As the Lakers Break My Heart....

...I'll try to do something productive while i'm up foolishly late. And so, another post comes flooding out the fingertips...As mentioned in the last entry, Saturday was tourist day. I went to the farmer's market in search of a basket for laundry purposes. Couldn't do it. Instead, I walked out with a piece of cheese, 30 eggs, and a four-pack of baugettes. It was quite the scene:

Tourist numbers are growing exponentially. I don't mind it -I'm still a tourist! Anyhow, the entire centre of town gets closed to cars, and its streets filled with what you see above. Everything. Baby Ducks (presumably for "pet" purposes....presumably....), art supplies, olives, cheese, baskets, clothing, fruit...everything. You'd think there wouldn't be any deals, but if you look hard enough...

Picked those up then saw a familiar golden flash in the distance...

Could it be??? Unrefrigerated 40s of fabled Olde E???

Surely not??
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No, false alarm. Fresh apple juice or "pur jus de pomme." Okay...getting sidetracked. Oh wait...did I have a track to begin with? Nope. This is the glorious (I say that both sarcastically and truthfully) action-packed life of a guy with little to do outside of training and sleeping. It's a good time...and I'm easily amused/intrigued. Moving on....the cheese guy:


You see...these cheese guys, they stand there behind big menacing wheels of cheese, and offer you a sample as you pass. Nice enough, no? I sampled one, and I liked it. Solid. So I thought, "allright, got a great deal on the eggs, so I'll splurge on some fromage." Thing is, there is no price posted anywhere. I was sold on this cheese-stand after the guy complimented my french. Cut me deep, that comment...so I said "I want some, but just a little something." He cut off a tiny piece, and it ended up being 8 euro! Yep, 40 euro/kilogram cheese. I am wiser now, however. Hahhh...the most unnecessary, dull, and lengthy cheese story ever. Done.

Mon Boulangerie! "Boulangerie Marie." The best!! The woman on the left puts up with my 2nd-grade level french on a near-daily basis, and the bread I got shortly after this photo was taken burned my hand from fresh-hotness! Saturdays are like that. The tourist day came to a close with a photo that could have been better, but this is the best I could come up with using the timer. There's actually a big wide clean river under that bridge, but ah well...

Allright, that's the last tourist day and tourist photo this blog will see or know. I hope. You hope. Enough. It gets old: the scenery, the prettttty architecture, the really old everything, but it's all so damn photo-worthy that I can't help it sometimes. So I'm done. Oh, great news. The hard-working crew here at aramdellalian.blogspot.com just informed me that there will soon be a special blog entry devoted to my primary [non-bike] means of transport, the '85 Fiat Panda. Terrific.


oh: I finally race again on tuesday. No idea where or what type of race, but 8am depart time. I'm bringing the good legs for this one...

Training, Epiphany-ing, and Some Photos

Bonjour,

I haven't raced in a while. The race this last sunday was canceled because of the french elections...no dull details necessary for that one. In any case, the time off of racing has been swell, and I've been training plenty. It's nice to take a break from being humbled by the skinny french 20 year olds. But the humbling will end soon! I feel it. That tingle in the legs. It's coming...

So let me bore the readers with some technical bike-dork training jargon. The bike's coming along real well. Got new housings/cables yesterday. Snappy. Also installed the SRM head unit i've had for a long while (Endless thanks to this Guy). No SRM cranks yet, but it's so terrific to be able to download data from rides -even if it's just speed and HR for now. Fantastic. Charts. Graphs. Temperature. Calories. Gears. Seconds. Dig it. It's particularly gratifying after a good day of training. Like today. Short day. 2 hours. Hmmm..before I delve into the interval-game. Let's talk about how I came to do these things in the first place...

In SoCal, I didn't do interval training. Ever. The weekly routine was:

-Monday off
-Tuesday morning mix it up with the Barry guys, then climb the crest gently. Rest for a couple hours, then destroy the rosebowl at night
-Wednesday easy 1-2 hours
-Thursday was similar to Tuesday, depending on the weekend's race schedule is.
-Friday 2-4 hrs...depending on how I felt.
-Saturday-Race/Montrose/Off
-Sunday-Race

That's how it used to go, and it worked. Why? Because group rides, and rosebowls and all that junk that's so common and convenient in SoCal make for solid training! They're *real* intervals in themselves, and as long as there's proper recovery in between those things, it's a swell time. If you look back in the blog's archives, you'll find that my absolute hardest rides of the year in '06 were crazy rosebowl sessions with Hilton Clarke, Jaimie Paolinetti, Christian Valenzuela, etc etc. I'll be damned if anyone can get a workout like that doing intervals up some local hill. Additionally, the group rides gave me a way to gauge my fitness level(relative to the other riders in the pack). Good things all around...I'm having a bit of an epiphany here...my intention wasn't to glorify the SoCal training ride scene. Anyhow...back to Aubenas: the land without group rides or practice crits.

