent reviews. The fancy place wasn’t just more expensive, it had worse reviews and a later start time.

We walked down to the Ubaye river and crossed it, and it wasn’t a very long walk at all. The place turned out to be run by a middle-eastern immigrant, so the menu was eclectic and had lots of different items to choose from. The service was fast though the restaurant was very busy. We were also motivated to eat fast as other customers started smoking.

When all was done, we paid and walked out. Out in the fields, we saw a couple of crows harassing a cat! We walked back to the apartments and looked up when the last water was on Col de la Bonnette in case we needed water to be dropped off.

It turned out that the last water fountain was halfway up the pass at 12km, which meant we didn’t need any water bottle drop off. We also had to choose where to stay the next day. The choices were Isola village or St Etienne de Tinee. Isola Village was much lower, but the only lodging in St Etienne was Le Rabuons. The reviews were mediocre, but the price was cheap. Arturo noted that the half pension option looked particularly cheap. “Book it!” he said. And so I did.

Review: Nor Crystal Tears

 Nor Crystal Tears is Alan Dean Foster's first contact novel between the Humans and Thranx. Apparently its a universe (called the Humanx Commonwealth) that other novels are set in but since I hadn't read any other novels in the universe, I'm not sure there's any context I should have had prior to this novel.

The novel starts from the perspective of a Thranx child, an insect-like race of sentient beings that start out as larva and then metamorphize through a cocoon phase and become full-fledged adults. There's not a lot of background about this we never get an exposition about how the race evolved or how the physiology overcomes the limits that diffusion-based life on Earth from growing to becoming huge. The plot revolves around a spaceship for the Thranx encountering the disabled ship of the humans who had just been attacked by the Aan, enemies of the Thranx.

They capture the human, but despite the presence of experts seem unable to make headway in speaking the humans' language or understanding their culture and way of thinking. The protagonist of the novel (Ryo) shows up, and in a matter of weeks manages to learn the human's languages and also brank then tree and accompanies them home.

You can see plot holes all over. Why was the exploration ship unaccompanied by military vessels and why did the humans not send someone to investigate after the ship went missing?

Anyway, the rest f the novel depicts Ayo's attempts to convince the humans that an alliance is desirable despite instinctual mutual antagonism. Ryo then comes up with a harebrained scheme that works to tie the races together. I finished the novel but am pretty sure if this is the typical standard of an Alan Dean Foster book I will not read any more stories with his name as the author.

July 15th: Arvieux to Napoleon Refuge Vars

 To my dismay, the low battery warning on my power meter pedals did not go away! An examination of the details on the head unit indicated that while the left battery was fine, the right was low. My spare must have been defective! I had no more spares, so I made a note to get a replacement at the next bike shop we encountered on a weekday.

We started the morning with a swift descent down to the intersection where we had taken a left turn the day before in the car, and turned right instead. The moment I turned right I knew it was the right decision, as the descent followed the riverbed into a beautiful series of Canyons. Not for the first time on this trip did I think that I should have gotten an Insta 360 camera on the tandem and tried my hand at making videos even though I knew I did not have the patience for it.

At the bottom of the canyon we turned right and headed up towards Gulliestere, where a bottleneck in the road happened because some truck drivers had decided to take container trucks along these sharp corners and low tunnels that had a good chance of opening up the tops of their containers like a can opener.

I decided to go a little more aggressively and squeeze through the bottleneck along with some motorcycles and then stayed ahead down into Gulliestere where we took off our clothing to start the Vars climb.

Vars started steeply and was fully exposed without a lick of shade until we exited the farming areas and started up towards the ski resort. At that point, the long straightaways gave way to slightly tighter switchbacks that would stair step their way up various villages, each of which granted us an opportunity to refill water bottles or drench our cycling caps in water (or both). The latter provided much less relief than expected. I remember at one point in between my dipping my cap in water and Boen refilling his water bottle, my cap had dried to the point where there was no longer much cooling from evaporation.

The Napoleon Vars refuge was 100m from the summit in vertical elevation, and you could see the summit from the refuge. Mark had gone ahead, deciding he would make the summit that day before doubling back to the refuge. Boen and I made the refuge, where the owner told us the rooms would be ready after we’d had time to have lunch. Boen ordered the fish and chips, and ate it all, indicating how hungry he was. The car was already at the refuge, and Xiaoqin and Bowen were out hiking.

The nice thing about the Volvo EX30 is that the app enables you to unlock the car, so effectively those of us with the app could unlock the car (though the app obviously needed an internet connection to talk to the car), so we grabbed our luggage into our rooms and then took a shower and did laundry. After that we went for a short hike. There weren’t a lot of choices, either the lake loop that Xiaoqin and Bowen had done, but Arturo constructed an out and back that had the potential to be a loop if the lines on the map turned out to be connectors. That didn’t work, and despite being at 2000m, it was still quite hot. This was proving to be a record breaking heat wave, and I wasn’t looking forward to sleeping at a relatively low 1200m in Jausiers the next day. I remembered that Barcelonnette was even warmer so that was out of the question. With this kind of heat, a hiking break was out of the question if it was positioned as low as Barcelonnette.

Arturo, Mark and I did a hike that wasn't a duplicate of Xiaoqin and Bowen's. It didn't really lead anywhere but did lend us nice views of the surrounding mountains.

