October 3, 2019
Conclusions
In total, it was a great ride!
The section of the Aveyron river that we rode was beautiful, but some of the hills were really too steep for us (sustained > 7%).
The Lot river valley between Cajarc and Puy l'Eveque was heavenly. Cahors is highly recommended.
If we did it again, I would avoid Villeneuve-sur-Lot. But Pujols was a lovely stop and is nearby.
Equipment-wise, we had no problems besides the rack bolt that went missing on day 3. No flats, no broken spokes, no issues with the bike at all. The conversion of the tandem to 1x11 shifting made for easy shifting. We derailed once while soft pedaling as I shifted into the lowest gear. So there's something to look at there. Maybe a chain line issue.
Our intercom worked perfectly, except for one day where I evidently sweated too much into my microphone.
Navigation was significantly better with the Wahoo Elemnt Roam. Robin liked the color screen, and we made use of the "route me back to my route" feature a few times.
I hope this will prove useful to other non-athletes who want to enjoy this beautiful country on bicycles.
Enjoy!
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 7 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 5 |
If you’re ever inclined to it, I’d be interested in reading more about your expat existence there. How did you establish residency, how has it been adapting to society, that sort of thing. We’ve semiseriously toyed with the idea of doing something similar ourselves.
3 years ago
Thanks for the welcome! We will never rise to the level of bike touring godliness that you and many others here are at, but I thought a bit of representation for less studly tourists might be helpful. The more people we get out there on the road, the better.
We're cheaters. We retired to France in 2015, but we've lived here before. We spent 7 years total of our working lives in Paris and in Belgium, just south of Brussels. So we had a bit of a leg up on the culture and lifestyle. Adapting has been pretty easy for us.
Robin has been keeping a blog on the experience. I'm guessing there's far more info there than you would ever want to read, but here's a link: http://laquille2015.blogspot.com
We lived in Portland from 1999 through 2014 and we're both programmers - kind of a weird coincidence. Maybe we crossed paths at some point without knowing it. We lived just down the street from the Hawthorne Fred Meyer - 38th and Lincoln. It was a great time and place for us - we still have friends there and miss them.
If you have questions related to visas and immigration stuff that isn't covered by Robin's blog, send me a note at randrpdx at gmail.com and I'll do my best to answer. We've been here long enough now that my info is out of date, but I'll do my best to help. We have 2 sets of American friends here (both tandem teams) who are a couple of years behind us in the process, so we have access to newer info.
3 years ago
We’re not serious about expatriating yet - it’s still just a fantasy idea, one we keep coming back to when the political climate back here grows more maddening. For now though, we’re still very happy with the vagabond life. I suspect it will be a few more years at least before we’re ready to resettle anywhere.
How funny that you were both programmers back here too! You’ve even got the same style email address as ours, so some part of you must still have a hook back in PDX.
3 years ago
9 months ago
I'm looking forward to following your adventures here on CycleBlaze!
9 months ago