So a week after that first stage race that I botched (but finished!), one of the director sportifs, Jacques, came over with a bunch of papers. Papers....business papers. What he basically said is, "Listen, Fatman, time to get fast and lean." Jaques speaks relatively good (key word: relatively) english, so after a couple minutes, I was able to deduce that what he had was a complete training programme and set of guidelines to (a) get me leaner and (b) get me faster. I didn't realize it at the time, but in a sense, I was replacing the hammer sessions at home with neater, more quantifiable, more gratifying (sometimes...) interval sessions. Didn't like it at first, but when you feel good, and finish off a set of hard efforts...it's a good feeling. That's the "tingle" I spoke of earlier. I won't break down the whole programme right now, but today was fun. It's become my favorite workout. 30 minute warmup. Then, 3 to 6 efforts (6 today): 5 minutes each, with 5 mins of recovery between efforts. First 3 minutes at ~65% (160-164bpm for me), the 4th minute at 75-80% (172-176), the 5th minute gets ramped...to about 90-95% (180-186), then SPRINT the final 10 ticks (190+ bpm). Here's today's file:


The red line is heart rate. Nice and neat huh? I love neatness and symmetry of the intervals. I think I'd go insane with a powermeter....good thing it's not coming all at once. Prior to this, I hadn't ridden with a speedo/HRM/anything on my bars since the 80s! Also, found a nice little sprint trick which I'm shocked at not having discovered earlier...not that there are actually sprints here, but i'm sure it'll come in handy one day...

Almost done.

I haven't done any tourist stuff lately. In the Ardeche, if you don't speak french smoothly, you're not allowed to not be a tourist....so I have an obligation! ['Till I master French, of course]. Farmer's market tomorrow. Going with a bit of cash and a camera. I need a basket (one of those nice hand-woven ones would be nice...) for laundry purposes, but outside of that? Who knows? There's always something interesting out there...and I don't know how many more saturdays I'll have off from racing...so gotta jump on the opportunity.

Blue=me. Los Angeles Parking Skills in Effect!


One of the best sandwiches I've ever had/made:
4 Egg Whites + 2 Egg Yolks (scrambled) + Gouda (melted) + Basil + Moutarde Ancienne + frrresh Baugette

I finally got one of those cool red aero-fairings for the front of my bike:

Tour De Georgia and a Can of Worms

Salut,

At best, a dull Tour of Georgia. My only exposure to the race was indirect -the results sheet and the cyclingnews play by play. The tone of the cyclingnews.com guy was not-so-inconspicuously negative throughout the race, and I can't confirm if it was warranted or not. Given the sparse crowds, sponsorship issues, and the rapid ascension of the Tour of California, I think the clock's ticked for the TdG. The first (or second?) one was great...with Lance beating Ivan Dominguez in that sprint. It's been downhill in terms of excitement since. I think Ivan said that it was both the "best and worst moment" of his long career. Unreal. If you've seen Ivan in person...you wonder "how do you lose a sprint?"...and to a guy that wins stages on tops of mountains and junk. how? how? how??? Homage

cyclingnews.com

Another curious element of the race -Monsieur Adam Bergman. I didn't know he was riding professionally this year. He's goin well, looks like. Lots of mentions on the live coverage. He takes a two year break for kicks, comes back as an amateur with no real results (I saw him on a Superweek results sheet), and is awarded with a pro-contract with the Colavita team. C'est Bonne!

Hmmm? Is our talent pool in the United States SO depleted and just complete utter-shite that admitted users get the green light before more deserving younger riders who've never had a chance in the first place? No really, I'm asking, pleading for an answer. I don't understand the rationale here -at all. Does anyone? I sincerely hope that there's at least a couple of pissed off amateurs on the east coast (or wherever Colavita's based) who are turning pedals in anger after being scoffed at in this guy's favor. David Millar he is not.

