Another epic summit, another day of rest. Today, we would drive to Lake Geneva, or Lac Leman in french. (Why can’t we all agree to call foreign places by their actual name. Like München instead of Munich?).
We drove toward the Swiss city of Geneva, but decided to avoid the big city traffic and hassle and experience a more casual pace of some smaller cities on the french coast of Lac Leman. Recently, the G7 held a conference in Evian-les-Bains so we decide to see what that was all about. Well, it was right on the shore of the lake and very nice indeed.
The first thing we found out is that Evian-les-Bains is the corporate headquarters of Evian Water, the same bottled water you can buy in the USA. It is also a very picturesque city, We actually drove through the city and came to the border with Switzerland, but turned around. We just wanted to see what the border looked like, just like the Freemans did a few weeks ago.
Once we turned around, we found a Boulangerie in Evian-les-Bains and bought some sandwiches and ate lunch sitting on some benches along the lake and watched cormorants diving for their lunch too.
The next day, we would be driving south to Malaucène in the shadow of Mont Ventoux. Mont Ventoux is a ride that I did 7 years ago, but from Malaucène. Riding it from Bedoin was yet another of the rides that I had wanted to do 3 years ago, but did not do due to my medical condition. at the time. This would be the year, but I was nervous because of the reputation of the mighty mountain, not to mention the steep slopes. In 1967, Tom Simpson died riding this climb in the Tour de France. Of course, he was using amphetamines as a performance enhancing drug at the time and had a heart attack. I was counting on the fact that I was not using them!
As we were getting ready to depart the hotel in Grésy-sur-Aix, I noticed that two gentlemen in the hotel lobby were speaking english. Not just english, but American english (there is a distinct difference). I approached them and asked where they were from. They replied: Olympia, Washington! It turns out that they were in a band that had just played a concert in Aix-les-Bains the night before. Their band, Huldar is a Death Metal band and they were on a wild European tour. They were on their way to Marseilles that afternoon and then on to Germany. They definitely looked the part of a Death Metal band, but were very friendly and down to earth. It was nice to talk to some Washingtonians! Small world. One thing about our conversation. They had actually knew Kurt Cobain of Nirvana fame. One of the great hotel staff members, Guillaume was a huge Nirvana fan and was in awe that these men had actually know him.
After a drive of several hours, we arrived at our hotel later that afternoon, the Blueberry Hotel in Malaucène. The first thing we did was to drive over to Bedoin to see what that 12 km stretch of road looked like. We were contemplating riding from Malaucène to Bedoin as a warm up for our Mont Ventoux climb, but wanted to see what the road actually looked like and how much effort it would take to get there. There was a lot of steep climbing on the route so we decided it was going to be too much. We just ended up looking for a nice place to park to begin the ride the next morning.
The Blueberry was a nice place and had a restaurant as part of the hotel. We ate there and had pasta as part of our pre-ride carbo-loading regimen. I think we were going to need it. Mont Ventoux is a very hard ride. Epic, but hard!
Our ride started off with a flat warm up for a few kms, then pitched up and really never let up after that! The route went through a forested section before it opened up into the famous “moonscape” the you can see for 30 miles from below.
One other thing about Mont Ventoux. Vent is the french word for Wind. And after we got out of the forested portion of the ride, the wind was blowing! It was a double edged sword…. A fierce headwind on parts of the road, followed by a major tailwind for other portions. The worst part was the transitions where the wind was sideways to the road and tried to blow us off the road into the ditch. Yikes! This happened more than a couple times, but I was able to stay on the road, bit just barely.
The approach to the top is maddening. You can see the giant tower on the summit from so far away that you think you are getting close, only to find out that there are many more switchbacks and many more kms yet to go. Maddening I say. But eventually, I did actually get to the top. Again, Steve was waiting for me at there, but I was still pleased to have finished.
It seemed that each ride we did in France was harder than the last one. Mont Ventoux was indeed difficult, but now we would be on our way to Italy and the rides in Italy might be the hardest yet. Gulp!