Dreaming of France -- The Tour

Thank you for joining this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it.

Every year, we look forward to watching The Tour de France. It's our July trip to France without fighting through all the tourists.
The first week of the tour was a little disappointing.
The start was scenic with Mont St. Michel in the background, but the bicyclists ended up clogged at the starting line, as no one had figured out how to get all the riders into that little circle in front of Mont St. Michel so that they could begin the race.

The stages were fairly flat and the riders chose to ride incredibly slow for at least two of the days. The endings have been close because the sprinters competed, but four hours of bicycling on TV leading to about a 30-second sprint can be disappointing.

Friday, the pace picked up and Saturday, the riders arrived in the Pyrenees, where you know the action will increase. Just the vertigo of spinning down the mountains with the riders excites me, not to mention the beauty of the ragged green mountains, the green pools formed by melting snows, and the patches of snow that remain.

The people watching the Tour are crazy too. I tell my husband that next  year I'll get him a Speedo bikini suit to wear while watching the tour alongside the route. People dress up in costumes. They wear crazy wigs and wave giant flags.
On Saturday, a costumed man ran alongside the riders as they struggled to climb a mountain. Chris Froome, the winner of last year's tour and the favorite for this year, reached out with his fist and clocked the guy in the side of the head. I can't blame him. The fans are a bit crazy. They need to give the riders room to ride.
This year, on July 12, the route goes through the area where we plan to move next year -- Languedoc.

 We'll be eagerly anticipating the release of next year's map to see which part of the country we can travel to and see the tour ourselves -- with or without a Speedo.

I'm also linking to Paris in July. Hope you'll play along with both Dreaming of France and Paris in July. We can't have too much France love, right?

Thanks so much for playing along with Dreaming of France. Please leave your name and a link to your blog on Mr. Linky below. I really appreciate your participation and I hope you'll leave a comment plus visit each other's blogs.

Early Morning Bike Ride

Not being able to run in the morning leaves me a little antsy.
I go for walks. I've been to the gym to do weights, to swim, or to pedal on the stationary bike. My knee feels much better, but not quite ready to try running again.
On Tuesday morning, my husband was awake at 6:30 a.m. (an unusual occurrence) and we went for a bike ride.
I convinced him we could drive down the main road to the bike path. Even at that hour of the morning, we took our life in our hands to ride down that main road. Once on the bike path though, we had it to ourselves.
Along one side of the trail, I could hear the cars whirring past on the highway, but surrounding me were trees and bushes and rivers.
I paused briefly to watch a white egret fishing in a low-head dam.

We rode to downtown Columbus. We might have continued on to the Audubon Center south of town if not for road construction which redirected us onto morning rush hour roads.
So we turned around and rode home in a different direction to avoid the busiest roads.
Two great blue herons walked peacefully in the confluence here, and a third one buzzed past and they all three took flight.

We rode for about 45 minutes, returning home in time for Earl to get ready for work.
A lovely way to start the morning.

Dreaming of France -- Pont du Gard

Please join this weekly meme. Grab a copy of the photo above and link back to An Accidental Blog. Share with the rest of us your passion for France. Did you read a good book set in France? See a movie? Take a photo in France? Have an adventure? Eat a fabulous meal or even just a pastry? Or if you're in France now, go ahead and lord it over the rest of us. We can take it.
Maybe we can all satisfy our yearnings for France, until we get there again.
This week I'm sharing with you some photos from our 2002 bicycle trip in Provence.
We rented bikes and they were fabulously sleek. The company delivered them to our hotel in Avignon. We had planned a 40-mile bike ride to Nimes and along the route, we'd see the famous Roman Aqueduct Pont du Gard.

From this angle, it just looks like some magnificent Roman engineering. We got to actually ride our bikes across it.

 

Look at this picture of me and the bikes. We are so small compared to the aqueduct.

