07-25-2006

We finally made it out of the Chamonix area and started heading to Gap. Found out the Tour de France was going to be the Alpe d'Huez stage on the 18th. Cool, that is the best stage in the Tour, so we'll hit that. Usually the Alpe d'Huez stage is a time trial, so they start in the morning sending one rider out at a time every 3 minutes. The riders are by themselves on a relatively short (but steep in this case) stage.

So we got to the base of Alpe d'Huez about 10pm to thousands of people partying. It was crazy. We drove up the hill a ways and with the number of cars, bikes and pedestrians on the road, decided we wouldn't get a spot at the finish and drove back down and parked at the bottom. Threw all the sleeping gear into the backpacks and started hiking up. Got about 4km up and camped around midnight. So the next day we wake up expecting the roads to quiet down as they start getting ready for the stage. But thousands of cars, bikes and pedestrians continue to stream up the hill in front of us. 11am, 12am, 1pm, still no signs of closure or the start. By this time it was easily 100°F and we were dieing of starvation and dehydration. We had 9 euros to our name and only about 9 crappy rice krispy bars we were given at the internet cafe the day prior. I finally was able to walk down to a restaurant and grab some baguettes and ham for the last of our money.

Finally Margaret asked the people next to us what time we could expect the stage to finally start. Much to our surprise the riders wouldn't be by until about 4:45pm! Apparently they weren't running the Alpe d'Huez stage as a time trial this year. Instead, the riders had departed Gap at around 9am that morning and would have to do nearly 200km to get to our point on the stage. Whoops. So we waited and watched the people streaming up the hill. Finally around 3:30pm the "caravan" hit. This is a little parade that goes along the route ahead of the peloton. Basically it's 30 minutes of the worst commercial ever. There are cars all done up with people in them singing with crappy music playing, trying to advertise their wares. Most of them throw corporate advertisements at you (in the form of plastic blow up things, hats, samples, etc). So not only is it a commercial, but the commercial throws garbage at you. And that goes on every day for 200km for 20+ days! Quite disappointing actually.

So 4:45pm finally got there and we got to see some riders go by. It was pretty exciting, actually. It only lasts a few minutes as the pack (spread thin from the effort of the stage and the hill) streams by. Some riders look relaxed, others look like death. Pretty cool to see some of the worlds best athletes cruising up one of the hardest stages ever. It got me thinking I need to get on the bike again and get in shape!

We bee-lined it back down the hill once the peloton was through. Headed to Gap and spent the night in a hotel since we never arrived until 10pm or so. Got up the next day and headed to Ceuse, arriving there mid-day. Jason and Helen were already climbing, so we just chilled. Got up at 6am the following day to get up to the crag early to beat the sun. It's an hour hike up to Ceuse and it's steep! You have to go early because the sun hits the wall around 1pm. You can climb in the evening also, but our destination was Cascade, which is a morning spot.

The first climb of the day, a 6b+, felt like getting my teeth kicked in. It's starts off with like a V3 boulder problem. And yes, they still call it 6b+. It was cold and I felt my left middle finger tweak a bit. Once past the first section, the climbing was really enjoyable. People say it's polished there, but compared to places like Charleston and Thailand, it was quite good. The next two climbs were reall fun; a 5c and a 6c.

Next I sat around and chilled, then finally decided to get on a 7a before I got too cold. Oddly enough, I wasn't really wanting to get on anything at that point, but I thought "that's stupid; I'm in Ceuse and I need to climb!" So I hit the 7a and just felt my left middle finger again at the second bolt. I said "take" and hung there for awhile. The finger didn't hurt, it just didn't feel right. I tried again and then said words I thought would never come out of my mouth: "I don't want to climb." I wasn't talking about just that route - I was talking about this trip. I came down, pulled the rope and took my harness off. We stuck around for awhile while Jason and Helen climbed a bit, but finally I just had to leave. We left around 4pm and never looked back. Imagine me leaving the worlds premier climbing area voluntarily without an ounce of regret or any misgivings!

Packed up and headed to Geneva that night. I wanted to see if I could change my flight back to an earlier date. Our plan was to get a hotel somewhere near Geneva on the French side. Little did we know, the Tour was coming through Annemasse, which is the town nearest Geneva on the French side. We arrived in Annemasse around 10pm. Every hotel and campground was completely booked. Okay, we'll try the next town. Booked. You don't realize just how big the Tour is until you need a hotel room near one of their stages. Basically, every hotel room was booked from Annemasse to Chamonix to Annecy, a huge portion of France. We tried campgrounds, we tried everything. Even pulled over in this pullout alongside the road. It had a nice pond and was quite pretty. Until we tried to setup camp and realized that the euro's like to shit and leave their toilet paper everywhere in these roadside pulloffs.

During this searching, we had an interesting time on the autoroutes. As you know, they are paid autoroutes here in France. For example, we spent like 15 euro to get from Gap to Geneva. Well during all this driving around looking for places to stay, we ran out of cash for the autoroutes. No problem, they surely take Mastercard (all the toll booths have icons of them on their side). We get to e toll booth and had them our Mastercard. The toll was 1.60 euros and we only had 1.22 euro. The dude swipes the card, shakes his head and asks "American?" "Yep." He proceeds to tell us in very fast french that it doesn't work with American cards. We tell him we don't have enough euros. We ask if we can pull aside, let other people go through and look for more money. Nope. He just sits there babbling french, asking for the papers for our car (apparently to write us a ticket). We get out and start tearing the car apart looking for either money or the car rental papers (at this point I didn't care if I got a ticket). This went on for about 5 minutes before Margaret had the idea of giving him American dollars. I handed him a $5, he took it, exchanged it at about 3/4 it's value, called us liars and let us through. Pretty fun!

By this time it's 5am and we're both at our wits end. We said "screw it" and headed to the airport hoping they'll have rooms in Geneva. We finally found one and got checked in around 6am. Ugh. The whole reason we avoided Geneva in the first place was to save money. I guess it would've been worth the difference had we known beforehand the trouble that would cause!

06-24-2006

Finally got out today and did some Euro "hiking". That consisted of walking 10 minutes to town and then riding the gondola up to over 12'000 feet elevation. It is rough here. We took the cable cars to Italy for lunch, then rode back across the glaciated Alps and had dinner in Chamonix. Wait, did I say we went hiking? Oh yeah, we did hike 15 minutes over to a lake somewhere up in the foothills on the way back home...

06-08-2006

I think this place will do nicely for a couple months. Went bouldering at Le Col des Montets for a couple hours today and the view was outstanding. Good rock too, and only a couple miles away. We can walk to a pretty fun climbing wall. Lots to check out. The chalet is hooked up with wi-fi, big screens, everything one needs for geekin' out. The view out our window looks directly to Mt. Blanc. Good times in Chamonix!