Colombia day 3: Look Dobbin, mountains!

The 6am alarm felt far too early, again, but we made it down to breakfast for 7am. It's nice to eat a hotel breakfast and not feel like you've consumed your regular calorie intake for an entire week. After running our errands and packing our bags we managed to get on the road by 8:45. The ciclovia was in full swing and the road was full of cyclists and the occasional runner as we made the turn for our main climb of the day: Patios! This is a famous local climb with thousands of cyclists attempting it every weekend. The road was still open to traffic, but was generally very tolerant of the bicycles weaving their way up. The range of cyclists and bikes was huge, though most were traveling faster than us. There were surprisingly large number of mountain bikes both hardtails and full suspension. Given the steepness of the hills, I can understand the desire for lower gears than you get on many road bikes.

Patios was a great way teave Bogota, as soon as you make the turn you are leaving the city behind and once through the crush of cyclists at the top it was into green open farm land. Despite the summit of the climb being almost 10000 feet, we never felt the need for more than shorts and a t-shirt although it would have been quite different if it had started to rain. There were still huge numbers of cyclists around and it was easy to spot our mid morning snack point by the number of bikes. Elisa had given us a great tip about a couple of roadside shacks selling the traditional arepa, a ground maize flat bread filled with cheese.

The road surfaces were quite variable, and there was a number of sections of road with roadworks, one way traffic and gravel surfaces. Dobbin of course ate them all up and we made it to Zipaquirá in time for lunch at a cafe on the main square. Colombia seems to have some similarities to France - plenty of grizzled old men on road bikes, lots of bread and many, many places to buy fresh pastries. I don't think I'm going to be losing My weight on this trip! Lunch was savory pastries filled with cheese and chicken followed by a delicious pastry with layers of honey custard between flakey pastry layers and topped with something incredibly sweet. Yum. After lunch it was a quick walk up to the big local tourist attraction - the salt cathedral. We had just missed the start of the English language tour, so it turned out to be a quick run up the hill to catch them. I haven't really noticed the altitude when cycling, but definitely know about it when walking or jogging up hill! Thus the first tourist attraction of our visit was achieved. 

 

Our first proper day cycling touring for quite some time has gone well, and we are getting back into the swing of it. Tomorrow we face some more rural roads and more climbs. We are looking forward to it.

Colombia day 2: Discovering Bogotá

Friday evening we went out for dinner with Elisa and Roland, relations of some of our SF Randonneuring friends, and new friends of ours. They are keen cyclists themselves and so were able to point out various suggestions and tips for our planned tour. Roland is also a Brit himself, lived in Colombia for 4 years now so interesting to get his take on life here. Describing the various adventures they'd taken his parents on when they'd visited I had to smile to myself at the thought of guiding my own worried mother around the Colombian countryside 😮😀

Elisa invited us on her morning cycle the next day, but a 5am start didn't sound appealing with our jetlag so instead we had a decent lay in before grabbing breakfast. Our hotel breakfast was quite satisfying but we were both intrigued by how petite we found it. Most likely five years in USA have made us come to expect breakfast portions that would do for lunch as well. I think the meal size here is what we'd have previously considered "normal"

Spent the morning doing a gentle shakedown ride on Dobbin, over to an outdoor store and back, to also get a few things we couldn't fly with (camping gas) or got confiscated in airport security (water bottle)

The plan for the afternoon was to stroll around Parque 93 area our hotel is in. On our second café stop I decided I could do with a more substantial wallet ("billetera") as rifiling through strange foreign notes in an audaxer's wallet (clear plastic bag) was feeling unnecessarily conspicuous. Thus began a journey to the El Retiro shopping area of town.
Uber is a fantastic invention of convenience for the taxi user, and doubly so when in a foreign country where taxi drivers all speak foreign and are frequently center of suspicion even for locals. However, while Uber is very common here it's the source of great animosity from said taxi drivers. Combined with the questionable to downright objectionable practices of corporate side of the company, we thought it time to try the highly recommended local taxi app, Tappsi. This was surprisingly easy to install and use: excellent English UI and good features rating and tracking rides and improving security. The one real snag we had with it was just as we were about to climb into our cab, a bird decided to crap right on my outheld mobile phone screen, so the initial interactions with the driver were extra challenging, trying to read the confirmation code and destination off the app without flinging or smearing more poo around the place.

