Leaving Paris, with bells on.

At Charles de Gaulle airport, TSA screening my carryon luggage notices a bunch of metal circular items with little gears. She asks me to explain. I say- "oh those are bells..." to a blank stare. "ring ring?"
Nothing.
"oh," I say, "sonnettes!"
Ah, voila! Oui, ok!

I am bringing back to the starts at least a dozen vintage French bells, some chainrings, waterbottles, cycling caps, and a Rebour drawing or two.


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Location:Rue de l'Échelle,Roissy-en-France,France

ridiculous bikes I saw doing PBP

My since of ridiculous is probably different than other people's, but here are some bikes I would not want to ride 750+ miles on, in a row.

tandem made from 2 inexpensive department store mountain bikes.

90%+ of the bikes were off the rack road racing bikes, with skinny tires, no real lights, or mudguards.

Sure this is a nice Colnago, but the rack is made of metal, sticks, and tape. really, there is branches from a tree. plus no toeclips.fairly aggressive gearing. She finished, but past the cutoff.

Colnago c-40, with seatpost mounted rack. really.

she finished ahead of me on this. . .

of course.

and as cool as this single tube pneumatic is, it didn't look all that comfortable.

various ways of resting during pbp

I tried them all! By wednesday, it was common to see about a rider every couple of miles laying on the side of the road. I would assume to the casual car driving by, it looked as if they had recently crashed. Sleeping alone on the side of the road did have it's advantages, you didn't have to hear the snoring that was ever present at the controls.

Alex Singer Bicycle shop

I did take more pictures, I will post more later, just a taste. they had quite a fleet of bikes on display, I assume for PBP, but it may be a more permanent display?

PBP finished

Fin. It was great. I finished with over 30 minutes to spare. One might say that is close to the cutoff time, but I had a great time and wasn't too worried. I took hundreds of pictures and even poised my bike in nice settings like this one below. The bleu farce paint from Peter Weigle inspired me to stop at numerous blue painted houses and maisons and chateaus. I will write more about the ride in the future, and will post more pictures. Pat and cecily also finished really strong - at 84hours exactly!

Pbp rain

Not as bad as 2007, but raining.


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PBP - tracking riders as they ride

Well, it is not the same as riding Paris-Brest-Paris, but the next best thing- following the progress of a rider, me. I am well determined to complete and every passing day, my goals get a little loftier. On the official PBP Website, you can follow me from checkpoint to checkpoint, wondering what I'm thinking about, guessing how many pan au chocolates I have eaten, and hoping I will update this blog in real time with amazing pictures of 6000 like minded cyclists.

So here is the LINK, and my rider number is 4428
my two friends I am riding with(Pat Gaffney and Cecile Adams)- 6386 & 6385