Friday, September 9, 2011

Etienne's Visit

My son has been out visiting for the last 10 or so days. He's doing very well in the rowing team at college and wanted to use the trip for some pre-season training. So we did a lot of cycling and a little bit of hiking.

The first problem was finding a road bike that fitted him. We were really lucky and found an excellent early nineties bike; it needed some TLC but for 200 Euros we had a bike that new today would be over $6,000. 

We used to cycle together 6 or 7 years ago but hadn't since. As I expected, our "performance curves" have crossed some time in the last few years. He probably hadn't done a ride over 1 hour before coming out, but he took to it very easily. 

We had some long, hard bike rides (of course, they strangely seemed longer and harder to me). The weather was reasonably cooperative - warm but not too hot. Of course, we're in the Alps, and there are lots of steep 10 - 15 Km climbs. And we're in France, so lots of nice restos for lunch. I appreciated the latter more than the former. On the last day - accompanied by Ray - we had a 7+ hour day that left us all nicely tired - the perfect preparation for Etienne's cross-atlantic flight!

No comments:

Post a Comment