Anyhow, despite that one glitch (which I can't blame the app for really) the ride and the trip were successes. Evening meal was a pizza washed down by a couple of fine beers courtesy of the BBC - that is the Bogotá Beer Company.

  

Colombia Day 1: Welcome to Bogata

Yesterday was busy. We woke up in an empty house in Sunnyvale, and went to sleep on a (4.5 hour) overnight plane from Houston to Bogota. In between we had wet-eyed goodbyes with neighbours and our landlady, took 1.5 hours to get ourselves, bags and the tandem checked in (the most nerve-testing tandem check in yet), and enjoyed the hospitality of the United Airlines club lounge.

Bye bye bay area

This morning I was woken up by the announcement that we were starting our descent into Bogota, and looked out of the window next to me to see a river of orange winding its way through the darkness shrouded landscape below - The PanAmerican highway! The clouds soon covered the landscape again and we spent most of the descent in some of the most amazing cloud formations. A good start to the day.

So far our experiences in Colombia have been brilliant, and everything we've led to expect and more. The queue for immigration was not short (but took less time than it did to check in), and negotiating customs was interesting but everyone was friendly and helpful. Tip: Having a receipt for high value items like a tandem is a good idea. We had arranged a taxi through our hotel to transport out mountain of luggage and it was wonderful to exit customs to have the driver waiting to help us transport the boxed Dobbin, two overweight suitcases, two duffel bags and two laptop bags to the car. We are not travelling light on this trip! The journey to our hotel was longer than we expected as we were crossing the city in rush hour. It was great to see the high quality and well used bike paths, and watch the mopeds and motorbikes weave through the nose to tail traffic with the jam packed busses of the rapid transit bus system travelling in their own lanes.

Today has mostly been about getting ourselves oriented and organised. After checking in and a quick breakfast at a coffee and bakery store we headed over to the google office for the first of three visits. The googlers at the office have been amazingly friendly and have been a great source of information. Dobbin appears to have survived the trip, so the remained of today will be spent getting him ready to ride around locally tomorrow, and finding an evening meal before getting an early night and some well much needed sleep.

LEL is go! Rides of inappropriate distance

Sat at louth, 240km into our 1450km ride. Lovely morning but hit by a huge storm 30 mins before this control, now drying out a bit

To track us, use:

this link
or

https://londonedinburghlondon.com/tracking-chart-distance-time/

Rocky Mountain 1200

Wow. It’s been a while!I could claim that we’ve been so busy cycling that we just haven’t had time to write anything. In truth, we’ve been doing some riding, skiing in winter and lots of beer drinking and chilling out. Last week we rode the Rocky Mountain 1200km brevet and have actually managed to put some words and pictures together for once. It seems to have turned into an epic one too!

Bow lake on the Icefields Parkway.

Rides are unique experiences - my experiences on the back of the tandem will be different from everyone else's. Joth was riding the same bike at the same time, and while our experiences are similar, they are different. A faster rider trying to get around in 3 days and the slower rider surviving on very little sleep will have ridden the same roads, but their experiences may be vastly different to mine. I guess that’s one of the things that keeps us riding - seeing the glossimer spider thread floating in the breeze catching the early morning light, getting a honk and a wave from a train driver, seeing a Grizzly bear by the side of the road and spotting the cornice hanging off a glacier high on a mountain above you. New roads are great, but no two rides are ever the same.The RM1200 has been on the to-do list for a while - we first heard about it when in the UK when we read a ride report from Pat Hurt about his experiences in 2008?. In March we skied the Wapta traverse from Pepto lake on the Icefields Parkway to the great divide lodge on the Trans-Canadian Highway at Kicking Horse Pass. This route took us past the lodge and up the Icefields Parkway past Bow Summit and Peyto lake - something we were really looking forward to seeing in summer. It didn’t disappoint! We rode all of this event in daylight hours, lucky enough that we didn’t have to ride at night and could take in the mountain vistas. One of the riders we were chatting to at the finish had ridden as much as he could in the night when the temperatures were cooler. While he missed out on some of the views, he had seen the Milky Way clear in the star filled night sky with no light pollution to dampen it.

