Day 13 - 'Le Denier Jour' The Last Day

Before I begin this post for the last day of Hank, Ki and my wonderful bike trip in the Bourg d'Oisans region of the French Alps I would like to comment on a couple of things.

First, this was my first effort at blogging and the software here a blogspot.com has been extremely glitchy. I have had a hard time just keeping the text justified within the margins and the photos properly positioned. Some of the post have changed completely with regards to word placement and I have gone back to them to find really odd breaks at the end of lines completely different from what I was shown by blogspot when I reviewed the blog before posting. I just got done completely redoing my last post and deleting the original. There have been dozens of other small headaches involved in just getting the blogspot software to work. So if you go back to any of my earlier updates and things have gone completely haywire ('Haywire' being Hank's new favorite word, he used it to bingo in Scrabble and beat me in a game at our lodge) please be apprised that it looked OK when I posted it. Also, let me know if things have gone all kaffluey so I can go back and try to fix it.

Second, I apologize for any and all errors in grammar. I could plead that I was distracted by my ongoing war with the blogspot software whilst trying to create coherent updates, but the truth of the matter is that I have grammatical blind spots and there is a reason I keep a copy of 'Garner's Modern American Usage' on my desk. Evidently ownership of 'GMAU' is not a panacea for preventing major grammatical faux pas, but it is evidence of my desire to try and get things right. So if I make any mistakes, please let me know as I want my writing to flow smoothly and not jar any potential readers with errors in usage. (My biggest grammatical blind spot so far pointed out was my more or less continuous substitution of the noun 'road' for the verb 'rode'. I attribute this to a sort of phonological dyslexia similar to the there/their/they're homophone conundrum where the distinction between the words is elemental, but the fact they are homophones deafens the editorial ear. I have gone back and tried to edit this error out of the blog and I will watch out for it in the future.)

Third, I want to thank Hank and Ki for being wonderful travel companions and the three of us want to give special thanks to Guy and Helyn at the King of the Mountains Lodge for being the best hosts imaginable.

'Le dernier jour,' our 'last day' of riding in the French Alps was especially memorable. It was unlikely that I would be able to coax Hank back into the Renault after the previous day's jeeping adventure up on the Col de la Madeleine so I quickly agreed when Hank proposed another Alpe d'Huez Ramble. One of the many wonderful things about the King of the Mountains Lodge is the incredible variety of riding in the immediate vicinity. Sure, it's all climbing, but that was why we were in the French Alps to begin with. In our two weeks at the KOM Lodge we did not come close to exhausting all the possibilities for day trips from the lodge by bike. Another great thing about the KOM Lodge is that the owners, Guy and Helyn, are avid bikers, and were always available to make suggestions or help us fine tune our ideas for rides. We pretty much new what we wanted to do for our final day of riding, but Guy gave us a great way to end it(more on that later). So at about ten o'clock in the morning we set out on our final Alpe d'Huez ramble. The plan was for Ki to meet us for lunch in Alpe d'Huez and then Hank and I would tackle two optional climbs off the main Alpe d'Huez road. We rode down the Col d'Ornan road to Bourg d'Oisans for our final assault on the classic TDF Alpe d'Huez route up the 21 switch backs on the front of the mountain. It was Saturday, and there was a huge contingent of Dutch club riders in Rabobank team kit teeming around the base of the mountain getting ready for an organized mass ride up. Supporters of this ride were waiting on all the lower switch backs. They were dressed in orange team t-shirts and busy painting their rider's

names and encouraging words on the roads. Both Hank and I got white paint on our tires. The Dutch fans were well equipped with megaphones that played the 'Olé olé olé olé' song that is ubiquitous at soccer matches and somehow seemed less annoying when one weighed it against the option of the Vuvuzela horns we were hearing every night during the Soccer World Cup back at the lodge. Hank and I started the climb on what was a gorgeous day with the expectation that we would soon be overtaken by a frenzied peloton of orange clad Dutch Équipe Rabobank wanabees, but we did not see them again until the top. For that matter I didn't see Hank again until the top as he took off like a shot, bent on improving his time up the Alpe d'Huez classic route. I don't know if it was Hank's classic Descente jersey - the envy of collectors of vintage neon cycling apparel everywhere - or a return to his doping practices of the previous week, or the fact that Hank had developed a radical new climbing strategy based on immediately getting into the easiest gear possible and spinning with a Lance-like quickness, or some combination thereof, but Hank burned to the top in record (for him) time. Well done Hank! At the top we had lunch with Ki on the front deck of a restaurant and watched as the Dutch arrive to much noise and fanfare. Air horns blasted, the 'Olé olé olé olé' song was played repeatedly, the beer flowed freely and there was much merriment on the part of the Netherlanders or the Dutch or the Orange or whatever they were choosing to call themselves that day. But the climbing had just begun for team Clydesdale.

After lunch the next stop for us was the top of the Col de Poutran and Lac Besson (Lake Besson), another 3.5 kilometers up from the Alpe d'Huez ski village.

At right a picture of Hank in his vintage Descente jersey with Alpe d'Huez below him. The road was a little rough, but the climbing is not as stiff as the climb up the classic route we had just made. From Lac Besson we descended back to Alpe d'Huez and began the climb up the rough, but rideable, road to the top of the Col de Sarenne. To give you an idea of where we went I have once again cribbed the excellent map from the www.cycling-challenge.com blogspot, which is an outstanding source of information on riding in the French Alps. The KOM lodge is in Rivier d'Ornan on the bottom left of the map below. Route D526 is the road over the Col d'Ornan. The black squiggle is the main route up Alpe d'Huez. The red line is the route up to Lac Besson. And the green line is the route up and over the Col de Sarenne. The Col de Sarenne

road was even rougher than the Col de Poutran route up to the lake, but it, too, was rideable. There were plenty of warning signs attesting to the roughness of the road. This one reads

'Summit in 3 miles / Roadway in a Bad State', and they weren't kidding. I had not seen this many warning signs signs since Dorothy's approach on the Emerald City of Oz. Hank, as usual, could not resist the opportunity to play the clown. It was not at bad as all that and we agreed it was a

great ride with an marvelous descent from the top of the col. We saw no other cyclists on this route was incredible considering the throng of Dutch riders on the front side. Here are some pics of the descent. From the top it was like looking down into an abyss.

At the bottom we came out on the main highway in the valley, route D1029. Rather than follow it directly into Bourg d'Oisans we took the advice that Guy had given us in the morning and went up the Les Duex Alpes ski area road, with an eye towards riding up to a high shelf road on the south side of the valley that would take us through the hamlet of Les Traverse. From there we would have a long forested descent down to the main road and back into Bourg d'Oisans. All through our trip Guy and Helyn from the KOM Lodge were giving us great ideas to add something to our rides (any and all of the cycling miscues previously chronicled in this guide - the wrong ways up cols, the jeep trip, were purely my doing).

The ride up towards Les Duex Alpes was great, a somewhat gentler grade than the Alpe d'Huez road, and, of course, Hank got summit fever so nothing would do other than riding past the Les Traverse road up to the Le Deux Alpes ski station on top and then back down to the shelf road for the ride home.

In Bourg d'Oisans we stopped so I could get a coke to fuel my last ascent up the Col d'Ornan, then Hank and I did our last climb up to the KOM Lodge. It had been a great day with a metric century of riding (100 kilometers) as Hank pointed out and about 9,150 vertical feet of

climbing. And it had been a great trip. Team Clydesdale had triumphed over the high cols of the French Alps! That night Hank and I disassembled and boxed our bikes for the trip home early the next morning and agreed that we would try to come back next year.