The Bike, The Wine, The Life

The idea was hatched by Peter and Damian back in September. 2009

The idea was to cycle around France, learning about the culture, enjoying the wine and food, absorbing the scenery and meeting the locals in the small villages of France that exist, survive and prosper off the main roads and highways. The idea is also to explore some of the roads made famous by 100 years of the worlds largest and greatest annual sporting event, The Tour de France (Le Tour).

Runners dream of the challenge of a marathon or ultra marathon. Of testing their resolve in the toughest running event. Cyclist dream of the physical and mental challenge of the iconic mountains of Le Tour,; the Ventoux, Alpe d'Huez and Tourmalet to name a few.

Progressively, Phil, Craig, Mick, Adrian, Colin, Greg and Ern signed up for the adventure. Sadly, for different reasons both Adrian and Greg will not be joining us.

It all started to come together in March when Greg set about a huge research project to design a tour route. A credit to Greg's effort is that over the following months, his original plan has stayed almost entirely intact. A big thank you to Greg.

Adrian withdrew due to business reasons. As luck would have it, he had a fall from the bike last week and broke his wrist.

We will miss not having Greg and Adrian on tour and will surely raise the odd glass of fine French wine in their honour.

The exodus from Brisbane begins tomorrow.

Ern is heading first to Singapore to spend a few days with Anders, a cycling colleague of us all from his time in Brisbane while Mick is on a direct route for Paris to get things settled ready for the big 'departe'.

Colin, Craig, Phil, Phil, Damian and Peter all make their way to Paris via ports including Singapore, London, Dubai and wherever it is the Phil's are first going to and coming from. We will however all be as one in Paris by Friday afternoon.

Packing is the challenge. Qantas allows only 23 kilograms checked baggage while Emirates allow 30. Qantas however is more generous with cabin baggage. When you start with 8 kilograms of bike and a 5 kilogram bike bag and add the essential cycling gear, there is not much left before excess baggage cuts in.

And fitting the partially dismantled bike into the bike bag is a challenge. Seat posts are fixed on many late model bikes and bike bags are not necessarily flexible to accommodate this. Handle bars just make it so it is a tight fit indeed with 'millimetres to spare' reports Damian.

What started in earnest in March, has come around extraordinarily quickly.

Join us for the next of many more 'trips of a lifetime'.