France: Day 1 and 2

Hello everyone from Annecy, France! Heather and I arrived safely here on Sat afternoon after a joyous 9 hour flight.

First things first...the 24 hour race in Wausau, WI was a blast. It was great seeing the guys (Trent, Simmons, Sears, and Greg) and we had a lot of fun. That course is really fun. Especially at night. We got 22nd as a team. Not too shabby for a team 'taking it easy' for the national championship race. Simmons (Vino) has a great race recap here.

We left Madison on Fri afternoon (Thanks Brooks and Mary for dropping us off at the airport...and for taking care of Vontoux, Birdie, and Gordon!!!). Went to Chicago first before heading to Brussels, Belgium. After hearing so much about the rainy, crappy weather conditions for all the spring cycling classics in Belgium, I was not surprised when we arrived in Brussels to wet and rainy weather. We had a few hour layover there before we boarded our plane for Geneva, Switzerland. We didn't stay long there though, as once we picked up our luggage we hopped into a cab to take us to our current location of Annecy, France (just a quick 45min cab ride).

Annecy is a real cool town that is right on Lake Annecy, the cleanest lake in all of France. Very clear. Heather was amused by this older man walking his dog in a suit along the lake, so I took a pic of him:

We met our tour companions early this morning for our first day of riding. There are only 9 people total on our trip, so a pretty small group. A cool group of people, including a Trek Travel photographer, so odds are good that we will be in the Trek Travel booklet for next year. :) We had a good ride today, a little over 30miles with a couple of smaller climbs. Here we are at the top of one of them:

After riding, we took a nice swim in Lake Annecy, which is also quite warm. Then we had dinner at the hotel, and we got a little dressed up. It was also a special day for Heather, as it was her birthday. Here's the birthday girl, looking all cute posing on a couch:

You should check out the website for the hotel that we are staying at...it looks like a castle and is right on the lake. The website can be found here. You should also take a look at the other pics that we took from the last few days. I put together a SnapFish album for all of them here.

Tomorrow will be a very fun day as well. We take a ride around the lake, then climb our first major climb, the Col de la Forclaz. Also, once we get to the top of Forclaz, we are going to paraglide off the top of it! The tour guides got us all a group discount, so it was an added 'bonus' to our trip. Should be a great time! Talk with you all tomorrow!