I'll hold back and stop myself there. This blog isn't a "lets all hold hands and clean the sport!" diatribe. I'm all for that, of course, but don't want to share the onus at this point -for obvious reasons. The only reason i'm slipping here is that I felt this was too glaring an issue not to address, and hopefully people become privy to what's going on in this strange, strange game. Fin.

What? An entry with no France pulp? Yeah...i'll give you guys a break....


Abientot

filler entry

it's late...no race tomorrow, but we're doing a team training ride of some sort [which, it's important to note, is my understanding of what I was told in french...so it could be something different altogether] at 9:00am, so time to sleep, but hopefully the video works.

It's a little pre-race ditty from last weekend. Not too exciting or insightful, but still kinda cool to check the scene out.

Bienvenue Internet

Bonjour Mon Amis,

We have internet at the house now. Terrific. It's really opened up alot of doors for us. The Australians can get their share of Cricket World Cup (it's a big deal in the other hemisphere), and I've gotten in touch with Los Angeles again. And doing more all the time with it. Next mission is to get a wireless router so that we won't trip on the myriad of cords and cables all around the kitchen.

Pre Race in Roannes

Two races to report on. I have a pre-race interview/video from saturday's race that i'm trying to upload, but Google's being weird. Also, my google is in french. Trying to figure out how to make it english, but no dice yet. Alllllright.

Race one. I've lagged in reporting this one, but it's been a short week between races. Had one on Easter Monday ("Paques" as it's called here), and then another one on Saturday the 14th. Both were in the central region of France. One in the town of Roanne and the other in Charolles. Most races are never in huge towns, but that means great roads, great scenery, and lots of enthusiastic people watching.

Roanne: "Grand Prix Du Vogy". 166 kilometers. 140 or so starters. 12 laps around a 13k circuit. Easy enough. The race was basically uphill for half of it, then a slight downhill for the second half. The first lap was the most difficult. Gah. Hurts just to remember it. The uphill segment was easily faster than the downhill -it wasn't steep, but the speed made it hard, and closing the ensuing gaps definitely woke the legs up. "Hi legs. This is French racing.". Oh, the weather was good...no crying about poor weather today. First lap's speed was in excess of 45k/h. NRC crit status almost! hehe. I hung on. Studied the course. Saw where to recover, where to go, and thought i'd found a good algorithm for the course by the time the 3rd and 4th lap rolled around. Untill.....the fifth lap came. We came through the start finish, and turned left instead of the usual right we'd done the first 4 laps, and went down a steep hill...I was bummed, cause I liked the old loop...and then....oh man. I really should have taken a picture, but i'll try my best with words. We went down that steep hill, made a sharp right turn, and there it was. 6 feet wide? 15% gradient? Moss and broken pavement on the inside, and parallel 10" wide strips that were rideable. Oh, and millions of people on both sides all saing the same thing -"ALLEZ". I didn't cringe. I just laughed. What else can you do? So the remaining laps would go over this climb. It wasn't long. Maybe 300 meters? But steep. And straight. Yeah...you could see all the asphalt that awaited you straight up at the top. But here's the thing...the first few times up this climb, it wasn't hard at all. It was, yeah, but it was nearly impossible to advance your position, or get dropped. Because if 200 guys are going on such a narrow road at once, then it's like an escalator with lots and lots of people. You just wait and go at the escalators speed. So yep. That was intense. The peleton was still huge at this point (to my dismay), so the next few trips were pretty much the same. 5-6 to go, gaps started to open. Breaks went up the road, and I was too conservative. I actually had some juice left, but didn't go with the breaks, and ended up in a worthless group of 20 or so riders who either had nothing left, or no reason to work/chase. And yeah, that was pretty much game over. I finished, but likely in the 40th-50th range.

If someone can figure out how you're supposed to drop a #2 in this place, let me know.
Bike races in France don't have toilets. This one did, but what to do? And if it's just for pissing, it's pointless, as the French are much more liberal with regards to relieving yourself if you've got a cycling kit on. Hmmm....

