A Ride In The Park

After resting up for a few days, I was looking for a ride this weekend. The weather Saturday was not looking very good so I decided Sunday would be a better choice.

The realtor who helped me with the apartment mentioned that there is a Regional Park nearby and that I should consider riding there. That sounded like a good choice to me since I was curious about it anyway. You can see these very steep rock formations in the nearby mountains from town and I think they are part of the park.

The full name of the park is Parc Naturel Regional du Massif des Bauges. There are several ways to get to the park so I took the way that I was most familiar with. I rode the Voie Vert National Bike Path 63 to Aix les Bains and then headed north and followed the signs (and all of the other bicycle riders). It apparently is a popular ride for the locals. After Aix les Bains, the road started to rise up at a moderate grade that lasted for about 16km, then crested over a hill and dropped into the main valley of the park for a short 6km. From there, it was an up and down ride for the last 4km to Lescheraines and the small chain of lakes that occupy the valley.

It is a regional park., so it is more like a State Park in the US. There are trails, swimming, picnicking and such. I did not get to the actual lakes since you had to pay to get in and I didn’t feel the need to do that. But it was nice there.

I had a lunch at one of the sidewalk cafes just out of town before heading back to Chambery. Before I actually headed to Chambery, I rode up valley for another few kilometers to see more of the valley and see if I could get a photo of the lakes. I rode as far as Le Chatelard when I figured that I was going to be foiled in my attempt to photograph the lakes. The ride up to the head of the valley was not bad and the short climb was easy enough to spin up without too much effort. Then it was a nice downhill ride to Aix les Bains and then the pathway back to Chambery.

On the way back, my bicycle started making this obnoxious noise somewhere in the drivetrain and most likely in the bottom bracket. For all of the non-bike-techies out there, the bottom bracket is the axle and bearings that the pedals spin on. It started making this click-click-click noise that was embarrassing. Every time I came across another cyclist, I stopped pedaling and coasted by so they did not have to hear the noise coming off my bike.

Even though the ride ended on a sour note, the ride in total was really nice. It was right around 100km or 62 miles, just enough gradient to get a good sweat going, the weather was perfect if not a little on the hot side, and no wind to speak of. Doesn’t get much better than that.

Around here, and like a lot of shops back home, the bike shops are closed on Mondays, so I waited until Tuesday to go the the MondoVelo shop that I found a few weeks ago. Also like many bike shops back home, they are really busy in the summer and backlogged for a week! But the repair guy did look at my bike just enough to verify that the bottom bracket was the culprit making the noise in my bike. I am at their mercy since I don’t have a vast array of tools with me to even attempt to fix it myself.

So, I am taking a short break from any serious riding for the next week. I can still ride, but with earplugs (haha)! The techie said that if I ride it won’t really hurt the bike, just my self esteem! But there is another reason to take a break. If you have been following the world news, a heat wave has hit Europe. It is not “Africa” hot as my friend Greg C would describe it, but it is over 100F. It is hot enough that I won’t be missing the long, suffering rides in the alps that much, for this week anyway. But it won’t keep me from planning new challenging rides coming up soon.