photo time

Since G leaves tomorrow and takes the USB card reader with him, here are some photos:

1) tough climb. it might be the only one that was walked

2) hey - that's not where Ben parked his bike!

3) my new house is just down there on the right...

4) see if you can find the tree ninja in this photo. he is very stealthy.

5) that's the real Monte Carlo. It's got 3 bentleys in front, so one can argue that it's nicer than the replica casino in vegas.

6) the view from our place in Cinque Terre was pretty ok

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7) mmmm, wine in a box. tasty & cheap.

8) breakfast on Lucca's city walls.

9) coming soon.

june 20 (french train strike day)

we wanted to start early. instead we went grocery shopping at the Casino (grapefruit yogurt!) and had some cafes. ride was decent from what I remember (7 days later). tried to catch the train to Nice from Frejus, but there is apparently a strike in progress, so only every 9th train or so is running. Kept riding on to St. Raphael where we had to get a ticket for the TGV (hi speed train) to Nice. Normally, bikes are not allowed on this train. Howver, G talked our way on and the bikes were placed in a secret compartment.

blatent endorsement time: use TripAdvisor.com when picking a hotel. users rank the hotels in each city and you can see candid photos and reviews. it steered us right in Nice at the Little Palace hotel. great location near the train, beach and pedestrian street. only €90 for 3 stars also. not sure why nice is so famous. the beach is all rocks and it seems pretty touristy to me. perhaps cannes would have been better but we didnt have time to stop. antibes was also supposed to be fun, but didnt see that either. apparently Tom Cruise was there for a wedding yesterday.

oh, I lost my wallet tonight also. found it at the supermarket the next day though. that almost sucked.

wanted to go to Monaco for the evening, but the tain strike has us worried about getting stuck there. instead, got some doner kebabs in nice and planned to hit Monte Carlo for lunch tomorrow.

jun 19 Toulon to St. Tropez (day of the gull)

ok, we were a day behind at this point. whatever. we have the trains to make up lost time if needed. most disturbing sight of the trip: 500 ft. from the hotel we see a seagull dragging a dead pigeon across the road. it looked like a lion with an antelope in its mouth. the gull shook the bird like a dog does to try & break its neck. we stopped and stared. french people pointed. then the gull took flight carrying the dead pigeon with it. all of us were too shocked to snap a photo. i think it would have won a natural geographic prize.

Traffic in to St. Tropez is awful. miles of cars bumper to bumper. french bikers ride on the yellow line, but we opted to stay to the left out of the way of oncoming traffic. scored a decent hotel 100 feet from the main plaza and chained bikes to a tree in the courtyard. should be safe.

reminds me how much I love my combination cable lock. in that spirit, here are some things I am happy to have along for the ride:

-powdered gatorade. best investment ever. $3 makes 2 gallons. sports drink is $3 for 12 oz. here. you do the math.
-raincovers for the bags. G is missing 1 of 3 and fears for his belongings everytime it drizzles.
-swiss army knife...opens wine, cuts chorizo, tweezes, scissors.
-moleskine journal. thanks kieffer. so much better than a notebook.
-boxes of wine. cant say enough good things.
-campsoap. this stuff is amazing for cleaning out jersey, water bottle, etc. a few drops makes all sorts of suds. highly recommended.
- shoulder straps for luggage. simple but lets me get everything up stairs in one load.

ok - back to st. tropez. amazing yachts here. some as big as the cruise ships at Navy Pier. G really likes the 'Ability' a 5 story ship that seems to have Americans on board. A quick Google reveals that this is a charter yacht. cant be cheap.

strange that we can walk right up to these yachts. not very secure in my opinion. after getting rushed thru a crepe dinner (15 seconds from fork down to bill arriving), we went back to the main plaza where people were playing bocce ball (as ususal in France). we got some really strong beers (8% alcohol) and sat to watch them. Ben decided he was a tree ninja and climbed into an old oak tree to harass passers by. G has a video that absolutely needs to find its way onto you tube. there goes bens career in politics.

pretend it is june 18

so let's imagine for a minute that I am writing this as we leave Marseille and not in an internet cafe in Florence.

let me start with the ongoing battle between the bike rack and the spoke. it turns out that the racks Graeme and I have were meant for much less weight. Mostly because they wobble side to side if the rack is overloaded. eventually, this motion causes the hook that holds the pannier (side bags) to fly into the spoke of the wheel. consequently the hook gets vaporized or your spoke gets mangled. on the first 10 miles out of town, Graeme had the latter happen. the hook hit his spoke and the spoke shattered.