Charolles. For this one, I contracted a bit of the never-ending cold my teammate has, but I'm certain that it wasn't my limiting factor on this day. The field for this race was huge, bigger than the previous week, and from the looks of the team cars, a higher quality field. Gerolstiener's U25 team was out there. AG2Rs, and the heavy duty UC Aubenas, fielding 3 riders. Our remaining riders were racing VTT (mountain bike) French Cup. It'll be nice to have them back. Anyhow. Race started, and it was a really cool course. One giant 100k loop, and 4 10k loops in Charolles' Centre Ville. The first 100k...rolling. and rolling...and rolling. I remember about 60k in, energy levels shot, grinded my way to the tops of the first 4 climbs -or so I thought, when my teammate Herve, says "allright Aram, get ready, the first climb is coming up". The firsT?!? What about all that shite we just went over??? My legs filled with lactic acid as soon as he told me those words. Gah. But! The climb was okay. I didn't bury myself. Got dropped, and used the caravan to catch back on with little worry -a first. The field must have halfed at this point, and I looked back a couple times to see that I was last wheel. Pas Bien! So it was a constant battle of moving forward bell-lap-crit-style when the road was flat or downhill, and pseud-sag climb when it went up. Unfortunately, with the diminishing size of the peleton, there was little room to hide my double-digit BF% body, and I was popped. Again, rode the final 40k with the groupetto (I think...we had 20 guys...there may have been other groups). I finished. Good training! hehe. A good time, except it was a bit cramped on the 300k drive back to Aubenas. I'm learning more with each race...but knowledge is one thing, power is another. It'll come.

Addio...

Side Note to the Cyclists: Do you ever do some training rides that feel REALLY epic and adventurous and amazing, but then come home and realize, "eh. it wasn't that big a deal." I have those all the time. Thursday was one. It ended up being just a 4.5 hour ride in a light rain. Nothing epic or noteworthy about it. I think when you're at the near-bonk zone, every pedal stroke becomes an accomplishment -until you get some calories back.

and from that ride:

Can't Wait To Descend This In The Dry

Jaujac

One of Many Sprawling Metropolises

At 1600 meters

Let's squeeze in another entry...

I'm really tiring of driving down to this weird part of town to use the 2-bar internet signal while rationing out my battery life as much as possible. I thought that if I kept repeating "oh, we'll never get internet" that it would somehow ironically arrive. Some kind of reverse reverse psychology. But who knows? Right now, my room/teammate's younger brother and father are visiting. They're Australian. Brash, Foster's-Commercial Australians. I enjoy having them over...even though our house is tiny enough for 2 people, but hey? And our hot water heater is just about big enough for one proper shower...yeah. Just a couple more weeks. But they do housework, and they eat all the chocolate so I won't have to! The australians like their chocolate...I can almost make that generalization 'cause all 3 of them destroy a bar or two a day -each! I had a bit when I first got here, but yeah...no more chocolate.

I'm finally settling into a nice routine with my diet...when I first got here, I ate like my roommate did. Easy stuff: LOTS of dairy, cheese, bread, chocolate, LOTS of pasta...it worked out, but it isn't the stuff I normally eat. Since arriving, i've been to nearly every market within 10k...checking out selection, prices, freshness, etc etc. This will be a never-ending process that i'll try continually refine and improve as my budget sees fit. I've since [finally] found some soy milk at a nature-mart (also a nice find...but I was on the bike and didn't get a chance to fully explore it) a couple days ago! That's a huge discovery, and the price wasn't too bad either.

For breakfast, it's muesli...aka Oats with dried fruit and nuts. Delicious and pure....and CHEAP. A kilo for a euro. Comes in a no-frills bag. No sugar added. No chocolate (like everrrrything else here)!! "30% fruit content" it claims, but it's really got a whole lot of oats in it...and they're big and chunky oats that take effort to grind and swallow (Low GI?)...and with the soymilk...amazing! I can't see myself ever tiring of it. Sometimes I'll also grill up a diluted scrambled egg side dish (usually 1 yolk for 3 egg whites). Eggs (oeufs) are cheap too, 3 euro for 24! And my roommate doesn't like em! :] Quality protein, negligible amount of fat, tasty. Yeah. Next meal...

Lunch. Lunch is almost always cheese with bread and mustard. Depending on how much i'm riding afterwards, I eat accordingly, and it goes good. I'd like to eliminate dairy entirely, but this is cheese town! Sorry wisconsin...but there multiple aisles at the markets devoted to the stuff. No cheese curds though...Wisconsin wins that battle, hands down. The mustard (Moutarde)...there are two types...."Ancienne", which is dijon mustard with the seeds prevalently left inside. Really good! And the more typical (and cheaper) type is the regular "Moutarde Dijon", and I got this one jar that's really got a nice kick to it...cross between horseradish and wasabi. Fantastic. Also, couscous (for some reason, called "tabouleh" here) makes it's way into our lunch meals whenever we've got it. Conveniently, the cheapest brand of it (500g for 1 euro) is also the best tasting (we concluded), and also is relatively lighter on the oil as well. Perfect! Lots of fiber in the diet already. Pu eloquently, I'll just say that the digestive system has never been better!

