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November 20 to 22, 2009
Yours Truly and Pilar
Distance: 125km
First day: stars
Second day: sun
Third day: rain, rain, rain
# illegal imigrants seen: 1
# hunters seen: 10
# fishermen seen: 8
# horseback riders passed: 5
# hikers and cyclists seen: 5 and 0 respectively
Geneve to Chambery, France
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Starting point: St. Julien en Genevoise train station near the Swiss border, 8:30pm. As we were packing our stuff and getting ready to hit the darkness and cold outside, a bunch of cops kept running through the station. As they ran by the door once, we happened to notice some dude standing near us with a suitcase, looking awefully interested in what the cops were doing. As soon as they got out of sight, he ran off at a hurried clip. We didn't take any notice at first, until the cops came back in a flurry and asked us if we'd seen some slavic dude with a couple of suitcases pass by. Yep indeed, he ran off thataway!!! Mass exeunt, cop cars go peeling off, sirens wailing. Hoookay, right. Well lets go hit that darkness out there now, shall we! |
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After testing our new high-power bike lights very successfuly despite some intense valley fog for an hour and a half, we landed a rad bivy sight. Just above the blanket of fog, with the town lights in the valley illuminating the fog from below. Cool! |
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Saturday morning. |
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On the beautiful chemin de St Jacques de Compostelle. |
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Note the valley fog on the right that we had crept out of the night before. |
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Chateau de Pomier. |
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Fine riding. |
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Even finner riding. Warm summer weather! |
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See previous picture. |
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Moo! |
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Sweet downhills. |
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Chemin de St. Jacques de Compostelle. |
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Beautiful Pont du Pissieu (18th century). |
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Pilar stealing apples. |
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Beautiful views south, before Frangy. In the following town, Frangy, we were pausing just before the next long road climb, when a whole gang of speed boarders came screeeeeeaming down the hill at mach speed. Just at the bottom of the hill they had to do a 90 turn off the main road onto our secondary road to prevent slamming into the backs of the slowing vehicles in front of them, and to have a better runout. No problem! They flicked their boards sideways and screeched the wheels to slow down and take the turn. As if they were skiing. Unnnbelievable! The dudes were straight out of an apocalypse movie. Pretty funny! |
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A hunter's garage door! How many boars did he catch this year? |
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Along the route, there were just tons and tons of apples and pears sprawling all over the ground. These particular apples were easily THE best apples I have EVER tasted in my life. Guaranteed. And NOBODY was picking them. Wow. We lived on these for the rest of the trip. It was worth the extra weight on the back! |
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Sunday morning, after a wet breakfast. |
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Oh it's wet today!!! Half of today was spent beside the Rhone river. Cool! |
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Swapping the map around under the protection of a bridge. |
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This guy passed us with a husky team pulling his quad. Must've been training them or something... |
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Steep pedestrian bridge at Chanaz. Boy were we cold here! Good thing there was a boulangerie/cafe, followed by a steep climb. |
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Map-swap-stop under the eaves of a farmhouse. |
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Savoie vineyards in the fog and cold and wet! |
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Final 25km on the road to Chambery. |
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Final 10km downhill to Chambery. One hell of a cold downhill!!! |
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Views of the Lac du Bourget on the descent. |
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Final 10km on a piste cyclable, trying to stay warm and eat. |
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Aaaah, dry clothes! Waiting for the train back home in Chambery. What a sweet trip! |
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