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< back to day 1 > forward to day 3 The night in the tent was cold. We had left one side of the rain fly open for better ventilation, and to save some space and weight I had brought only my middle-of-the-summerßweight sleeping bag. The bright morning sun and a cup of coffee warmed me up quickly, though. As it is usually the case on the first few days of a tour, it took us a while to get ready; but by 9:45 we were on the road again. Our tentative plan for the day was to make it to Mont Orford National Park, about 80 kilometers and a bunch of climbing. We knew that this might be a challenge; but since there were a number of other campgrounds along the route we went for it anyway. The road from the campground was mostly empty on this beautiful Saturday morning, and after only a few kilometers we reached the Route Verte 1. ...

Over the course of the year, the Biketopus and I had loosely talked about doing a long bike tour this summer. The Biketopus will start a busy new job next year and so we wanted to take the opportunity to be on the road for more than just a few days. We discussed various options – taking the bikes on our France work/vacation trip, touring in my native Germany, or maybe going out to the US West Coast. In the end, we decided to stay close to home: start in Montreal and go east for about two weeks, taking the Route Verte 1 to Quebec City, continuing along the Saint Lawrence, and then cutting across the Gaspesie peninsula. Unfortunately, we had a family emergency just before the planned start of the tour and therefore had to modify our plans. The trip was trimmed down to one week and about 600km of riding in a loop from Montreal. ...

As part of our summer work-vacation trip with the biketopus, I had a chance to see the 100th edition of the Tour de France. We managed to tweak our schedule so that I was able to see four stages, one in Marseille and three in and around Gap in the French High Alps. Lots of pictures were taken, and here is the first installment of photo essays. Marseille was the finish of the fifth stage of the Tour. After three stages on Corsica and the team time trial in Nice, this stage was a mostly flat 228km from Cagnes-sur-Mer to the Marseille beaches. Having never been to the Tour in person, I didn’t have a good idea of what to expect – how many people are going to be there? How close to the action can you get? What’s the best place to be at? – and therefore just made up things on the go. I knew that on such a flat stage there most likely would be a mass sprint at the finish and so I decided to head out to the finish area. Wanting to get a good spot, I headed out there on my Le Velo bike share bike several before the projected arrival. ...

Edit 2013-08-17: Please read the update at the end of the post. Edit 2014-05-31: As this post appears to be getting a lot of search engine traffic, I’d like to point out that the functionality I’m describing here is now available much more comfortably as part of Strava itself. I guess I was not to only person intrigued by the concept. Most people would not think of Strava as a planning tool. Sure, it’s a great performance and training tracker and provides lots of opportunities to compete with fellow cyclists and yourself, but its use for route planning is less obvious. The basic problem is this: You want to plan a ride in area that you don’t know well. There are many roads, but how can you tell apart the heavily trafficked, narrow highway from the lovely scenic back road? There already are a number of tool that can help, but they all have some shortcomings. For the amount of traffic on a given road, one can look up traffic count data from state or local departments of transportation (e.g. New York State). Depending on your location, this works reasonably well for major roads, but the small back roads that are often the nicest to ride on often lack count data. Google Street View can give you a good general impression of a road – how wide is it, does it have a shoulder, are there big potholes? – but it can be tedious to check longer stretches of a road. OpenStreetMap allows everyone to add useful information to their geographic database, like the existence of shoulders, the smoothness of the road, or its speed limit; but so far a lot of those features are not displayed on the map and the data especially in North America is very incomplete. ...

I got back from France on Monday night and the jetlag and who knows what else made me feel quite miserable throughout the whole week. Whereas in France I wanted to ride all the time – and couldn’t, back in Montreal I could’ve ridden all the time – but wouldn’t. Since the lack of physical activity obviously didn’t help with my mood, I firmly planned to go for a ride on Saturday. Nothing strenuous, just 100km at a leisurely on a well-known route. Knowing myself and my tendency not to go through with the “leisurely pace” or “just 100km” aspects, I even took measures like leaving at home my GPS (to prevent me from chasing Strava segments), just bringing one water bottle, and not packing more than the four Clif Bars that were already in my saddle bag. The jetlag woke me up at 5:30 and I was on the road by 7:30, and initially everything worked out as planned. I tootled along across the St. Lawrence and on towards Chambly where I was then to turn towards St.-Jean-sur-Richelieu on the Chambly Canal bike path. Once I got to a little map display of the region’s bike trails in Chambly, however, I suddenly was like: “Hey, you’ve already done the St.-Jean ride a couple times this year. What about going to, say, Granby?” The map claimed it would only be 26 km, and while in the back of my mind I clearly knew that that couldn’t be right, the urge to bikebikebike had already kicked in. I was thrown back a bit when just 5 minutes later I got stuck at the swing bridge across the Chambly Canal. It stayed open for quite some time, meaning that a sizeable number of cars and cyclists amassed on both ends. ...