Dinner. This one's a toss up. Still waiting on improving upon it. Sometimes we get lazy after a ride and put in a frozen pizza. That's also the choice if the dishes are all dirty. They're pretty good, but probably not the best choice. Pasta is always an option. But I was sick of pasta sometime in 1988. Eh. It's just bland. Still, I eat it from time to time...it makes it easy to nullify the caloric defecit. Other times, we'll eat the bread left over from lunch...and the bread (baugettes) goes stale after only 4 hours, so it isn't a top choice, again. Tonight, I boiled some lentils, mixed it in with some plain couscous, sauteed some onion, and mixed it all up. A bit bland, but really hearty...and yeah...overtime for the digestive system today. Other nights we go to town with thinly sliced baked eggplant (baked with a bit of olive oil). Tasty. Yep. And my teammate has a cookbook issued to him from the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS). Most of the recipes have lots of prep time, a wide range of ingredients, too much meat, and yeah. I'd rather do my own thing. Also...the dagger...those recipes are usually for 3-6 people...not 1-2. So we make it...then have all this food to eat. and so we eat it. Yeahno. And too much to clean up. Routines...food's gotta be somewhat like a routine (except on rides...anything goes there...had a nutella creppe today) for me for it to work. And so far, no problems...Legs are good, weather was good (had some late thunderstorms tonight...fingers crossed for tomorrow), bike...bike descends nice! and i'm looking forward to the 3 hour trip tomorrow morning to see more of this peculiar place. Adieu!

Adieu.

***also...brief captions added to the last entry's photos***

Lions Tigers Bears....

Blogo

Hi. Still no internet, of course, so another thrown together entry….but with photos! I'll type this up on my laptop (which has an english keyboard.....5000 wpm faster than the French one!!), then transfer over some photos and junk with the card reader i just got, and hopefully there'll be an entry up…

Allright.....i'll begin with the most pressing: i have an injury. A stupid one. I should not have crashed while training last week. These things happen, yeah, but that’s no consolation. Eh. You see, my left thigh muscle (quadriceps...the lower most area of it)...the part that bore the brunt of the impact of last week’s crash, is having some trouble putting out big wattage. I raced on it this weekend (more on that in a bit), and only felt the ill effects afterwards. Today, it was great after 90 mins of riding, then from the 91^st to the 200^th…agony. Frustrating, yes. The neosporin cleaned out nearly all of the scab (with a good bit of soaking and scrubbing on my part) in the week since I went down, but the stuff underneath is either healing itself real slow or getting worse with every pedal stroke. The affected area also has a nice yellow hue to it that I’ve never seen before. I just keep telling the team people while pointing to my left thigh "ici pas bien" or "here not good". I think they get it, but ah well. If anyone knows what the french equivalent of Bengay is....please! let me know! I know that'll at least help me train normally. The DS gave me some other stuff, "gel d'arnica", and an oral version of that same thing…I haven’t noticed any effect. Okok...enough complaining...

French racing! Lets preface this little ditty by saying that the weather so far has been nice. Not So-Cal nice, but nice. The kind of weather that makes you happy because you know in just a few weeks time it'll be dreamy-nice. Right? Well, someone pissed off the cycling gods (Dieu du Velo), and the kind of shite we had to race in this weekend was miserable –at best. And no, not one race. Three races in two days. Ahh...still though, somewhere way underneath my cold wet skin, there lay some excitement and a touch of apprehension at the prospect of racing outside the US for the first time.

