Splunking?

We are continuing to enjoy our time here in Vizille although we hardly seem to be here. It has been hot, hot, HOT topping out at about 36degrees today.

Yesterday we headed into Grenoble. Mike was really excited about seeing the fort that is there. It was nice but maybe not as exciting as he was hoping. The view was spectacular and the ride up was fun too. We rode up in these plexiglass bubbles so you could see all around and under you. They were a little warm by the time we got to the top. Here is the view from our bubble.

Here are some more shots from the fort. It was built for the French Revolution and the view was spectacular!

After the fort we headed into Grenoble and it far exceeded our expectations. It was exactly how European cities are in the movies. There were lots of tiny streets lined with shops and cafes. We had the worlds best icecream cone from one of these places.

Heather and Andrew successfully completed their Mount Vonteux craziness and were feeling a little fatigued so today was planned to explore some caves that were relatively close by. They were absolutly spectacular. The stalagtites that were there were growing at a rate of 5cm per century. We also saw a dinosaur called an Olms. They are prehistoric cave dwelling...things that still exist today...very cool. The road leading up to the caves is not for the faint hearted. Mom, you never would have made it. It was narrow and curvy with overhanging rock everywhere. Very beautiful though. Here are some more pictures.

Those were our adventures for yesterday and today. We head off tomorrow to see the Tour de France time trial back in Annecy (where we jumped off the cliff). It's an early morning so I had better get to sleep.

Paragliding is Awesome!!

Bonjour from France.

Our last two days have been pretty fun.

Andrew and Heather arrived very late on Saturday night…or early Sunday morning…not that that should come as a big shock to anyone who knows them!

After getting up a bit late (9am is late for us), and lounging in the house for a while chatting, we decided to explore Vizille a bit. It’s a pretty neat little town; exactly what you think of when you imagine a quaint French village.

They also have some somewhat, um, interesting ways of doing things. This looks like a nice little stream running through town:

Appearances can be deceiving; see those pipes going into the water? Those are sewer pipes and the nice little stream is where everything goes.
We managed to find our way down to the main street where we got a nice lunch at a restaurant across the street from Chateau du Vizille.

The Chateau is the Musee de la Revolution Francais (Museum of the French Revolution). We didn’t end up going through it yet, but we will at some point. It is rather impressive.

There is a really nice park inside the grounds of the Chateau:

Andrew and Heather headed out for the drive down to Mont Ventoux, so we decided to do a short ride ourselves to get the cobwebs out of our legs. Andrea was feeling a little fatigued from 24 hours of travel and the six hour time change so I picked a nice short easy ride through a few of the towns in the valley. As it turned out the road that I chose did not go along the valley…it climbed up and out of it. 3.5km at probably nearly 10% grade to start the ride wasn’t quite what she was looking for…oops. Here she is ‘smiling’ for the camera near the top. Her jersey selection is rather humourous given the ride. You can get an idea of the grade, but it was steeper than it looks here:

I ended up doing about twice as much distance as Andrea since I was scouting forward to try to find where the climb ended. We went to the top then turned around. I did an additional climb up a short side road (maybe 1-1.5km). It got progressively steeper as I went, but the work was worth it for the view from the top:

That’s Vizille way down there!

When we finally got back from our harder-than-intended ride Andrew and Heather had dinner cooking. They had aborted the trip to Ventoux until today since they were pretty tired from having arrived at 3am yesterday morning.

Today Andrew and Heather headed down to the Verdon Gorge, with plans to ride all three ascents of Ventoux tomorrow…yup they are certifiably insane! I think they may think the same of us though, since we drove down to Annecy today to go paragliding. We don’t have any pictures of us doing it that we can put up (they are on a DVD provided by the paragliding school, Les Passages Du Vent, but our netbook doesn’t have an optical drive). Here are a couple that we took though. See that little circle way up there? Yeah, we jumped off of that!

Here is another group coming down.

We had a great time; I’d definitely do it again if I get the opportunity. If you happen to see this, Vincent and Pierre you were excellent pilots and made it great fun for us. Thanks very much guys!

On the way into Talloise (that’s where the paragliding was) we saw team Garmin-Slipstream riding on the road around the lake; we could only recognize Vande Velde and Ryder Hesjedal (who the heck has names like that?! I can’t spell them). Also saw the team car following them. Unfortunately the camera was in the bag so we didn’t get any shots of them.

Now we’re back at home base in Vizille relaxing after dinner.

Oh, we also got passed by an Aston Martin DBS on the highway. I may have drooled a bit.

Bye!

We're here!

We're here...finally. It was a long and uneventful flight. We got very little sleep so we are a little sleepy...zzzzzz....ooops nodded off there. Mike dumped the bikes off the trolly on me only once so that was good. We watched some movies although my earphones didn't work well. We also got to see the sunrise from 35000 feet...kinda cool.

Geneva is the most confusing, unorganized, maze like, glass filled, no elevator, no english airport ever invented. We had about 150lbs of luggage each to carry around and around and up and down and up again (when I say we I mean Mike did all the stairs). We eventually got out and got our rental car which is kind of cool. Here is a really dark picture of Mike loading the car.

We drove all the way to Vizille and only got lost a couple times. I took some pictures of the views as we drove along although I am having trouble uploading them.

The place we rented is HUGE!!! It' s easy to get lost in because I am tired and there are lots of corridores and rooms. Our bikes will each get a bed to sleep in. Heather and Andrew are yet to arrive but we are looking forward to seeing them and hearing about Spain.

Now it's time for a nap!

The Best Day Ever?

Saturday was the day we've all (well, Andrea and I anyway) been waiting for...puppy picking day! Not only that but it was also the first day of the Tour de France. What more could I ask for?

After watching the first couple hours of the time trial we made the short drive down the road to Lone Wind Acres to finally meet our new puppy. We had the fourth pick out of four females, so our decision was pretty easy! You may have noticed in some of the earlier pictures that each pup has a different colour collar; Christine at Lone Wind does this so that she can identify each pup right from birth. We were discussing on the way there which puppy we thought that we'd get; for some reason we felt that we'd get "purple". As it turns out we were right.

We definitely got the prettiest puppy out of the bunch...not that we're biased, of course.

We think that we have a name picked out for her. She looks like a Rosie Cotton don't you think?

The girls are looking as cute as ever.

After forty minutes of playing outside she's tuckered out! It's time for us to go home and let her sleep.

Three Weeks Old and Still a Potato!

As well as our trip to France we are eagerly awaiting the arrival of our new family member. The house has been very quiet so we decided to bring one of these darlings home. They still look like potatoes with legs though.

Three Weeks and Counting!

Three weeks and counting until our first trip to France. We are very excited and have everything prepared...I hope.