Ben and I went ahead to a Shell station and tried to ask where a bike shop was. unfortunately, the french word for shop is magazin. which I pronounced like 'magazine' prompting the Shell clerk to send me to a bookstore down the road. eventually, we made it to a Decathalon sporting goods store where G got his repairs for €8 and Ben got a AG2R racing jersey. the French are so into biking that they have 3 aisles of supplies in their version of Sportmart. Brand name stuff too, not the crap you get at a sporting goods store at home. we the problem fixed, we rolled on.

got to La Ciotat and took the train up to Toulon to stay on schedule. some lady was hogging the ticket booth and the machine only accepts smart cards, so we had to hop on the train without a ticket. apparently, this is a 60€ fine if you dont find the conductor immediately. oops. Lucky for us the conductor was too lazy to come find us. the train had a really nice bike area where you hang your bikes vertically to keep them out of the way. clever french.

Toulon was ok. had a fun waiter at dinner and ben learned how to work peel & eat shrimp. we also discovered that he really really likes chocolate mousse. he ate his and most of Graeme's before we made him wipe off his face and leave the cafe. G tried steak tartare. esentially, it is a hamburger with a raw egg and a bunch of spices so you can make your own meal. the capers made it tolerable. someone at home: make a burger with capers and tell me how it is. please cook it though.

blame it on the construction

so this post is REALLY REALLY late. we are in Lucca, Italy getting ready to leave for the last ride of the trip. before that, we plan to sit on the old city walls and eat breakfast. since the hotel wants to charge us $15 each, we figure this is the best option.

I blame the late-ness of this post on the european construction. everything here is under construction. fountains, roads, tunnels, railroad tracks. Therefore, I assume the Internet is also under construction. in fact, its been really difficult to locate internet cafes in Europe (as opposed to Latin America and Asia). I assume its because everyone has a home computer here.

Cinque Terre was beautiful as it was when I saw it 8 years ago. we stayed in riomaggiore, which is the 5th of the 5 towns. the first night, we walked between town 3,4,5 which was a good time, and less technically challenging than the hike between the first two (which Ben did solo on Sun). there is some weirdness going on in the Med, causing most of the town harbors to be shut down and massive waves to crash over the boulders. we almost saw a couple get swept into the sea. I blame the whole thing on global warming, right Al Gore?

have I described how cheap wine is here. in the grocery store, you can choose from several bottles under $4, most of which have been incredible. its actually tough to find one in the store thats over €15. you have to go to a special wine shop for that. they also have miniture wine in a box. some are personal size (like the size of the juice boxes you had as a kid)

ok - time for breakfast. I will write more tomorrow.

Ben joined us

ok; i know this entry is late. we have been running around a lot and have not seen much of the internet. I'm glad to see that its still here. our day trip to Aix was gorgeous and much better than the construction ridden city of Qix itself. the trip back into Marseille was a mess as usual, so we were late picking up Ben. he called us and we worked out a plan to meet him at the train station, otherwise we'd have been 2 hours late getting to him. once back at the hotel, we introduced Ben to the wonders of Port. our new favorite drink. we dont really go anywhere without it and have sampled 4 brands at the time I'm writing this. besides powdered gatorade, port is one of the things I'm most thankful for on this trip.


for dinner, we took ben to a creperie where we got sweet and savory crepes. the nice french family next to us convinced me to get a crepe flambe (i.e. it was doused in alcohol and set on fire). family was extremely nice to us. the father even gave us his contact info an offered to take us on a tour of the city. i guess the mean french you always hear about are mostly in Paris. at least thats my theory.

ok, there are 3 people waiting for this PC, I'll have to get back at this later.

thank god for the old guy

so, on our way to narbonne, we took an incredible bike path that took us across this uninhabited island along an old canal. the canal is mostly used for houseboats now, so it was pretty quiet. the path started as asphalt, turned to pea gravel and eventually small boulders. reminder: we are on road bikes with 35 lb packs on the back. so, it was a bit rough on the bikes. eventually my rear tire gave up and went flat. no big deal, i'm a tire changing pro, right? after 2 inner tubes, i finally realized that our only pump was broken from the fall i took after the flat. not good. it was 6 miles from the next town. so we sat there for about 10 minutes cursing the bad luck and the failure of not getting another pump when this 70 year old comes tearing up on a mt bike. turns out he has the presta valve pump we need and we were rolling in 3 minutes. thank god for the old guy.

in narbonne, we finally transitioned to crepes from tapas. mine had some sort of chicken, tomato, veggie mix. it was excellent.