Three days to go. . . .

We'll be taking off from SFO on Thursday, June 10, 2010, at (hopefully) 7:25 pm via Swiss Air. Arrival in Zurich at 3:40 pm the next day. Catch a fight to Lyon, arriving there at 6:15 pm. We'll have to hoof it to make it to Carpentras before it gets too late. I'm a little worried about the car we've rented. I checked spec's on it and it should be fine. Plenty of room in the rear area with both seats folded down. It's a Renault Kangoo:

http://www.renault.com/en/Vehicules/renault/Pages/kangoo.aspx

The boxes used to carry the bicycles fold flat when not used. The plan is to load the car with the bikes still in the boxes, then drive to Carpentras. I couldn't get a room the first night in Bedoin, where we really wanted to stay. We did manage to get a room at Hotel des Pins In Bedoin on Saturday and Sunday nights, however.

We'll spend Saturday morning building the bikes back up, going for a short ride, and loosening up. We'll transfer our accommodations from Carpentras to Bedoin as well. Our first big ride is Sunday, June 13th. We plan on tackling all three approaches to the summit of Mt. Ventoux (the Giant of Provence) in one day. About 86 miles and 15k feet of climbing. We'll start in Bedoin, go to the summit, down to Malaucene, back to the summit, down to Sault, up to the summit, and finally the last sweet downhill to our hotel in Bedoin. That last downhill will make the ride closer to 100 miles but, hey, it's all downhill!

If we make it (or WHEN we make it) we'll be "members" of this club:

http://www.clubcinglesventoux.org/index.php?lan=en&PHPSESSID=787cdaf21a6561211beaaa17cd095964

Loosely translated, it means "nuts (or crazies) of the Ventoux".

The 10 day forecast on weather.com I looked at today calls for "isolated thunder showers", whatever that means, in the Carpentras area on June 13th.

If everything goes according to plan, we'll leave Bedoin on Monday morning and head to the French Alps, about a three hour drive to the northeast. I'll try to preview that tomorrow.

I am not sure how things are going to go with later posts--I don't know what kind of access I'll have to the Internet, and I don't have a laptop to drag along. Hopefully the Internet cafes will be plentiful (and that I'll feel like writing).