Crazy Man

Well, I found some good pasta for dinner but Rick did not quite knock off Col delle Finestre that night. While this is not the highest col in Europe, it is one of the most difficult. The road is very steep (a lot of 10 and 12 percent grade with some spots even higher) and very narrow. That night he made it almost up to where the asphault ends. Yeah, the last 6 to 7 kilometers are gravel/dirt! He came back and looked incredulously at his ride sheet again... "no, it can't be... it gets steeper at the end!!"

Doesn't this look like fun?

It was a long day and he was pretty tired, but he did it, four cols, 120 plus kilometers... I met him at the top of Izoard and gave him the option of quitting and picking up there the next day, but nope. Off he went. Time made him call it quits short of Vars Saint Marie, our hotel stop for the night about half way up Col du Vars. He couldn't quite do that and still get dinner. When I brought him into the hotel, the owner said, "You did four cols in one day? Including Finestre??!! You crazy, man!" Finestre, Sestriere, Montgenevre, Izoard. And he still took me out to dinner afterward!

And because that was so much fun, the next day I dropped him off back at the bottom of Col du Vars and he rode up that one, followed by Col de la Bonette. This last one lays claim to being the highest road in all of Europe. (As a col, it is still just short of Izeran, but by adding a couple kilometers of loop road around the summit, they have the highest road honors.) On his route profile, this is the nastiest looking spike, but it is now behind him. Two days to go.

I want a medal, too, for driving all these crazy roads! I'm getting really good at shifting through hairpin turns. First, second and third are really getting a workout...what's that fourth gear for?

Tonight we're in a very interesting ski resort town (again) called Auron. Lots of mountain bike stuff going on in the summer. Rick finally tracked down the C02 cartridges he'd been looking for. You should see us trying to ask for these. My French is struggling along. Rick just launches into English and I try to translate. The combinations seems to work. The other thing Rick is really good at is talking to kids. He'll catch some kid's eye in a restaurant and say something like, "Do you speak English?" or "What's your name?" and pretty soon the whole family is laughing and dredging up their highschool English and coaxing the kids into talking with us. I make Rick say something in French, too (fair is fair, right?) and that usually gets a laugh, too!

Wherever we go, Rick always has to learn to say "well-done" in whatever language. He was trying to remember bien cuit tonight, but said it more like bien cue, which apparently means nice "bottom" so the restaurant owner mentioned he might want to be careful with that one.

Well, Ricky is sawing logs so guess I'll put up one more photo and call it a night. Heading to the perfume capital of the world tomorrow, Grasse!

Typical Alpes.... Incredible scenery....