The only problem that day, was we didn't pack food to eat during the bike ride. We were still in an American frame of mind and assumed we would stop for whaatever we needed to eat -- you know, at a French 7/11.

Well, those don't appear too often in France. So we rode without food and I got grumpy. 

Here I am, in desparate need of chocolate. We never rode without chocolate again.

We still consider this our best couple vacation ever.  

 

Saturday Snapshot -- France Reverie

To participate in the Saturday Snapshot meme post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken then leave a direct link to your post on Alyce's blog At Home With Books. Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don’t post random photos that you find online.
This month, I'm also participating in Paris in July sponsored byThyme for Tea and Bookbath, so, of course, I need a France related photo, and I can't believe we're at the end of July so this is my last official France post.
When people ask about my obsession with France, I say I've visited a number of times. I finally sat down and counted. I've been to France nine times. So, I decided to post a photo from each visit.
My first trip was in 1983 between my junior and senior year of college. I went with my boyfriend on a student tour of a gazillion countries. I packed a gigantic suitcase.

Next, I went to France in 1985 for three months as a nanny to two American girls who had French grandparents. We stayed in Corsica, near Bourges, and in Paris.  

This was at their country house outside of Bourges.

My next trip was with my husband in 1991, the year after we got married. We came home from the trip pregnant with Grace.

Our next trip was with all three kids, ages 2, 4 and 6, in 1998.

Here we are in Monet's Garden where Tucker disturbed everyone with his loud crying. Our

 French friend Marguerite lives in Paris. She taught English literature in school.

I went to Paris with my friend Michelle in 1999 after her mother, who was from France, died. Michelle had never visited France.

Earl and I went for our favorite trip in 2002 maybe. We're unsure of the exact year. That's our estimate.

This is us in front of the Pont du Gard. We actually rode our bikes across it.

We went again the following year for a 5-day weekend in Aix en Provence as I did some research for a book.

In 2006, we took all three kids again, age 14, 12 and 10.

In 2010, Earl and I went to celebrate our 20th anniversary.

Could there be another trip in 2012? How about 2013?

Cycling in France

I needed to write another post to get rid of the complaining post below, so I thought I'd focus on France again as part of Paris in July, thanks to the meme from Thyme for Tea and Bookbath
I'm enjoying the Tour de France on television in the mornings. I watch to see the countryside, but also get sucked into the drama of the racing. I cringe and look away at the crashes. Bicycling in France was one of my favorite vacations of all time.
In October 2002, Earl and I left the kids with my parents and went to France for 10 days. We rented bikes from Bourgogne Randonee in Burgundy. They delivered the bikes to Avignon in Provence for us where we began our tour. We traveled with saddlebags on the bikes and nothing else, so we really had to pack lightly.

This is me standing with the bikes. In the background on the left is the bridge from the famous song, Sur le Pont d'Avignon, and that's Avignon on the right behind me.

We had a very loose schedule planned on where we would stay each night. We pieced together some different bicycle routes from the book Bicycle Tours of France by Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks.  

The first day was the hardest for me. Maybe because of jet lag, but also because we didn't take any chocolate with us along the way on the 40-mile ride. I think we pictured stopping at a 7/11 type store to buy something to eat. Bad planning.

I need to scan this photo again to get it in
 the computer in a more usable form.

We rode across the Pont du Gard, a Roman adqueduct near Avignon and ended our day in Nimes. We had no hotel reserved, simply pulled into the center of the city on our bikes and went to the tourism office. They helped us find a hotel across the street from the Roman amphitheater. In spite of some rain, we made our way from city to city. One day when it was raining, we put our bikes on the train for a short ride to the next city. We also stayed in Arles, Salon de Provence and ended up in Aix en Provence where the brothers of Bourgogne Randonee retrieved the bicycles.
On the trip to Aix, we had lunch in a little village called Equilles. We could see Aix in the distance and we lingered over pork chops and green beans, along with glasses of rose. For some reason, we still consider that simple meal to be one of the best we've ever eaten. Maybe it was the fatigue, the ambience, the company.