I’ve just returned from a three week trip to the south of France. Probably there are going to be more blog posts about my adventures there, including those about seeing the Tour de France live, but for now I’m just posting a little ride report. Our stay in France was decidedly not a bike vacation and so my riding was mostly confined to riding around cities on various ill-fitting bikeshare bikes. The last leg of our trip had us staying in Gap in the French Alps. After suffering from increasingly strong bike withdrawal symptoms, I finally decided to rent a bike from the tourist info and go for at least a short ride. There was one shop in town that rented road and mountain bikes, but you would have had to drive there and the bikes were 40 Euros per day. The tourist info bikes, in contrast, could be picked up right in the town center and were free to use for the whole day. The choice of bikes was limited to some pedelecs, a step-through city bike and a couple Scott fitness bikes. The latter looked least ill-fitting for my 2 meter body and after dropping off a 200 Euro cash deposit and a copy of my passport I was good to go. ...

Instead of embarking on a 200km brevet on wet Saturday, I had decided to go onto a long solo ride on sunny Sunday. Whereas on the previous weekend I had turned to the southeast, this time I wanted to head north. The P’tit train du Nord is a rail train on the former route of a train to the ski resort towns of Mont-Tremblant and Mont-Laurier. The train begins in Blainville, just north of the Montreal island, and continues for about 200 km to Mont-Laurier. My destination for the day was the Mont-Tremblant. Two years ago, the SO and I cycled on the P’tit train for a two day camping trip, but for health reasons we only made it about halfway to Mont-Tremblant. Based on my planning the route at home, the total mileage from the Place-de-la-Concorde metro station to the village would be about 110 km one way – a long but doable distance. I headed out to the metro station near our house just before nine. As I was about to swipe my card at the turnstile, the ticket agent knocked on the window of her booth and let me know that today the metro was off-limits for bikes until 6pm, thanks to the F1 Grand Prix. Just another reason to dislike the Grand Prix… But what can you do – I just started riding, with the clear knowledge that this would probably add a good hour of not-that-fun riding and was diminishing my chances of actually making it all the way to Mont-Tremblant. Since it was Sunday morning, I just rode on the main arterial for most of the way and finally arrived at the de-la-Concorde station. From here to the start of the actual trail the route is a mix of separate paths and suburban and residential roads – nothing spectacular but also not too bad. In Blainville, the fun began: parallel to the commuter rail line lies a smoothly paved path. It’s very popular amongst cyclists, inline skaters, and runners alike, but it’s wide enough that you can still go at a good clip. I was feeling great and put the hammer down, zooming along at 30km/h. The wind was mostly a side to headwind, but it wasn’t particularly strong. In Saint-Jerome I took my first break after 60km, wolfing down a sandwich and refilling my water bottles. Once you get to the outskirts of Saint-Jerome the trail turns into gravel, and the gentle ascent begins. The trail is really well maintained and was easily rideable on my 25mm tires. For many kilometers the trail follows the scenic Rivière-du-Nord which switches betwenn still, wide parts and gurgling rapids multiple times. A lot of the old train stations were converted into tourist infos, rest stops, or cafes, and there are also always signs directing cyclists to nearby local businesses. On my second rest stop, I finally had a closer look at one of the sigs with distances on the trail – realizing that something had gone wrong with my distance calculation: It turns out that “Mont Tremblant” consists of multiple little parts, and that the one that I was trying to get to was the furthest, almost 20km past the one I had mapped. At this point it was pretty clear that I wouldn’t make it there and I decided to just continue until I felt like turning back. The route continued being beautiful and scenic, with the only annoyance being the sets of narrow chicanes at each and every road crossing (since they require a good deal of concentration I never ended up taking a picture of them). A lot of cyclists of all ages and types were enjoying the beautiful day on the trail. I reached my point of return when the combination of riding on gravel, the ascent, and the headwind had worn me down sufficiently. I had already crossed the highest point of the route and didn’t feel much like having to go back up on the return leg. Having the wind in my back now, going back was a lot of fun. My body had started getting sore in various spots, but I was doing alright. I even had enough energy to ride fast enough to be a target for a roadie grabbing onto my wheel on the section between Saint-Jerome and Blainville. Unfortunately I took a wrong turn at one of the street crossings and missed my chance to have him do some work for me. After almost exactly 10 hours of time in the saddle and 241 kilometers I finally reached the metro station, being very happy to be spared the final kilometers back home. Today I’m feeling a little stiff, but nothing major. All in all a great ride, despite not having made it to my intended destination. Maybe I’ll try it again some time after August, when the commuter rail to Saint-Jerome will have added weekend service. ...

