You just never know what you are going to get on these bike trips. This morning we woke up to gray skies and while having breakfast a we noticed a drizzle outside. When the drizzle turned into a light shower, we decided to push off our start from 9 AM to 10ish hoping the precipitation would pass. Fortunately about 10 the showers did slow down and finally stopped.
We wanted to take advantage of the opportunity and by 10:30 we were out the door and on the road. Eduard had routed the ride along some very quiet roads and excellent bike paths. Our hotel was west of Paris by 10 to 20 miles and out in the country. The temperatures were great for cycling about 65 degrees (18 degrees celsius), some riders with jackets and others without. Even the wind was going the right direction.
On these cycling tours, each night we'll have reservations in a new location, so good weather or bad, we're going to ride or figure out some alternate way to get to the new location. Each breakfast is a discussion of the weather with each rider pulling out their cell phone all scanning the many weather apps to try to divine the conditions.
About 30 minutes into the ride the drizzle caught up with us. The drizzle was surprising pleasant. It was warmish and dried almost as quickly as it landed on you. You might even call it refreshing. The drizzle passed fairly quickly but the heavy cloud cover remained with at the edge of the horizon, it brightened a bit to with a promise of sunny skies that taunted us all day but never materializing.
As I said earlier, Eduard had routed the ride and sent the files to us to load into our GPS devices but we still got off course. Still, we were roughly heading in the correct direction but not actually following the planned course.
We rolled into our planned lunch stop in Montmirail. During lunch, after consulting the weather app, it announced that an incoming storm was arriving soon and bringing heavy rains with it. We had a decision to make, either to bolt out of lunch, pick up our pace and race the 27 miles to Gionges where our hotel was waiting or for the 6 of us to pile into the van, load 4 bikes into the van and 2 more bikes on the bike rack.
Four of us, decided to go for it and race to the motel. The route was fairly fast and we stayed on course. Along the way, we started to see signs indicating "champagne". A couple of more signs and we started to realize that we were heading directly into the Champagne region of France. First a couple of buildings with Champagne on the signs and then with out realizing it, we were in the middle of massive vineyard, as far as the eye could see. As an added bonus, it was picking season. You could see a large number of laborers in the fields and small white vans scurrying about. Take a look at the photo album link at the end of the blog entry.
Though we had slowed down to view the activity, we could sense the rain was on its way and we picked up our pace, it was only a couple of miles to the hotel and the race was on. As we turned into the hotel driveway, the raindrops were already hitting our faces. We stored our bikes away and the rain started to pour.
At the start of the day, we had anticipated a long cold wet slog. Instead, we enjoy a beautiful day on the bikes. Great roads, views galore and to find ourselves in the middle of massive vineyards at the peak of picking season was not what we had expected of the ride while we were eating breakfast this morning. We were almost dreading a long cold day of dreary rain. How wrong we were. I guess biking is like a box of chocolates, you just never know what you are going to get.
Brian
