Paul's got a new bike

Remember Paul's incessant complaint that "bicycling sucks" while we were trekking across the country? He just bought a used Merlin titanium bike from a friend of mine who has accumulated a large stock of incredible bikes. Paul's pretty much decided that he really likes cycling. He has the bike he rode across country, a fixed-gear bike he uses for commuting, and a trick bike, besides for the Merlin.

I'm still riding a fair amount, commuting as much as 20 miles a day and going for one long ride every weekend. I went to Bourg d'Oisans, the town at the base of l'Alpe d'Huez in France, with one of the guys in my cycling club and some of his friends. I loved cycling in the Alps. We rode up three of the mountains that were on this year's tour (although we did them on three different days, while the pros did them all in one day), and many other alps and cols. The views were astonishingly beautiful. The mountains were impossibly green, decorated with soaring waterfalls and rushing brooks, with snow-peaked caps and glaciers all around. Beautiful wild flowers were in bloom everywhere (this was early June) and there was lots of wildlife and interesting farm animals. This area is a cycling mecca. On most rides, I saw more bikes than cars, and the people in cars are incredibly considerate of cyclists. On l'Alpe d'Huez, people just hand out to watch and cheer on the cyclists who are climbing up. There are 21 hair-pin turns, each named for someone who'd one a tour stage there. I had to remember to try to take a drink at each turn because they are the comparatively flat parts of the climb. A couple of beautiful French women were standing at one of the turns about halfway up, cheering the riders on. "Allez! Allez! Courage!" I thought this was one of the finest public services I'd ever seen and the 300 yards until they were out of sight was probably my fastest segment on the mountain. We rode up l'Alpe d'Huez a second time because we discovered that 500 crazy Dutch people were riding up the mountain 6 or more times in a day to raise money for cancer research. They started at 5AM. We had to see this and had planned to ride partway up, but the scene was so much fun that we did the whole climb again. There were thousands of Dutch people wearing orange wigs, floppy hats, and with all sort of noisemakers cheering their compatriots on. Sound stages were set up. It was amazing. The end was decked out like the end of the tour stage and hundreds of people cheered us as we crossed the finish line. I felt like a fraud because we'd only ridden up once, while some of the ride participants were already on their third ascent, but the crowd was cheering everyone. As I descended, I wondered how one could make oneself turn around and climb the mountain again 4, 5, or 6 times. It is 3,000+ feet of vertical over 9 miles. It took me about 1.5 hours to climb and half an hour to descend. Some of the Dutch riders were faster, but many were slower, so my guess is that the average rider spent 12 hours riding. That would be even less pleasant than riding into a headwind on a 100 degree day in South Dakota. But they seemed to be having fun.