France 2015—First Impressions

This is my third trip to the Vosges, the low mountain range in France just to the west of where France, Germany, and Switzerland meet. The weather for the last two trips was cool with quite a bit of rain.  It's been sunny and hot this trip—hotter than East Texas if you can believe that.  The temperature was 102 yesterday and 103 today. And there is no air-conditioning where I am staying either.

The riding has been great with the added benefit of cooler temperatures the higher you climb. Below is the view down to the valley floor from Le Markstein. It's an 18 km climb to the summit (1184 meters). Other than a short section at the bottom where it briefly ramps up to 10%, the climb is not particularly difficult, but it is long. There is a bike path all the way from Thann, where I am staying, to the base of the climb—about 16 miles with no traffic.

Of course, there was the requisite stop at the restaurant at the top of the climb. The lady at the bar filled my bottles. She even asked if I would like some ice, which never happens.

Descents are of course the rewards for the efforts of going uphill. Eighteen kilometers of downhill at 30–40 mph. Of course the pros go much faster. See the recent article in the Wall Street Journal to get some perspective on how fast they actually go. On a technical descent they can go faster than a car or a motorcycle. As the article mentions, it's like Formula One racing except that the drivers in Formula One know how the curves go—cyclists go into the curves blind at speeds of up to 70 mph. Thanks to Cory for bringing this article to my attention.

Here are a few miscellaneous tidbits for this first post.

• I have learned how to pack the bike to protect it from the airlines. Now I have to figure out how to protect it from TSA.

• I have had two totally different interactions with the police while on my bicycle in the last month. The first was in Colorado when I was descending from Carter Lake. The Larimer County sheriff was very upset with me because I was taking the whole road, which is the safe thing to do on a high speed descent. Fortunately, he didn't pull me over to ticket me. The second was this week in France. There were two gendarmes standing at the top of a col. They wished me "Bon courage" as I passed.

• This is the summer to ride in Europe. The exchange rate is the best it has been in at least 10 years (€1.00 is about $1.11). The cost of diesel, which is what my car consumes is about €1.15 per liter if you look around. Okay, that's still close to $5.00 per gallon, but my little Renault gets about 64 mpg.

• The picture below is Lac de Kruth-Wildenstein, and not Lake Naconiche as much as Steve Thomas would like to think it is.

I have a long drive to the Pyrénées on Tuesday (about 10+ hours).