On the road again

We are back on the road and FTP’ing for Tour de France week 2.  I was lucky enough to be chosen for the Luxury Behind the Scenes trip featuring Team Radioshack access.  We prepped for the few days before our departure and this included working on unit inventories, prepping our bikes and repacking our suitcases.  About 15 guides showed up at the house between Tuesday and Thursday, so the place was jam-packed.  Luckily, Renee had scheduled a cleaning service to come and clean the entire house before the chaos, so it was nice and refreshing to have a clean place. 

For having 20 or so people in the house at times, I was surprised how clean it stayed and everyone did a great job pitching in.  I was on cooking duty for the first two nights, and everyone seemed to love the food.  One of the best feelings for me is when someone enjoys what I prepare in the kitchen.  I’ll have even better skills after spending so much time in France!  The one morning was pretty funny because the topic of dinner came up and everyone looked at me! Haha.  They all got a kick out of it, but I was pretty tired and needed to work on my own trip prep… we had to leave in a day and I had no idea where we were going!!

Week 2 sees us riding in the alps near Switzerland, so we drove up to Evian (yes, the water place) two days ago; and yes, the tap water is very good.  The hotel we stayed in during our first night there was the original source for Vittel!  We began charting our routes and finished Day 1 & 2, and got halfway through Day 4; that means we can probably do a nice ride tomorrow since we’ll have a little extra time!  The Day 1 loop from Evian goes into the mountains, and everything has some Swiss influence regardless of it being in France.  The Day 2 ride takes us from Evian to Morzine, up a major climb and back to Evian.  Then we drove the first half of Day 4, which starts in Les Gets and moves south. 

We stopped right outside of Chamonix, because Renee has an good friend that lives there.  Jeff, Renee and I are now in a beautiful home along the crystal clear river outside of Chamonix.  The temperature is fairly cold here and was in the single digits!  Glad I brought some chilly weather gear.  On our way back from our FTP work today, we stopped at a small restaurant in a more remote town.  We had a specialty of the Savoie region, Fondue.  This was comte cheese with some whisky, white wine and cepes mushrooms.  That was an amazing meal, and the fact that Renee's friend gave us the rest of the red wine (worth about a 100euro a bottle), we were having a great time.  I’m exhausted after little sleep, long van day, and a fantastic meal with a lot of wine.  

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for new pictures on snapfish!