2nd Day of Cycling by Eunja Adolphe

This is the first chance I've had away with the kids.  Boy has it been adventurous!  Took the TGV (fast train) from Paris to St. Pierre to meet our Backroads leaders and group.  Who would've known that we had to bike to our hotel that day.  We stopped off for lunch and some wine tasting, minor adjustments of bikes and the leaders said "we'll see you on the road"!! About a mile into the ride, Quentin starts swerving back and forth and ends up in a ditch.  Thank goodness it was just a small grassy bank.  I screamed for everyone to stop (I'm last in line to watch out for stuff like this) and jumped in the ditch to pull his bike out.  Quentin was a trooper!!  He dusted the dirt off of him and jumped right back on his bike.  What a great way to start the trip!!

We learned a lot of new French words.  My favorite so far is "alle" just because I got to use it on some bikers passing by.  We were good until the very end.  We followed the directions and made every turn, but maybe it was the heat or the sudden traffic or the crossing over a bridge with cars honking at you, we got a little lost trying to reach the hotel.  Luckily, some other bikers from our group was with us and we figured out that we needed to bike a little more to reach our beautiful destination.  Then, voila! we made it to our Chateaux, Le Choisel.  A beautiful manor set in the mountains with picturesque flowers and gardens, oh and the kids spotted the POOL!  We immediately changed and they were in the pool cooling off from the "short" days ride.  The leader said that today's 16 miles was just a warm up for the week, to get us used to the roads.  Eric and I looked at each other and we both were thinking the same thing, "warm up ride"???

Dinner was a French kind.  Scrumptious meal over 2 1/2 hours long.  I was very impressed with the kids.  They were very well behaved even after a long day of riding!

2nd Day!!  We missed our first stop to da Vinci's last home, but the group leader caught us within minutes and said we passed our first stop.

Da Vinci's Home

Poor Jasmine and Eric had to bike back UP the hill to the home.  Jasmine said the 5 minute bike ride was too short.  She didn't realize we were just visiting a museum, then we were off for our ride for the day.  Pretty quiet ride today, except for some tired legs of little ones; beautiful, bright sunflowers; long rolling roads, and oh, yeah right, Jacob crashed on an uphill and made us all stop on an uphill.  The kids and I always say, don't stop on an uphill because it is so hard to start again, just keep pedaling!!  We were not happy with Jacob.

Castle

We visited a castle that the kids determined was too modern inside and they couldn't live there.  Kids went to the Fantasy Forest (that's why I can type for so long) while some of the adults continued biking, and some adults that have to pull 70 lbs (Eric) and adults that feel bad for them (me) and adults that just wanted a little rest took a taxi back to the hotel.

Let's see how the Fantasy Forest went for the kids??  It's supposed to be obstacle courses, rope climbs and miniature golf in the woods.  Sounds like fun!!

Wish us luck for tomorrow.  We're biking to our next hotel.
Eunja