Things on a Thing descending in the afternoon sunlight

There is no such thing as an easy 1200km ride, and with the mountainous terrain this route took us through it was always going to be tough. We got very lucky with the weather, the rain jackets were never needed and while a headwind slowed us down on day 2 it could have been much worse (when it was last run in 2012 they had strong headwinds and heavy rain for 24 of the first 26 hours). Much of this ride is on highways with heavy traffic which can be stressful, the road surface was generally pretty fast rolling. In another 4 years the Icefields Parkway may have been resurfaced and the snow heaves which bruised Joth’s forearms may be gone. The route may be changed again and the lovely out and back to Wells Grey Regional park removed, but I’m sure the spirit of the ride will be the same. More than 60 volunteers helped out with the ride - that’s more volunteers than riders. It takes an incredible amount of effort to put on an event like this, and as riders we were looked after incredibly well. I particularly enjoyed the shoulder rubs from Deidree at a couple of the controls. All but one control was manned and there was a great range of home cooked food. The menus were published in advance and it seemed like those with allergies and food restrictions were well catered for. Digestive issues are common on events like this, and when tired it is sometimes difficult to find something you *want* to eat. That wasn’t an issue for me on this ride. Having so many manned controls with facilities also give flexibility with regard to how far to ride each day. The drop bags are in specific locations, but knowing that you could press on to the next control and sleep there gave us the option of doing a fast ride. We did consider it, but we have remarkably few miles in the legs this year and just getting around and enjoying the ride won over that consideration - we are getting soft in our old age!

A welcome water stop before the final climb to Rogers Pass

Ride Summary

Day 1 Kamloops to Golden 390km

Route description: Brief section of the Trans-Canadian Hwy #1 before heading off on country roads to the first control at Spallumcheen. More country roads on the way back to Hwy #1 then on to the next control at Revelstoke. More Hwy #1 and more climbing to Rodgers Pass and a very welcome control at the top. Lots of fast downhill on Hwy #1 to the sleep control at Golden. Some potholes and debris on the shoulder on the highway, but generally a good surface and fast rolling. Much of the traffic is big (trucks and large motorhomes and caravans), but drivers were generally very good at pulling out to give lots of space when passing.

Weather: Hot

Interesting animals: a disappointing 0

This train driver gave us a honk and opened his window to wave at us.

Day 2 Golden to Jasper 317km

Route description: Climb along the valley to Field before the road steepens at Big Hill to Wapta Lake, once over Kicking Horse Pass the road descends to the control in Lake Louise. A turn around and head out taking a right turn onto the Icefields Parkway. Commercial traffic isn’t allowed on this road, but the number of tourist vehicles almost makes up for them. Road surface was good with the exception of the snow heaves which occur at intervals of about 4 metres in some cases. They were very annoying! A steep descent to Saskatchewan River Crossing for a top up of the water bottles and ice cream before tackling the headwind and climb to SunWapta pass followed by shortly by the very welcome control at Beauty Creek. It’s then pretty much all downhill to Jasper and sleep.Weather: Hot and windy. Interesting animals: 2 (1 Mountain Goat, 1 Grizzly Bear)

It may not be a very good photo, but I promise you that is a grizzy bear. Even with the presence of a ranger with a shotgun I really wasn't feeling like hanging around looking like a tasty snack, even if they are pretty well fed at this time of year.

Day 3 Jasper to Clearwater 326km

Route description: A gradual climb along Hwy #16 over Yellowhead pass and in the shadow of Yellowhead mountain before turning South on Hwy #5 and more down hill. We are now firmly in the land of glacial rivers famous for fishing. Welcome stops at the controls of Valemont and Blue River as the road continues gradually downwards to the sleep control of Clearwater. All highway but generally a good shoulder and considerate traffic.Weather: Pleasantly warm. The temperature would drop noticeably when crossing mountain streams, a thunder shower ahead of us at Blue Water dropped the temperature a few degrees for the small climb after the control.Interesting animals: 2 (1 Elk, 1 Black Bear)

Yellowhead mountain

Day 4 Clearwater to Kamloops 274km

Route description: A 50km detour off Hwy #5 out and back along a quiet country road up to the control in Wells Grey Regional Park. Steep climb out of Clearwater then rolling terrain out the control. Reverse on the return where we managed to avoid the temptation of a second breakfast in Clearwater before heading down Hwy #5 to Kamloops. Stops in Little Fort and at a fruit stand (for ice cream and cherries), broke up the journey. The run into Kamloops is pretty flat and we were fortunate to mostly ride with a tailwind.Weather: Pleasantly warm but hotting up (we finished at 1pm)Interesting animals: 1 (Coyote - they are pretty common in California but this mountain based one was much prettier than our local ones)

Canada's a big country. You got to run out of interesting names at some point!

