Col de l`Arpettaz and Rain in Savoie

Friday took me down to Ugine in the Savoie region of France from Thann.  The most direct route down here is through Switzerland on the autoroute.  However, this would involve paying tolls in Swiss francs, and I did not want to go through the hassle of changing money from euros.  I decided to trust Serena (the voice on my GPS) to find a route with no tolls.  Serena routed me down the French side of the Jura mountains on a series of back roads.  This was a route that will never be duplicated by anyone.  Still, she got me here in time to ride the Col d'Arpettaz.

The  Col d'Arpettaz is a loop that leaves from the Hôtel du Bourg, where I am staying.  It has a western and eastern approach.  This is a climb that I have passed by a couple of times during the last few summers and always wondered what it would be like.  Unless you have been to the area, it is a climb that you have probably never heard about.  The climb has never been used in the Tour de France, but it is featured in The Great Climbs of the Northern Alps by Graeme Fife.  The west side of the climb is 16 km long and averages 7.1%.  For you folks in East Texas, this is equivalent to 10 miles of Hayter Hill.  I went up the east side, which is a one lane narrow road with numerous switchbacks.  Coming down this way would not be fun.  I am told that there is a wonderful view of Mount Blanc from the top...when the weather is clear.  It wasn't.  Word has it that there is a gravel road connecting this col to the Col d'Aravis, but this would be a mountain bike project.  It was a cold descent down the other side.

No riding today.  It's been raining all day in Ugine---a good day for doing laundry, writing blog posts, and watching the first stage of the 100th edition of the Tour de France on TV.  I have a long drive tomorrow to the Pyrénées and hopefully a few days of sunshine and warm weather.

The Vosges

The Vosges are a low mountain range in northeast part of France.  It is also the name of the Department, where Joan of Arc was born.  The Vosges has been traded back and forth between Germany and France for the last 150 years.  After the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), the Alsace and Lorraine regions of the Vosges became part of Germany only to be returned to France under the treaty of Versailles in 1919.  There is still quite a bit of German influence in the area.  Half of the channels on the TV in the hotel were German, and it's common for people to speak both French and German in this part of France.

I stayed at the Hôtel du Rangen in Thann.  The rates were reasonable, the petit déjeuner (breakfast) was good, and the owner is an ex-bike racer.  He came out to make sure that I was reassembling my bike correctly, and I spoke to him (in French) for a while.  I don't get to use English again until I get to the Pyrénées on Sunday.

(courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Thann has a population of about 8000, and the nearest large city is Mulhouse, about 20 km away.  Mulhouse is in the area where France, Germany, and Switzerland meet.  The city shares an airport with Basel, Switzerland.  There is a wonderful cathedral in the middle of the Thann, La Collégiale Saint-Thiébaut.  The construction of the cathedral began at the end of the thirteenth century and was finished in 1516---more than 200 years.  Fortunately, the cathedral escaped the heavy destruction that the city suffered during World Wars I and II.  It looks very similar to the cathedral in Stasbourg.

The Vosges are a low mountain range.  This is cycling paradise.  Larry Smith and Veloski Sports will be leading a tour of the area in September.  There is a dedicated bike path running up and down the valley, and it was only a ride of a few kilometers to the beginning of the Grand Ballon climb.  I saw lots of other cyclists, and there are many side roads that I didn't have time to visit.  The Grand Ballon at 1424 m (4672 ft) is the highest point in the Vosges.  It is a big round-topped mountain whose name literally translates to the "big balloon."

(courtesy of Wikipedia)

The Grand Ballon climb gets hard during the last 7 km with an extended section of 8+%.  The road is two lanes all the way and pretty wide.  The pavement is good with the exception of a couple switchback turns, where they decided to use cobble stones for some reason.  I was very cautious on the descent and can't imagine what this would be like in the Tour de France if it was raining.

(courtesy of Wikipedia)

The plan for the second day was to ride the Ballon d'Alsace, but I ended up doing a short recovery ride due to rainy weather.

Getting to France and Solving Problems

Summers in East Texas are best spent someplace else, in France for instance. And it looks like I left just in time as friends have been telling me that the high temperatures in Nacogdoches are now 100+ degrees (38+ Celsius). The weather in the Vosges and Savoie (Rhone Alps) has been cool and rainy. Still, I have been able to get in a few nice rides.

My annual pilgrimage to France began Monday afternoon, when I boarded an Air France flight from Houston to Paris. Since I was flying business class, I was able to wait in the Air France lounge. Nice! No, I'm not rich, I just happened to have enough frequent flyer miles. My flight left 5 minutes early and arrived 30 minutes early. You can actually sleep in business class too!

