If it's Sunday this must be Alpe d'Huez

Dimanche et je suis arrivé. Sunday and I have arrived in France. After an over night flight that shortened Saturday night down to about nothing my trans-Atlantic flight arrived in Geneva where Guy from the King of the Mountains Lodge met me and gave me a lift to the lodge. I was pretty jet-lagged, but I decided to try and get onto the local schedule as soon as possible. So I reassembled my bike and rode down the Col d'Ornon into Bourg d'Oisans for a late lunch. Despite having had a lousy winter snow-wise (the ski resort on top of the Col d'Ornon was only open for three days this year and there was nowhere near as much snow visible from the KOM lodge as there was last year at this time) part of the roadway down the col had collapsed just below Le Rivier d'Ornon, the little hamlet where the KOM lodge is located.

Have I mentioned that I missed having Hank around already? Last year I had Hank and his new wife Ki along for the whole two weeks we were here. They had a baby last December so Hank had opted out of this trip. Even if he had opted in he would not be hear as he tore his right meniscus and hamstring whilst on the treadmill in Minnesota last week. This is vintage Hank. He can't injure himself heroically on the soccer pitch, he has to do it the next day on the treadmill. This blog will suffer for the lack of him as a model. I ate lunch at the same pizzeria I had eaten at many times last year with Hank and Ki then, sans Hank, I started up Alpe d'Huez.

As I mentioned at the start of this entry it was Sunday, it was a beautiful day and it had rained the day before so there were a lot of cyclist riding up to the Alpe d'Huez ski station.  Below is a view of the town of Bourg d'Oisans at the bottom of the valley and some of the 21 switchbacks on the road up to Alpe d'Huez.

Higher up on the road the ski station itself comes into view.  The photo below does not do justice to the amount of climbing left to get to the Arrivé - the finish line - for the classic Tour de France climb up to Alpe d'Huez.

I made it to the Arrivée.  Honest.   I even had a couple of Germans use my camera to take my picture.  But when I got back to the KOM Lodge there were no pics in my camera.  This says a lot about the aledged technical competence of the Germans.  Once again, I missed my climbing companion and model, Hank. I blame him for this fiasco and my lack of photographic proof.

The great thing about staying at the KOM Lodge is that no matter where you ride you have a five mile climb back up the Col d'Ornan from one side or the other to get back home.  At the end of the day I had ridden about 34 miles and climbed about one mile.  To give you an idea how close Alpe d'Huez is to the KOM Lodge here is the map view from my Garmin:

The King of the Mountain Lodge would be at the lower left and at the top of all the squiggly lines at the right that represent the switchbacks is Alpe d'Huez.  À demain - until tomorrow, Chris