2012 Day 1 in Francc

Je suis arrivé.  I have arrived back in France.  For the third year in a row I am back at the King of the Mountain Lodge and ready to begin another European bike safari.  My flights from Denver to Geneva went off without a hitch, but one again my internal clock is a little bit messed up my having to get up at 5:00 AM on Wednesday to catch my flight to Washington, Dulles, and then missing that night's sleep on my overnight flight across the Atlantic to Geneva which shortened that night by seven hours and put me in Switzerland at about 7:30 AM on Thursday.

Greg from The King of the Mountain Lodge picked me up at the Airport and by 11:00 AM I was at the KOM Lodge saying hello to Guy and Helyn and being amazed by how big their baby girl Alice has gotten.  A year makes a big difference - Alice is walking and starting to talk.

My plan for the day was to assemble my bike and in my sleep deprived state and attempt to ride up Alpe d'Huez.  But thankfully, while I was cobbling together my bike. it went from looking like it was going to rain to actually raining, and I thought that perhaps God in his mercy was sending me a message to give it a rest and wait for tomorrow to ride.

So I ignored all of the conventional wisdom of not going to sleep the afternoon you arrive in a new time zone and trying to adjust to local time by staying awake until that evening and around 1:00 I laid down to read for a while and promptly fell asleep while listening to the rain pounding on the skylight of my room.

But there is no true rest for the wicked and God was not granting me a reprieve.  When I woke up around 4:30 PM of that same afternoon the sky was blue and I still had several hours of daylight to get out the door for a ride.  Next stop, Alpe d'Huez!

I knew I would not have enough time to get to the top of the Alpe d'Huez climb and make it back to the KOM Lodge for dinner at 8:00.  I was curious to see how many of the 21 famous virages (switchbacks) of Alpe d'Huez I could ride before I had to turn around with enough time to descend and then ride the 9 or 10 kilometers back up the Col d'Ornan to the KOM Lodge in time for dinner.

The answer to that question was 17.  I took the two photos above from Virage 7, looking back down at the town of Bourg d'Oisnans and some of the lower switchbacks I had ridden up.  There are six more virages above my turnaround point at Virage 7.  Below is the view of the climb above Virage 7 and the town of Huez.  Higher up in the background is the ski resort of Alpe d'Huez where the climb ends.

It was hot during the climb, even after the rain earlier in the afternoon.  Like Colorado, the French Alps have had record heat this summer.  It was also hazy all through the day, during my drive to the lodge from the airport and during my ride, just like it has been hazy as of late in Colorado from the California forest fires.  I have no idea why it was hazy here in France today.

My total distance for my shortened first day ride was about 24 miles with 3,500 feet of climbing on Alpe d'Huez and the Col d'Ornan.  I felt pretty good and I only wish I had gotten out a little earlier and had had time to ride to the top of Alp d'Huez.

But I have almost two weeks of riding still in front of me here at the KOM Lodge, so I should manage to get up Alpe d'Huez several times.  It was a good day 1.