The evening’s dinner was outstanding. We would later compare it against the Rosenlaui meals as contending for the best meal of the trip. The half pension gave us a hearty beef stew that was both delicious and satisfying at the same time, making us the envy of cyclists who had arrived later without reservations (and therefore the option of the half pension). They pointed to what we had and we told them it was the half pension. They had started in Thonon-Les-Bains, the official start of the Route des Grandes Alpes, and were on a schedule and pace but the official route would do Col de la Cayolle instead of going over Col Lombarde. As usual, I’m quite constitutionally unable to follow any sort of “official route” written down by other people, preferring to customize my route to the weather, whims, and condition of people with me. 

We went to bed happy that we didn’t have to get an early start the next day. We examined options in Jausiers and found apartments in the same complex within walking distance of restaurants. It was a short day to give us a break before tackling the highest pass of the entire trip, the Col de la Bonnette. In addition, the highest paved road in the French Alps, the Cime de la Bonnette was only an additional 200m of climbing, and we were going to need all the rest we could get.

Review: Titanium Noir

 Titanium Noir is another novel recommended to me by ChatGPT. This is an unusual book in that it was good enough for me to read to the end, but even during the read I thought it was majorly flawed.

The book is sold as being Raymond Chandler-like in a science fiction universe. It fails at both. The author tries too hard to write like Chandler, but cannot match his style, sense of humor, verve, and the protagonist simply isn't as smart as Philip Marlowe. In particular near the end he lets the villain goes knowing that the villain will come back for him. That's insanely dumb. It was clearly a case of "turn off the intelligence of the protagonist so that I can get a payoff at the end with a cinematic ending."

The science fiction fails too. The premise of the book is the existence of a treatment (Titan 7), that basically cures all diseases and conditions by bringing you back to childhood and then regrowing your body through puberty. The side effect is that you end up much bigger and taller, etc. This obviously fails the physics test. A human body cannot scale up to those proportions without looking completely inhuman and different.

Read Richard K Morgan's Altered Carbon instead. That's the closest thing to Raymond Chandler. (Rest assured the novel is much better than the Netflix TV show of the same name)

June 14th: Briancon to Arvieux

 I always remembered Col L’Izoard started right from town quickly and steeply, and I wasn’t wrong. It didn’t take a single kilometer before I was exchanging my helmet for a cycling cap, and so had Mark, who had found a cap that fit him earlier on the trip. Arturo had foolishly promised some non-bicycle-touring friends that he would always wear his helmet, so he kept his helmet on for the entire trip despite the cycling in a heat wave.

Col L’Izoard isn’t notable for being pretty or long, but what it does do is to take you from the northern French Alps into the southern French Alps as the terrain changes completely, from pine forests to Colorado like desert scenery with dry dusty looking terrain everywhere that wasn’t immediately next to a stream.

We rode past the Napoleon Refuge 100m of vertical distance from the top, where once again there was a summit monument and a café that didn’t serve anything more substantial than ice cream. Just looking at the desert scenery was enough to make me hot, so Boen and I ate an ice cream each before starting the descent.

Xiaoqin had started the climb up the L’Izoard from across the street from the Logis de France hotel. When we saw her she said the hotel we had hoped to stay at said they were full! Arturo and I kept going down until we had cell signal, and then started calling. Through some confusion, Arturo called that very same hotel who had told Bowen and Xiaoqin that they had no room and this time they said they had room!

When we got there the manager explained that we were very lucky as someone had called in a cancellation just before Arturo called. It turned out that the confusion meant that we had a chance to stay at another Logis de France hotel. We ordered the half pension, and after eating an excellent lunch, found that they had a working swimming pool, our first of the trip!

So quickly used the swimming pool and the hot tub. While discussing things, I laid out the options for exiting France. We could ride up to Saint Verans off the Col Agnel highway. Saint Verans is the tallest village in France at 2000m, and it could serve as a base for hiking if we took an extra rest day then. The alternative was to ride Col du Vars, then ride over Col de la Bonnette and then Col Lombarde for the exit from France. My original plan for riding over the Col Tende had long been shattered by construction on the French side blocking transit and was no longer feasible given the pace we were moving.

Well, the car was fully charged from the day before, and it wasn’t a long drive, I suggested. Why don’t we drive to Saint Verans and scout it out? With that, we were out of the swimming pool into civilian clothes and Arturo and I drove to Saint Verans. The road was indeed exciting but looked very exposed, and the climb up to Saint Verans looked painful, with several sections exceeding 10% grade.

What broke against Saint Verans, however, was that it looked like there was only one out and back hike, and it involved a lot of time on a fire road. Col du Vars, Col de la Bonette and Lombarde started to look better as a plan. We were still in need of a rest day, however. We noticed that Col du Vars had a Napoleon refuge with a good reputation as well, so we called them and asked for two nights. “No. We can do just one night.” Was the reply. We booked the half pension for one night, and decided we could transit down the mountain the next day to Jausiers so we could attack the Col de la Bonnette with fresh legs instead.

Dinner at a Logis de France hotel is always excellent, and this one did not break the mold. To my surprise, the service was very fast as well! I had set expectations with every one that French dinners could take 3 hours, but so far we had not had that happen to us!

My Garmin XC200 pedals complained that they were running low on battery, so I took the opportunity to add wax to the drivetrain and replace the batteries on both sides.

Our after dinner walk was pleasantly cool at 8pm, as we took a small loop. The hotel was near a stream which made the place looked a lot less like the American West.