Rest day today - Bagneres de Luchon

Today is a Sunday.  Today is coincidentally a much needed, and much appreciated, day of rest. 

We have completed four days of riding, and we have four more left to go until we reach the Mediterranean.  Tomorrow we will enter Spain, that apparently at the very top of our first climb of the day, and we will remain in Spain for the rest of the trip.

We are spending the day in Bagneres de Luchon.  This is a really cool little town, right in the heart of the Pyrenees.  This whole area is just outrageously beautiful.  We are just a short distance from Spain.

My roommate and I slept in this morning, probably all the way to 7:30 AM or so.  After breakfast, I set out about the important job of washing clothes.  I found a tiny laundromat just two blocks from our hotel here.  There were three washing machines and two driers.  No people were there when I arrived.  There were some handwritten messages on paper, taped to some of the machines.  I can speak, read, and understand at least some French.  Clearly not enough.  Doing my laundry was a remarkable intelligence test.  I substantively failed the test.  I was unable to understand most of the handwritten messages on the papers that were taped on some of the machines.  Further, the posters on the wall regarding how to operate the machines were just incomprehensible.  I lost a number of euro coins in one machine.  I couldn't understand that.  Later, an elderly man and his wife came in.  They spoke no English at all, but they didn't need to speak English to discern that I was a complete idiot.  Recognizing my dilemma, and my incompetence, the man spoke to me exclusively in French, very slowly, enunciating each word clearly and motioning excessively with his hands.  It was clear that he felt sorry for me.  He was finally able to explain to me that the letters "H S" mean something like "out of service."  (I had been happily putting my coins in the washer with the sign taped at the top that indicated that it was an "H S" machine.)

Ultimately I succeeded, and I now have a suitcase full of clean and dry clothes.

I am having a great time on this trip.  Everything about this trip is meeting and even exceeding all of my earlier expectations and hopes.  That stated however, this has been a more than humbling experience for me.  There are 21 cyclists on this trip, along with the 3 guides.  Everyone is incredibly friendly and positive.  It is more than clear, however, that I am totally outclassed.  I am in way over my head, in terms of cycling ability.  (As an example, one of the riders on this tour is a woman who placed fourth apparently in the 2004 Olympics in Athens!)  Who was I kidding when I signed up for this trip?  Not that it matters, but I am generally the last, or the next-to-last one, at the top of each climb.  Yesterday I made it in to the destination probably hours after the first cyclists arrived.  Of course that doesn't really matter.  Still, my earlier self image of being a moderately accomplished cyclist is pretty well deflated.

Oh well.  I just guess that means that I have more room for improvement than a lot of the others do!

I must pause to comment upon the French drivers.  I wish that every licensed driver in the United States could be required to come here and learn how to drive.  I have been on narrow and winding mountain roads throughout this trip, most without a defined road shoulder.  I have been going uphill at a speed invoking concepts of plate tectonics, and I have been going downhill at speeds over 60 kph.  Throughout all of that there has always been lots of automobile, motorcycle, and truck traffic.  Despite the traffic and the roads, I have never felt threatened, unwelcome, or unsafe.  Not even once.  The French drivers are uniformly respectful of cyclists.  If a car is behind me and it is unsafe to pass, the driver just slows to my speed, and stays well behind me until passing is safe.  That is surely not the scene in the United States. 

I am looking forward to continuing the ride tomorrow.  (Maybe by then my legs will no longer function like jelly!)

Perhaps even more so,  I am really looking forward to seeing Marsha in Barcelona on Friday!

Onward to Spain!!!