One thing leads to another as we pedal along the winding road of life. Paris-Brest-Paris in 2007 brought us to a corner of France we hadn't seen before and best of all, brought us our new friend, Sophie Matter. Last year we had the pleasure of sharing our corner of the world with Sophie when she came to ride the Rocky Mountain 1200 in Canada. Randonneurs being the crazy people they are, we parted with promises to see each other at the next year's "Big Ride"; London-Edinburgh-London (LEL.)
Ah, but the rains of a Northwest winter and the cold Mistral of Provence breed grandiose plans and soon Sophie was inviting us to visit her in France for some "pre-LEL" riding. She must have been feeling particularly isolated because she extended the invitation to include 4-5 other Seattle International Randonneurs as well!! We wasted no time in RSVP-ing that one, and so it is that three Seattle Randonneurs and their wives will be spending this fourth of July in the small town of Carces in Provence!
The cast of Characters in this great adventure are Dave & Cathi who live just across town and Bob and his wife Lisa (Bob is the rider who talked Sophie into following him to our gite during PBP) and of course Crazy Ricky and yours truly! I've been a little worried about my cycling ability as I know Cathi is an avid cyclist and has done a few 200Ks and Lisa works as a personal trainer so I know she at least gets more gym time than I do (me-zero!) But I'm happy to do my own thing and let everyone else do theirs as well.
There should be no shortage of beauty and wonder as we make our way through the next month or so. Bob and Lisa are already in Europe, visiting Bob's son in Switzerland. Dave, Cathi, Rick and I leave next Friday and we will all be met by Sophie in Nice on Independence Day. The next day, quelle suprise! The Tour de France will roll through her little town of Carces. We couldn't have planned it better. Between that first week in Provence and our final week in and around London, the planned road will take us to Alsace, Grenoble, and Paris. We wish you were all joining us, but hope you will follow along!
We have a new toy this year so I am including a link to another site here:
http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0E3KpBipJX1RZt8e2KYcXOz4UofXbA8zR
This should take you to Rick's Shared SPOT Page. SPOT is our Satellite Personal Online Tracker. Rick tucks SPOT into a jersey pocket and SPOT "barks" out "messages" to this website every 15 to 20 minutes. The result is a track of locations (they look like bootprints on a google map...no little bike, sorry.) Sometimes SPOT isn't able to send so there may be gaps, but mostly he tracks along pretty well. It is "real-time" so you can log on and see where we are at any time. The shared page only saves the route for a week so I may add in another link later that will give you the whole month's adventures together.
Have fun. I know we will!
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