The winter in Grenoble has not exactly been what I would call harsh. I've had to deal with very little snow, ice and generally cold weather compared to what I'm used to back home in Norway. At the same time, a sort of grey fog has seemed to lie over the city since November, as if had gone to sleep to wait for better times.
This weekend, it reawoke. And naturally, I celebrated the coming of verdant spring by riding my bike all weekend.
On Saturday, my German friend Sophie, her boyfriend Martin and I got our skinny-wheeled road bikes out and took them out for a sweltering 100 km and 2200 meters vertical.
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| Me and Sophie on the way up Col de Vence |
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| Sophie enters Le Sappey en Chatreuse, with Chamchaude still snowdecked in the background |
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| Church vs mountain in St Pierre en Chartreuse |
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| Victory on Col Granier, our last big climb of the day |
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| Martin alone on the road back to Grenoble, the Belledonnes glittering in to the left. |
The next day, with the addition of Norwegian Andreas to our mix, got our trail bikes out and went trail hunting. This basically meant that there would be a nice trail that I knew somewhere, but that was slightly hidden in some way, involving detours and me stopping to go "Hmmm..." to find it. Rinse and repeat for a good ride!
First we went to the east side of Grenoble, above the area called Fontaine.
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| The gang on smooth singletrack |
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| Andreas goes for it |
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| The flowers are in bloom! |
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| Sophie below Les Trois Purcelles (The spiky thing in the background) |
Then we went down town for some refreshments. And yes, the correct answer in 25 C and sun is ice cream.
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| Andreas has never seen anything so beautiful in his entire life. |
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| Neither have I! |
And finally we hit up some trails in the south of Grenoble. Andreas and I had found a nice descent route there the weekend before, complete with jumps that someone had built. It was trail bikers' paradise. When I finished the descent, even though I knew my legs would take no more, I just wanted to continue flying free forever into the bright blue sky.
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| Martin shows us how it's done. |
Who knows, maybe some day I will?
- The Wild Bazilchuk
Nooooo, stay here with us humans!!
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