Day 4 - Salvation is Achieved

We got somewhat of a late start today by waking up at 10:30. The extra sleep was nice though. We were also delayed since I had to find a replacement video camera. I had the front desk guy call Oregon Scientific's Paris office. They referred us to a department store called Bazaar de l'Hotel de Ville. We set out at one o'clock for this store as our first stop of the day. Dale watched the bikes as I went up to the 5th floor. The elevators are markedly smaller than in the U.S. I have noticed. A store employee instantly recognized my camera and pointed me an Oregon Scientific display case that contained my camera. It was on sale no less and there were 16 of them available! This is an item that would not be found on a store shelf in Chicago. I couldn't be more pleased. The Champs-Elysees will be filmed after all.

The tourist portion of today's ride took us to Montematre. At the top of this hill is the Basilica of the Sacré Cœur. The climb to the top was really no big deal. There was, however, a lot of tourists in the middle of the street that forced us off our bikes. There is a nice view of Paris from up there but the Eiffel Tower is not visible. The required pics were taken and we were off.

I had to get to the Hippodrome de Longchamp in the Bois de Bologne. This is one of two horse tracks in this park. I was told that many cyclists meet there and do laps on a roughly 2-mile flat circuit around the track. I was here on my last Paris trip but the fast guys were not there. Traffic on the way there was pretty thick. The motorbikes cut and slice though the traffic and plug the holes I would normally take through the cars. The lanes are a bit smaller too. The driving is a little aggressive but no one goes too fast and hardly anyone honks or gets angry. The motorists are totally accustomed to the motorbikes so the cyclists benefit from that.

We arrived at Longchamps and, to my delight, I observed a big group of fast guys go by. Dale was gracious enough to take my shoulder bag and I jumped right in when they came around again. I was thrilled to be in a pack of Parisian racer types. I was actually in a slower group at first when the faster group started to pass us. I obviously abandoned the slower guys for my new "friends". I made it to the front and traded pulls with a couple of strong tri guys and a young road guy. There was about 50-60 riders in my group. I rode around for about an hour and pulled off as I was feeling a little pooped. I can describe the ride a long consistent grind with some break attempts. I did some counting and there were about 175 riders total riding around in various groups.

There is no official start or finish to this ride. People start showing at 4 P.M. and start leaving around 7:30 to 8 P.M. This means one can conceivably ride around for 3.5 hours at a pretty good clip. I feel tired already thinking of it. Paris has so many criss-crossing streets that it is impossible to do a group ride on an actual route so their only option is do laps on this circuit. The course is closed to traffic by the way. Also, there is another park in Vincennes where they do the same thing. I can see getting major league burned out very quickly. I would have to piecemeal it by doing the ride twice during the week and that's it. On the weekends, I would either race or ride on more rural roads.

We decided it was better to eat dinner right away so we stopped at a brasserie called Le Carousel. The food was delicious as always. The Rue de Rivoli is a very busy street so it was little noisy for dinner but after a while we tuned it out. I stopped at the Haagen Dazs store for my macadamia brittle ice cream and rode back the hotel. Tomorrow we travel to London on the train. Yes, of course we are taking our bikes. Bonsoir.