The ticket agent did not charge my for my bike either. I have a Pika Packworks bag for my bicycle. The bag is pretty compact and doesn't look like it has a bike inside. It protects the bike pretty well too. I spent $335 for the bag but I have saved more three times that amount in airline baggage fees. Thanks again Pika Packworks.

I picked up my Renault Kangoo at the airport. I am leasing the car for my entire stay. If you ever go to France and need a car, forget the rental car agencies and lease a car through Renault Eurodrive USA. Ninety-nine percent of the paperwork is taken care ahead of time, and zero-deductible insurance is included. Renault's service is superb too. The only catch is that the minimum lease time is 21 days. However, this is a great excuse to extend your trip to France for three weeks, right? It was almost 10 am before I left the Paris airport, and I didn't arrive in Thann until around 4 pm. Having spent the previous night on an airplane, I was definitely starting to fade near the end of the drive.

After checking into the Hôtel du Rangen, I spent the rest of the day putting the bike back together. I had a major problem putting the rear dérailleur back on the bike. For those of you who have never worked on a bicycle before, you can skip to the next blog entry if you like. When transporting a bike, you should always take off the rear dérailleur, since it is very easy for this part to get bent or broken in transit. In any case, the chain got twisted around somehow how, and the only way to reinstall the derailleur was backwards. For what seemed like an hour, I tried to untwist the chain, but this was a problem that only a knot theorist could solve and not a sleep deprived traveler. Then I thought about breaking the chain, but this didn't work. SRAM chains have a master link, and you need a special tool to break the link. I have this tool, but it currently resides in Texas. Finally, it occurred to me that I could take apart the derailleur cage by removing the jockey pulleys, position the chain correctly, and then put the derailleur back together. Problem solved---almost. The final problem to be solved was adjusting the shifting. This would have been a simple 5 minute task if I had had a workstand. I tired for about 30 minutes, and got the shifting to work reasonably well except for the largest two cogs. As I was pretty tired by now, I decided that it was time for bed, and I would take care of the problem in the morning.

While Wednesday's weather wasn't perfect, there was no rain in the forecast, so I decided to ride to the top of the Grand Ballon (see the next blog entry). The rear dérailleur shifting wasn't great, but I could shift into my lowest gear. The problem was that once I was there it sounded terrible, and I couldn't shift back to a smaller cog either. So I rode to the top of the climb without my lowest gear. This wasn't a huge problem, but the Grand Ballon is an 16 km HC climb (most difficult rating) with a few extended sections of 8+%. When I got back to the hotel, I decided that I needed some way to suspend the bike (a workstand?) in order to solve the problem. After looking around for more than a few minutes, it finally occurred to me that I could open the rear hatchback on the Kangoo and hook the nose of the saddle on top of the hatchback to suspend the bike. It worked perfectly. The shifting problem was due to the top jockey pulley touching the largest cog. This was easily solved by adjusting the B-screw. The bike is now in perfect working order.

Floods Strike the Haute-Pyrénées

The Tour usually goes over the Col du Tourmalet in mid-July, but the Tourmalet was omitted from this year's TDF.  It's a good thing because flooding in southwest France has tragically claimed at least two lives and put a large part of the city of Lourdes underwater.  The Haute-Pyrénées experienced an unusually large snowfall this year.  The Col du Tourmalet opened in early May last year (although it closed temporarily in mid-May).  This year the eastern approach opened on June 9.  The area had lots of rain on top of a large snowpack.   Several long sections of the road on the western approach are now gone due to flooding.  I will get a first hand look at the area end of the month.  The photos below tell everything.  Check http://www.velopeloton.com/articles.html for the latest updates.

On your marks, get set, GO!!!

Actually, I am in Seattle at Sage Education Days 5.  I fly back to Houston tonight and leave for Paris on Monday afternoon.

• Depart Houston on Monday, June 24 and arrive Paris on Tuesday, June 25 at 8:30 AM.
• June 25-28.  The Vosges in Alsace.
• June 28-30.  The Alps near Albertville.
• June 30-July 4. At the Lanterne Rouge in the Haut Pyrenees.
• July 5-13.  At Les Deux Velos in the Ariege Pyrenees.  Will see two stages of the 2013 Tour de France.
• July 13-16.  Staying in Provence near Mont Ventoux.  Will see the Mont Ventoux stage of the TDF on Bastille Day (July 14).
• July 16-July 22.  Back to Albertville to ride in the Alps and watch another stage of the TDF.
• July 22-30.  Classic Climbs of the French Alps with VeloSki Sports.
• July 30-August 5.  Back to the Lanterne Rouge in the Haut Pyrenees.
• August 5.  Paris.
• Back to reality. Paris on Tuesday, August 6 and arrive Houston on Wednesday, August 7.