The Adige bike path in the early morning Entering the Stelvio National Park Pass open? Check. I was going through my old GPS log files and discovered this gem which I hadn't uploaded to Strava yet: A log of the hardest ride I've ever done (No. 2 is this one, I think). We spent the summer of 2011 in the North Italian Alps. We primarily went hiking, but on the second to last day of our trip I rented a fancy crabon road bike and set out for a ride up the famous Stelvio pass. The original plan was to save myself some of flatter parts of the route by taking the train to Prato, at the bottom of the pass. When I arrived at the train station at 6 am, however, I realized that one couldn't buy tickets on the train. Oh well, what can you do -- I just got going, telling myself that those 42 km wouldn't make that much of a difference. The bike's lowest gear was a 34-27 which is not bad for a road bike, but for 25 km of constant 8% gradient it wasn't exactly what would have been good for me. Well, the spectacular scenery and the loads of other cyclists (some slower, some faster) pushed me on and I actually rode up all 48 switchbacks to the pass at 2750m with just one stop. For the way back I went down the slightly less spectacular but still scenic and quiet Umbrail pass. Once I reached the Adige valley again I was already pretty spent. But there were still about 50km to go. While they theoretically were all downhill, the typical hot wind that blows up the valley made my life miserable. In addition, my butt was really sore from being on this tiny racing saddle for many hours. Well, after 150km, over 3500m of climbing and 9 hours in the saddle I made it back to the hotel in the end. Unfortunately, my suffering wasn't quite over yet. I obviously had overexerted myself enough to compromise my immune system and caught a nasty stomach bug. For almost a week I couldn't eat anything solid. But hey, it was still totally worth it. Some remnants of the brutal fought here Blurry picture of the first switchback The valley opens up, providing great views Plenty of cyclists Nice, smooth pavement Ortler. At 3905m the tallest summit in this part of the Alps The iconic view of the final switchbacks. At this point you've already climbed for a long time Time for a rest break before tackling the final climb The pass is tough on everyone and everything. Stranded RV. Switchback No. 1. Woo! Top of the world (almost). Turn off to the Umbrail in a picturesque Swiss village My crabon wonderbike Re-entering Italy

