A new adventure.

Greg is on the go again. It seems like my amazing ride across the country was just over with but it has been an entire year since I started that journey.

After watching the Tour de France for so many years and seeing the incredible mountains they have ridden over, I decided that I wanted to give them a try myself. I am actually writing this from the town of Chambéry France located on the western edge of the French Alps.

Getting here was “half the fun”! I left Wenatchee on Sunday morning the 26th of May. My good Nick Covey drove me down to the transit center where I took the Wenatchee Valley Shuttle to SeaTac airport. That went very smooth and was about the only element of this trip I did not worry about. I had to wait about 6 hours before my flight but the time went by pretty quickly if You can imagine that. I had to wait for about 2 of those hours waiting for Icelandair to open their ticket window. I needed to complete some business with them concerning the flight to Paris. My bicycle was considered an extra piece of baggage and I needed to pay for that. I tried to do it on-line but was not able to figure how to do it. The website said I could do it at the time of check in so that is what I did. That went pretty smooth and I am not exactly sure if they even charged me the extra $116 that I was supposed to pay. I guess I will have to wait until I can review my credit card statement. That will be interesting since I seem to be hemorrhaging money right now.

Next, I needed to secure a plastic bag from the airline to put my backpack in. It has so many straps dangling off of it that it always gets hung up in the baggage sorting mechanism and never seems to get to my destination at the same time as I do. Of course, Icelandair did not have any bags so I had to hunt one down at the Alaska Air counter (at the other end of the airport I might add). So that got accomplished as well.

Next was reserving a Rental car at Charles DeGualle airport in Paris. I had thought about taking the train from Paris, but after consulting with Ed Farrar I decided to go the rental car route. Ed would know since his son Tyler was a pro cyclist and raced in the Tour for a few years even winning a stage! Ed said the train was tough and people have had their bikes stolen off the train before. Plus, renting the car saved me from having to haul the bike box all over Paris for who knows how long. Feel good about the rental car!

Now the next thing is to actually get on the the plane for a brief flight of 11 hours (with a brief reprieve in Iceland of 1.5 hours). You would think that getting on the plane would be easy. Well Icelandair found a way to put drama into that! For some bizarre reason, they have two flights from SeaTac to Iceland that leave within 5 minutes of each other. You read that correctly. 5 minutes. And the flight numbers are 582 and 584. And from gates S9 and S11. Just to make it even more interesting, they decided to flip the gates around so people were running back and forth. My original booking was on flight 582, but they managed to put 584 on my boarding pass so I was a little stressed out about that. But after going to both gates, I was finally confident that everything was alright. And it was, thank goodness.

Once in the air, a minor miracle occurred. The flight was not booked full and I shared my aisle with one other person. I had the window and he had the aisle. As soon as the captain turned off the fasten seatbelt sign the other guy left! I don’t know where he went but he did not come back to his seat until 30 minutes before landing. So I took full advantage and slept lying across all 3 seats during the short night we had. I say short because we flew a semi polar route and flying toward the sun so the night was only a few hours long since the days are longer the further north you go and then the massive time change as well. But I did sleep a little bit. But it was better than the normal lousy attempt that I usually make while flying.

So leaving at 7pm on Sunday, I got to Paris at 4:30 pm on Monday. Got the bags and bike, got the rental car and was out the door by 6 to negotiate my way through metro Paris. My only goal for Monday was to get out of the Paris suburbs and find a Motel to sleep at. Oh, and to get some food. Icelandair doesn’t feed you unless you pre-purchase a meal which I declined. So I only had 2 sports bars and a sandwich that I ate in Seattle before the flight. So yes, i was more hungry than tired.

But I was tired so I slept good. And woke up only a little early so knock on wood, I haven’t really had any jet lag to be bothered with.

Today, Tuesday, I finished the drive to Chambéry, France. This is the town I think I am going to call home base for this trip. It is close to many great climbs in the Alps. The Alpe d’Huez, the Col de Galibier, the Col de Criox de Fer, the Col de Magdeleine, and others. Once in Chambéry, I found a motel for a few nights and started doing research on bike routes and other important things like trying to find my car after I parked it and got lost in town, etc.

Tomorrow, I am going to recon some rides and see about logistics for some of these epic rides. They are not all accessible from Chambéry without having to ride 100 miles or more round trip. That generally is too much for a ride of that nature, but we shall see. I am going to check the bus and train situation tomorrow or the next day as well to see if I can take a few miles off the total ride distance.

So in the mean time, I am just enjoying the French restaurants and sampling some of there wines as well.

Just some final notes. I am not planning on riding every day like last year so I will not be posting everyday either. Lastly, my cell phone doesn’t work over here without costing a small fortune so please e-mail me instead if you want to contact me. You can still comment on the blog page too. My e-mail is pezoldt@flymail.net.

Au Revoir….. for now.