Stage 1, Saturday afternoon, 128k point to point RR: We were reconning this stage the day I crashed...so I knew the course...particularly where it was I'd crashed. It was very difficult, as I'd mentioned, with 3 categorized climbs, and a difficult finale (2km) to cap it off. Relatively short, at 128km, but hey. The race start was great. It happened to be our town's annual stage race (Le Tour D'Ardeche), so the start was right in the middle of town, a kilometer from my door...under other (warmer) circumstances I would have been really giddy, but at this point I was just trying to stay warm and focused while trying not to be overwhelmed by the surplus of Full-Record Look 595s with Boras and the scores of billion dollar bikes all around me...I did finally laugh when I inevitably saw a team on Time Ulteams exactly like my old one. Ah well! The scene was great. People looked happy, and it wasn't raining yet. Despite the weather, lots of people were there to watch the start (depart). The race started off neutral (I think...I really have no idea what the start-guy was saying), and a kilometer or two later, we were off. 5 minutes pass, and people were blasting off the front, every two seconds. Nothing shocking here…this is bike racing. I made a couple blasts, but wow...even after full-speed wheel-flexing digs, there remained a long line of people right behind. Geez. Give the fat american sprinter some room! So I gave up the breakaway game for the time being. Legs felt okay, and no pain from the quad whatsoever. I think the cold helped numb it down. First categorized climb....I made it! So did nearly everyone else! So no real accomplishment. Next categorized climb...sh*te’s blowing up! This was the same climb I aced during reconn...but not this time. Aram is shelled. Over the GPM I was an honest 10 meters from the back of the pack, but could not close it. Rode the rest of the stage (nearly 50k) in the groupetto, and finished a good 20 minutes down. Gah! Although the entire race was really close to home, the team stayed together at a nearby hotel (resort village of some sort, with a massive dining hall in which all the riders ate and hung out…really cool). I'd write more on that, but can't afford this tangent right now...soon.

Stage 2, Sunday morning, 7kilometer TT. Didn't think it was possible, but it was colder and wetter than the previous day. who hoo! At this point, delirium hit, and I didn't care. My DS wrote a nice little warm-up routine for me, and it worked out nice. The TT was 3km dead flat, 4km straight up, about a 6-7% gradient. I aced the 3km section, and felt allright at the hill, but only finished mid-pack, a minute down on the winner. On any other day................nono. No excuses, but it really was a good course for me, and I should have done better.

Stage 3, Sunday Afternoon, 100k Circuit. Three laps. Each lap had one categorized climb. I made it over the first time, no problem. Big ring the entire way. Interestingly, the director sportifs for UC Aubenas keep telling me not to spin so much...if you know me, you know that I’m a grind-it-up kind of guy, and don't really spin...at all. Trouble is, the Time Factory guys kept telling me to "Spin More!", so I have been, and now the reverse? Eh. The diesel-ullrich-style grind works best for me, I think. Anyhow, after the climb, the wet and windy descent wasn't any fun. Gaps were opening up, people were actually attacking! And the bike’s currently got these no-name brakes that work rather unpredictably –in the dry. The descent was nearly as hard (and tons more nervous) as the climb that preceded it. Eh, total madness, and a rather emphatic introduction to the ‘scene. Second time up the hill...breakaway was up the road, and the pace was fast, but controlled, and I made it through without worry. 3^rd time up, last time up. From the first 10 meters of the climb (which was 4k long), it went. I was trying to keep the yellow jersey in sight, as I figured he wouldn’t be doing any firecracker stuff. A quick move went up the right side, and the jersey followed…I dug, and followed, and when I looked back, there was a gap to the rest of the group, and I was on the Jersey’s wheel…gahh…not the way I’d wanted to do it, but better than being off the back. A couple minutes later, the peleton was back together and breathing hard, and yeah…legs started catching up with me…I made it to the GPM with the peleton! But in the 200 meter false-flat before the descent, got gapped, shelled, and spit out the back. I finished better than the previous day, and in front of the groupetto this time, but yeah…just a litttttttttle bit more juice in the climbing game, and I’ll be able to break some legs in the sprints….

That’s it!

Once internet comes…there’ll be a lot more pulp from me, as there isn’t a whole lot to do outside of eat and ride…so if I’m blogging, I’ll probably be eating less, and those 10 meters???? Margins…

And some random photos! Proper captions some other day!TT Warm Up Routine...

Our Coffee Spot in Ruoms

Tourist

How Ugly Is it?

Looking Down at Ruoms...Check Out the Guys Fishing

Ruoms Again

The Roundabout...Some Are Decorated Real Nice

Porcupine Roadkill is the Most Common Roadkill
Unlucky.

PAIN. Delicious

L'Ardeche...Home

Hi

After 3 Stages of Wet Filth...Check Out the Mud-Tan on the Shins
The Expression? I dunno. Leg Rolled Up 'Cause the Elastic Hurt.

Chump Tourist: Now Complete With Mismatched Clothes

My Current Background. It's a Real Peaceful Shot, No?