More photos can be found here

The Controls of PBP

In reliving moments from PBP, Emma and I keep getting mixed up and having to remind ourselves of which control is which. So here's our personal memory-jogs for how to differentiate the controls plus some tips on smooth passage through them.
(Some photos would be great to add here, but alas the memory card in my camera was pooched so we lost what photos we had)

Dreux

• Only go here on the way back
• Big sports hall, great food selection.

Mortagne-au-Perche

• Only a control on the way back.
• Large bar area as you enter (remember first control from '11). 
• In '15 Just picked up water on the way out, stopped to snooze on the way back in the cafe are to the right of the bar.

Villaines-la-Juhel

• Major party town on the way back. Bike parking down either side of closed street in wooden wheel grabbers
• Kids help carry trays down the maze and slope to the eating area
• Best to park by the control Exit, walk up to control entrance, remember to fill bottle before controlling.

Fougères

• Control spread around school on a hill: enter at bottom, first you see restaurant, then pass dorms, control up top.
• Showers in the control building just off the snack bar area. (Gang showers)

Tinteniac

• Restaurant is upstairs, not best food choices.
• Snack bar up top of bike park area
• Slept here on way back in '11 - good beds in small dorm rooms. Had to be mentally massaged to life by Jo in the very poorly stocked restaurant.

Loudeac

• Enter via a big inflatable arch and little lump to climb to bike parking
• Big bike park area with dedicated velo-spécial down the end by BBQ, toilets and restaurant entrance
• Control up the top next to rapid service snack bar (missed this on way out '15) and restaurant, with infirmary in next building where Joth got gel put on knee.
• Met the chief controller both ways (in '15) chatted about his 7 PBPs, he asked how we were doing, gave him SFR lapel pin.

Saint-Nicholas-du-Pelem

• Water stop, small snack bar
• We both slept on benches in the cafe on the way out in '15
• Lots of surprise hills around here

Carhaix-Plouguer

• Big sports hall dorms - slept on way out in '11
• Cardboard on the floors everywhere
• Only a couple toilets with full-time attendant, told to use men or women's.
• Maze through 2 cafes to find the infirmary - found barely used snack bar on the way.
• In '11 this place was a refugee camp of soaked 84h riders

 Brest

• Avoid - get a stamp and go.
• Limited toilets, need to hike to get to the poorly stocked restaurant. Bounce it and find a bakery in town e.g. Le Fournil de Guipavas or stop in Sizun on way out / back.
• Hotel ibis budget Brest Sud Plougastel is a cheap & quick sleep stop on the way into town.

PBP 2015

PBP2015 was a 'must do' for us. A chance to catch up with randonneuring/audax friends from around the world. At around 6000 people it's the biggest and best, although it's the international riders and amazing local support which really makes it so special. We went into it thinking we'd try for a fast time to make some use of the speed we'd developed for RAAM. As ever in life, everything did not go to plan, although we managed to have fun.

Mentally it was probably the toughest 1200 we've done. The combination of jetlag and worry due to the delay in our bike arriving in France meant that we didn't have the best preparation time. Big thanks to HK and Feline for the offer of solo bikes as contingency against the tandem not arriving in time. Thanks to everyone else who offered support and spares to ensure we would have enough lights and baggage to outfit the bikes too. If the ride had been anything less than PBP, we'd have cancelled a few weeks ago due to other hassles. It was great that everything came together in the end and we started in good spirits.

