From Guillestre to Jausiers was an uneventful ride. The Col de Vars. The scenery was less exciting than other rides. My animal was a cow. I was more tired than usual (because we had a rest day?) It was a total slog. Gabriel keeps asking me which ride I think was the hardest. Honestly, I can’t answer. Its so much more mental than physical for me now. Depends on my freaking mood.

We keep arriving in these villages starving, but too late for lunch and too early for dinner. At a bar in Jausiers (where they had the Tour on TV), the bartender let us bring in bread and cheese which we cut with our swiss army knives and ate at a bar table drinking wine. That was delicious.

Today we set off early for our last big climb: Cime de La Bonette. The highest road in Europe, they say. 23 kilometers. My animal was a happy white dog outside of our hotel as we left. The scenery up was breathtaking, and thank God, because I needed distraction. The hotel manager or whatever he was in Jausiers kept singing “Riders on the Storm”, not really to himself. Kinda full voice. And he didn’t bother with the rest of the song, either. Just “Riders on the Storm…” so that song was stuck in my head for the first hour or two. I kept seeing things and then thinking them in that tune: “Pinecones on the ground…”, etc. I couldn’t stop it. Pro-training type guys kept passing me. I thought: pass me Dude, I ain’t racing. The only race I’m in is against my own desire to jump on a plane, go home, and fall on the couch with my cat and a bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Cycle on, my friends.

Several kilometers in I went through another plague of flies. A couple dozen just circling me, landing on me, riding on my handlebars. I HATE FLIES! If even one gets in my house I’ll spend 45 minutes chasing it down. But for some reason, they love me here. Maybe they can smell the blood of my wounds–disgusting I know. But I’m riding and sweating hard and what do I have to contend with? Flies. Why? Because I hate them. Cos that’s the way it works, right Universe? So I tried to get Buddhist and love the flies. Like they’re my team. It didn’t really work but I tried.

When a sign said I had only 10 km to the top I stopped. I took a break and ate a banana (bananas, unlike flies, are wonderful!). Gabriel was way ahead of me, I couldn’t even see him up the winding mountain. He has become a climbing monster on this trip. He is a force to be reckoned with in so many ways. After my break, there were signs counting down each kilometer. 9, 8, 7… I was thinking to myself: the next one will be 6, the next one will be 5, etc. I promised myself when I got to 5 I would stop, get a fresh bottle of water, and eat some Peanut Butter energy goo. Finally I was at 5. I refreshed and went on. The scenery was like a few days ago: trees, mountains, patches of ice, cascades of melted snow blasting down the mountain. It was gorgeous but hard hard hard. And at that point cold. When the sun went behind a cloud my legs stayed warm but my chest turned to ice. I felt joy, though. I had felt it less after my fall, but today it was back– the wonder and the joy. Finally, I hit the top. Gabriel was there, as was a guy who was giving riders free Pepsi and dried fruit, and slices of pumpkin bread. Gabriel and I hugged. We did it. We really f-ing did it! The ride down was careful, and I had sugared-up. We stopped to eat lunch at a restaurant — we had never indulged ourselves in that before. We rode on, another 15km to our village and our hotel. We each had one glass of Rose at lunch (one sip of which had caused my hamstrings to literally melt into the chair). But now it was hot, another slog, and I rode slowly (way too slowly for Gabriel) to offset the affects of the heat and the wine. We lost then found each other– our Euro cell phones work, it turns out. We arrived here in Isola. There are exactly 2 hotels here, each a little worse than the other. And one restaurant, period. But we don’t care. WE DONT CARE!!! We’ll be in Nice in 2 days.