This trip has been our high standard for vacations since then. We can't wait to move to France someday where we can take bike trips whenever we want.

Exercising for Energy

The other day when I was kvetching to my friend Ruth about how tired I was, she said, "Isn't exercise supposed to give you energy?"
That stopped me. If exercise gives me energy, then I should be a whirling dervish. Instead, I wake up tired, catch a 20-minute nap when the day allows and move like I share joints with the Tin Man on the Wizard of Oz.
Most exercise gives people extra energy, it's true. But not my kind of exercise. This summer, I decided to follow the marathon training schedule. That means I ran 10 miles on Saturday.
Creak, creak, creak -- those are my joints as I pull myself out of a chair.
Now, let me be clear, as I have to everyone who asks, including the 20-year-old guy at the running shoe store and the young lady at Starbucks, I do not plan to run the marathon this fall. Running the marathon was the most miserable I have ever been. But, I decided I wanted to get in good shape this summer, and training for the marathon seemed like the way to do it.
Maybe if I got up at 5:30 and ran 5 miles before going to work, like today, then I wouldn't be so exhausted.
Twing, twang, that's the achilles tendon in my left foot when I hobble down the stairs.
But after I ran, I did about a 45-minute core exercise from P90X. Grace and I have been doing this together all summer, but she wouldn't get out of bed this morning.
Jab, jab. That's the shooting pain from shin splints shooting up the front of my legs.
And somedays, when the heat index isn't 100, I might hop on my bike and ride the half hour to work in the morning and back again in the afternoon.
My goal is to get in really good shape. I don't weigh myself and stress about numbers. I determine if I look good and if my clothes fit well. I'm pumped about the number of miles I can run without collapsing or begging my friends to walk.
But maybe the exhaustion is not the fault of the exercising. Maybe I need to go to bed at 10 like I did during the school year. In bed at 10, up at 5:30 -- 7 and a half hours of sleep seems like a good amount.
Instead, most nights, I drag myself to bed around 11 after Tucker gets home and then when Grace or Spencer gets home they come in to kiss me goodnight and tell me about their evenings. Then I may wake up when Earl gets home from work at 12 or 12:30 or 1 a.m. and again when he comes to bed at 2 or 3 a.m.
Last night around 3:15, Spencer wandered into the bedroom and asked whether he could have a pillow because he fell asleep on the couch and didn't want to go to his bed. I woke up Earl and took his extra pillow. Then I felt guilty and got up to get Earl an extra pillow.
At 5:30 the alarm went off and I started over again.
So maybe, it's not exercise making me tired. Maybe it's lack of sleep.
How about you? Does exercising give you energy?

Riding in Your Pocket

Sometimes, as a parent, I have wanted to tuck my children into my pocket and keep them safe.
Grace and I have come up with a kind of opposite plan.
She had a nightmare Sunday night and then woke in the dark of Monday morning as her alarm sounded at 5:50 a.m. She pulled on some clothes and walked out into the cold black morning. She unlocked her bike and rode to the swimming pool, fearing the demons from her nightmare and the real things that lurk in life.
Later that morning, she told me about her bad dream and her fear riding to the pool alone in the dark.
"Call me," I said. I teach at ungodly early hours and I set my alarm for 5 each morning.
"Call me and put me in your pocket when you ride," I said.
So, for the past two mornings, she has phoned. We chat for a minute while she unlocks her bike and then she slips me in her pocket while she rides across campus. I lay the phone down and put it on speaker so I continue exercising or flat ironing my hair. I hear muffled sounds as she travels.
When she arrives with a clank, she takes the phone from her pocket and says, "I'm here."
Sometimes I can hear other people walking past on their way to the pool or early workouts.
"Ok. I love you." Typical mom speak. "Have a good day."
Then she's on her own, but for awhile, I'm right there in her pocket.