Mount Ventoux

We had a 2 hour commute to Orange (pronounced Are-rahn-geh) then a scoot to the town of Bedoin where we would start our epic climb up the massive volcanic rock with a forest below and a moonscape above.

Now there were several things we learned on this climb.

1) Headwinds are great where there are swams of flies taunting you because you can only go 5mph on 10% slopes (and greater) and you need to break 7 to out pace (unless a tail wind). Blessing your self with the sacred cross is effective at shoeing the flies.

2) Often there are those unreal unmentionables that happen on a ride that are random and rare, yet are worth mentioning here because it wouldn't be right to forget them - namely the 50ft painted penis that climbed the hairpin turn and took several seconds to pass. Note - on historic climbs, such as ventoux, tourmalet and alpe d' huez...the road is reading material for the weary who climb and need aomething to pass time.

3) Guy Tucker IS a climber and fakes the fact that he loves beastly mountains. He also doesn't enjoy chatting it up with random dutch guys during the steepest part of the climb - noting that the dutch-yahoo had replaced the waterbottles on his rented bike with coca-cola bottles.

4) We like seeing the top of the mountain to gage how far the top is and how much more climbing we must endure. Ventoux has about 2/3rd of the climbing in a wooded forest before it becomes exposed to the sun, wind and reflecting bright volcanic rock.

5) Its cold on the top and I needed by winter beanie.

6) French men (when passed by a female on ventoux) shout out oooh-la-la! Happened to me several times.

7) People impressed by your effort shout to you, "bon courage!"

8) Climbing mt ventoux was the toughest mountain I've done to date and it put us on the top of the world - emotionally!

9) Climbing ventoux took just under 2 hours (record is 51 minutes by Iban Mayo) and decending was 17 minutes with my top speed reaching 51mph.

10) Galoping gerdie can happen to a bike when decending ventoux, just ask Guy - who's bike's front end wobbled and shimmed so severely he thought he was going down at over 40 mph.

There was an amazing memorial to Tom Simpson who died on his bike riding Mt Ventoux. Yeah...its bad ass hard, but he basically died from a drug OD.

Stats for the day:
Partly Cloudy 75 degrees (bottom)
Distance 42 miles.
Elevation: 5700 feet
Time: 2:18
Relaxed factor: 9.5