We learnt a hard lesson in the first few hours however, as we tried to work with another tandem who were significantly faster than us. We both went above our LT multiple times trying to stay with them on the climbs. We dropped off the back after around 100km and started riding at our own pace. We got mixed up with a few groups and managed to work with one or two of the solos which was nice. We didn't get to ride with another tandem for the remaining 1100km which was a shame. By the middle of the first full day, our speed had dropped significantly though and I was struggling to stay awake. Joths knee was hurting badly by Loudéac, to the point where we turned around 4km after the control and went back to it to seek medical attention. They quickly reassured him that riding on wasn't going to cause more damage and the anti inflammatory painkiller gel helped enormously. We were still really slow on the climbs though. A cup of tea and a sleep on a bench in the secret control perked us up a bit and we had fun all the rest of the way to Brest. While at the control in Carhaix we booked a hotel on route into Brest and stopped for a pizza in Sizun and gently rode down to 7 1/2 hours sleep in a real bed. Luxury! Having been distinctly unimpressed with the Brest control at the 2011 edition we opted to stamp and go before stopping at a boulangerie for breakfast a few km later. This was a fantastic choice, saving time and scoring tasty pastries in reward.

The climb up to La Roc seemed to take forever, but we were expecting it and once we joined the outbound route we enjoyed waving at riders coming the other way. The full night's sleep really paid off as this was the only day we didn't need to stop for an afternoon "jetlag" snooze. 

Roberta attracting attention at Tinteniac

The hills around Loudéac hadn't got any smaller and Joths knee started making worrying noises while climbing, a tube of voltoren was keeping away the pain however, so we just concentrated on maintaining a smooth pedaling stroke and tried to ignore the noise. The rolling hills on the run into Tinténiac were as fun as we remembered from 2011, even if we didn't have another tandem to share it with this time. An older French rider was the only one from our train who managed to stick with us to the control, and he thanked us profusely for a fun ride. Unlike our hotel in Brest, our sleep stop in Fougères was not successful. The combination of noise, light changes from the door opening and closing along with the remains of the jet lag meant little sleep. So we got up early, had the traditional breakfast of croissant and hot chocolate and pootled on. By Montagne au Perche we were struggling again, so after a quick bite Joth lay down for a nap. We had wanted to finish in daylight, but with the breaks it was looking increasingly unlikely we'd make that. Fortunately, at around 35km from Montagne the route becomes increasingly tandem friendly. We didn't go all out into the control at Dreux as we had in 2011, but still towed a significant number of solo riders into the control. Again, it was lovely to have riders come and thank us for the tow. The food at Dreux was great. The pastries at the controls were generally good, my pain aux raisin in Dreux was superb, and still warm. Yum. That only left the stage I struggled with so badly in 2011. This time I avoided caffeine, gels and adrenaline rushes and we opted for a gentle ride with a couple of Irish audaxers who kept us amused as the final kilometers counted down to the finish. We were disappointed not to do a fast ride, but the conversations and experiences we had instead did a lot to make up for it. We plan to be back in 2019!

Joth channeling Mr Larrington in Montagne au Perche

Back to normal (well almost)

So RAAM is done and dusted. We’ll hopefully write more about it at some point, but it was such a huge, amazing, all encompassing experience that it’s difficult to make sense of it all. We are now rested, recovered and looking forward to our ‘reward’ - yup, we’re riding PBP.

It feels a little weird to put a rack and heavy leather saddles back on Roberta, but for a 1200km event we need the luggage space and comfort is king. This will be our fifth Grand Randonee, and Roberta’s third, unlike her other two there will be no hotels rooms and no drop bags. Everything we need on the road, we’ll take with us. The bigger adaption is mentally and physically preparing for the ride. It’s surprising us how quickly we’ve adapted to stopping and eating every few miles. The first stage of PBP is 138km, which may have come as a big shock to the system. We had a great time last weekend with back to back 200km rides which has provided some confidence that we can still ride long distances and was a good shakedown for Roberta. We are finding that we need food much more regularly than we have previously - the short intensive efforts have (not surprisingly) done anything to improve our fat burning capability.

There are still a couple of changes we need to do to the bike, principally changing the rear brake - we are taking off the disk brake and just using a rim brake for PBP. We’ll also change the tyres before we go and take raceblades to fit on the front if there is likely to be rain on the event. Hopefully all the rain will have fallen before we get there.

We’ve really enjoyed riding the last few weeks without training plans and pressure. It’s great that we are both still keen just to ride a bike - there was always a little worry that we wouldn’t want to see one again for a while. We’ve not ridden a trainer/sufferfest session yet! It’s time to ride without pressure, guilt and to just enjoy it.