08/20/2023 Bikepacking Spain Day 12 : Se faire passer

Another great camp at high elevation. I couldn’t be happier about that. 🏔️

Notice Janet’s calf. A couple days ago, she got a pedal slice too. 🦵

I forgot to tell you guys about a photo technique I’ve been using for a while now: For scenes where there is a lot of contrast between the foreground and background, I use the flash. It helps illuminate the subject - except it can cause bright spots if your person is wearing reflective bike gear. ⚙️

Today was an exciting day for us: we would be doing the Col de Tourmalet - one of road cycling’s most famous roads.

So, Janet and I are climbing the Tourmalet in tow-mode. We are doing pretty well gaining 2,000’ per hour, which is quite a bit faster than our loaded full suspension tandem proving that tow > tandem! Everyone who passes us says, “Bonjour,” “Chapeaux,” or “Bon Courage”. One very large guy on en e-bike passed and said, “C'est facile pour le monsieur” (its easy for the gentleman?). Perhaps this is the French version of the “She’s not pedaling” heckle we always hear from men who think they just came up with the world’s funniest comment to say to a tandem 🙄. A Spanish couple passed us and the woman said to her partner, “I want you to pull me!” Once she was out of earshot, Janet said to me, “Her legs are more muscular than yours; she could pull us both up the hill!” 🦵

The Tourmalet was like one big bike party. There was a constant flow of cyclists. Normally I don’t like crowds, but this was kind of cool. I love bikes and the people who ride them so much that I can’t help but be happy to see everyone working for the summit. We were passed by a ~350 pound man smiling on his e-bike, and even saw a ~10 year old kid on an adult drop bar bike - clearly too big for him. I was so impressed I gave that kid a thumbs up 👍. I don’t think he saw because he was zipping down so well, but his following mom returned a big smile. There were so many different styles of riders - plenty on loaded bikes like us; many loaded heavier while others were clearly hotelling it the whole way. We saw the thoroughbreds with their toothpick arms, shaved legs, regulation height socks, and beeping Garmin’s telling them they had surpassed zone 2 trying to pass us. We saw couples, singles, families, and people of varying degrees of obesity all challenging gravity on this significant mountain. 🪨

Feeling kind of alpine - and we are only half way up! 🦙

So as I mentioned before, everyone who passed us said something positive in French. It’s a good time to practice because you’re out of breath and have a good excuse for speaking staccato - time to conjure up words. Plus, my repertoire of words-of-encouragement exceeds my general French Vocabulary. And then suddenly from behind, we hear, “Hi” with an American accent. A guy in a Jumbo Visma kit passes us and simultaneously Janet and I say to each other, “Sepp Kuss!” Both of us max out to tailgate this rider (who is probably cruising zone 2) and we’re excited imagining that we are riding just behind Sepp. But for some reason, he doesn’t look like quite the twig that I imagined Sepp to be. We know Sepp lives not far from here and that this climb will be in the Vuelta coming up… but something doesn’t seem to match. Anyway, what would we say if we could have “gotten back on terms” with him? At the top, we saw him and it was not Sepp. We snapped a photo and then looked at the team roster, wishing we could identify this athlete. Couldn’t figure out who’s he is. Anyone know? 🤷‍♂️

The top! Janet and I were pretty elated to be here. Part of it was the $4 each Diet Cokes we bought, but another part was the feeling of riding together the whole way. I really enjoy riding right with Janet. It’s fun to go on my own sometimes, but best to share this ride with her. Now that we have the tow method, I’m so happy the Uber/taxi/Bus/Hitchike/quit ideas all failed. ——

Remember Ralph from last week? He was the one whose doctor told him he needed to exercise because of his health problems - which is why he got a bike. This seems to be good medicine for him! He arrived at the top, coming from the other side! It was cool to see a familiar face in the crowd. His riding buddy, Heinz had quit riding because (according to Ralph) “his butt is broken”. I think that is Swiss-German code for “saddle sores”. 🧀

Thanks to those of you who asked about my wound. Yesterday, I was standing around and had an itch on my shin. You know how guys can sometimes be careless or lazy? Well I instinctively went to scratch the itch with the heel of my shoe without even looking or thinking. This ripped off all the bandaids and busted the wound open again, taking me back to square one. But it was a good opportunity to inject more Iodine, antibiotics, and do a better glue job. This time, I glued down pieces of dental floss to act as reinforcements kind of like when you do a fiberglass repair, only no mesh work. Let’s see how this works! ⛑️

Au revoir ! 👋

Looks like the biking there is amazing! And it sounds like you guys had a great day!

Jonathan ∑.