This winter in Montreal was much harsher and longer than last year’s and therefore I hadn’t gotten too many miles in so far. Yet, May marks the beginning of the brevet season, with a 200k. I probably won’t be able to do any brevets next year, as we’ll be moving to a town with a rando club and I therefore wanted to get a good number of rides in this year. Important things first: Once again, I managed to not put back my memory card into the camera. I really hate it when that happens, especially when there would’ve been many opportunities for taking pretty pictures on this nice and sunny spring day. The ride was scheduled for 7. I got out of bed at 5:30 and my usual slow morning self completed the last bits of preparation necessary. Other than forgetting the memory card, I also failed to prepare sandwiches – something I would dearly regret later. The forecast for the day was a high of 24°C and pure sun. Given how pale I am after the winter and having seen my SO getting badly burned from a relatively short run, I decided to play it safe and wear my longsleeve wool jersey. When I arrived at the starting point, there was already a big crowd of riders assembled – possibly the largest number I’d ever seen at a CVRM event. Jean, our club president, quickly explained the rules of the ride for the newcomers and after the obligatory group picture we headed out. I stayed with the front of the group, and riding through the quiet morning streets in a pack of 15 to 20 riders at high speed was exhilarating. Once we got out of the suburbs, a group of 8 or so cyclists increased the tempo further and after a short attempt of keeping up with them I let myself fall back and rode by myself for a while. While I had my first Clif Bar of the day, I was caught by another group of 6 riders and we stayed together until the first control stop at 41 km. On the way there, I – for what I think the first time of my life – managed to drop my water bottle while being near the front of the group. Fortunately, nobody was hurt and I was able to retrieve the bottle, but I was rather embarassed. Going with my usual policy of keeping the control stops short, I only had my card signed, went to bathroom and headed out again before the rest of the group. After a couple minutes it dawned on me that I hadn’t refilled my water bottles because somehow in my mind the next rest stop would be before getting to the big climb of the day. A quick glance at the cue sheet, however, confirmed that that was not the case and I therefore bought a bottle of Gatorade at the next gas station. The lost minutes, of course, meant that the people behind me would soon catch up with me. I considered hanging on to them but they were just a tad bit too fast and I therefore continued by myself. The route had been flat so far, heading straight south towards the US border. At the last turn before the crossing, we then turned west and rode parallel to border. This was also where things started getting hilly. It starts out with gentle rolling hills and a lot of false flats and I started feeling a little exhausted. This was exacerbated by my maladjusted rear derailleur that kept ghost-shifting into a higher gear. On the other, this stretch of the route is also the most scenic part. Vineyards and orchards, old stone walls, and nice views (you can see a bit of it here). The final climb up Covey Hill was mean, as always, but I made it up, huffing and puffing. The following downhill to the next control stop quickly made me forget the hard work, though, and soon I arrived at Boulangerie Chartrand, which was as busy as usual, both with regular customers and other randonneurs. I only had an espresso and a Clif Bar, refilled my bottles, re-applied sunscreen, fixed the derailleur, and headed out again, once again by myself. The sun was burning by now which on the one hand made me glad to have the protection the long jersey provided, but on the other hand also made me pretty hot. Once again, I was being passed by the group of people I’d been playing cat-and-mouse with. The route out here was again all very quiet – there’s only one little town, Saint-Chrysostome, on the 60 km between rest stops 2 and 3. Having a properly working derailleur was nice, but now I had to struggle with a headwind (even though it seemed to switch directios many times during the course of the day) and me being absolutely sick of eating and drinking sweet things. This is not uncommon for me, but usually doesn’t happen as early. I dreaded having to eat yet another Clif Bar and longingly thought about those savory sandwiches I never ended up making. My feet were also complaining, but in the end I made it to the third control stop (which is the same as number 1). A few other riders were there, fixing someone’s flat, and this time they actually headed out before me. The V8 and coke I had had at the control made me feel better, as did the knowledge that only a good 40km were left until the finish. Just before reaching the outer limits of the suburbs I was caught by yet another group. This time, I did ride with them and had a nice conversation with one rider who was doing his first fixed gear 200k. We arrived at the final control at 15:37, a good 8.5 hours after the start. Given how early in the season it was and that I had ridden mostly on my own, this was a surprisingly good time and I didn’t feel too bad. I also seem to have avoided getting burned by the sun. Overall, a very happy ride! ...

Jacques Cartier Bridge at dusk The Jacques Cartier Bridge is a vital link between the island of Montreal and the South Shore. To the chagrin of many bike commuters the bridge is closed during the winter, but at least "The Jacques Cartier and Champlain Bridges Incorporated" which manages the bridges is much better than the city of Montreal in closing the bridge as late in the season as possible and reopening as early as possible. This year's opening date was March 26 but until now the southern approach to the bike path was closed. This meant that one had to go up or down a steep, long set of stairs to get on and off the bridge, making the bridge practically unusable for a number of cyclists. Bike path on the bridge The reason for the closure was an unstable embankment. If you've used the bridge you've probably noticed that the side of the path kept sinking, and after they've tried some minor fixes this season a more durable solution was implemented. The first round of this work has now been completed but there will be more work -- and another closure of that section for five weeks in July. During that period some other work will also be carried out, resulting in a complete closure of the path for two weeks. While the closure is annoying, I'm looking forward to the improvements, and a detour via the sidewalk on the other side of the bridge exists. Since walking your bike across the entire span of the bridge and/or using the steps will be rather tedious (and yes, you should not harass pedestrians and actually walk your bike), it might be a better option to take a detour. During the partial closure you can exit the Cartier Bridge onto Ile-Sainte-Helene, cross the little bridge towards the Formula 1 race track and then follow the bike path to the Saint-Lambert locks across the St. Lawrence Seaway. During the complete closure (and if you come from points further south/west) you can detour via Pont-de-la-Concorde to Ile-Notre-Dame and then take the same way as above to the locks. © OpenStreetMap contributors. Data available under the Open Database License, cartography licensed as CC-BY-SA.