In spite of the profile of this ride, I found this to be one of the most comfortable climbs that we had all week.
The idea here is that we climb to within 5 kilometers of the summit of the big climb. We'd be taking the same road that the tour would be riding later in the day. Then we watch the tour go by and ride to the top of the climb and then it's all downhill to our next hotel.
As I said, the climb was fantastic. We stopped and had a great lunch, enjoyed a couple beers, and settled in to wait for the riders.
If you don't already know, today is the day that Landis launches his attack after faltering the day before. We were at a perfect spot to watch it but we really didn't know. When they went by he had just caught one group that he was attacking. I thought he looked terrible. Like I said, watching the tour live can be a little deceiving.
After the tour went by we climbed and then did a great descent. We lost one rider that day to a bad accident. He ended up spending the rest of his trip in a neck brace. The downhill and the fans combined for some very tricky maneuvering.
There were some very strong riders in our group. I couldn't keep up with them even on the downhill and got a little lost on the way to the hotel. It worked out though because I got to see an honest to goodness castle.
The hotel we stayed in, The Palace de Menthon, was not just the nicest hotel I've ever stayed in, but probably the nicest hotel I've ever seen. I'll post pics tonight. More about the area tomorrow.
That night we had some pretty good pizza in France. Better than just about anything you can get in Phoenix anyway. Had a few drinks with the locals and some other Trek Travel tourists and I almost fell into a sewer.
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