Windy Col de Saxel Ascent...

ZENers,

This is more of a photo essay, to share with two distinct groups of friends:

those from Eurobike, and those from TOPIX (where Yes-or-NO Floyd partisans post, thrash and slay news and rumours to the great dismay of opposing participants); I hope...

Oh: all photos and the films, were shot with my NOKIA 6300... A toy even a former cameraman could love!

Tourist information here:

France Travel Guide -

Tourisme en France -

The rains of August, 2007, have ended with the onslaught of "the Bise", our wind from St. Petersburg, which funnels through the plains between the Jura mountains, and the northern Alpes. It's a three-day event, and after sweeping leaves off the bed (devote AIR-worshiper here) ten times, we can only say 'A bientôt!' to its retreat.

Even so, high winds didn't stop ole ZENmud, the weather was bright, wind high and I decided it was long overdue for a 'first' ascent (Of the year) up the Col de Saxel: the northernmost Col of the French Alpes, rising 570 meters over lac Léman, to 944 meters high. (click on ANY photo for an enlargement)

First ascent of 2007, due to slow recuperation of a lingering thigh-nerve-muscle problem: ole ZEN is feeling the aches of skiing like an eedjit in Vail, CO, for thirteen years...

Setting out from Hermance, on a freshly-cleaned Bernard Hinault, a beauty of nine years, which has taken me twice to the top of Ventoux, twice over Vail Pass (brought via United Airlines in 2004)... four times around Lac Léman...

Starting out, across the river Hermance, world-wide unknown Franco-Suisse border, we take a fond look at the Cafe de Hermance, which actually sits on the French side of the border. Filets de perche abound there, under new management.

Immediately undertaking the first ascent out of Hermance, a strong wake-up call; the first kilometer serves, with about a 4% rise, to shake the legs and tone them up fast...

and the next flat, five km stretch takes one through a long series of bright tall cornfields, to Douvaine, renowned world-wide for... nothing, except perhaps its beautiful Sunday Market, and its crossroads status, between Geneva, Evian, Thonon, the Lac and les Alpes!

OH: and its five-way intersection, which becomes much more fun on the return leg....

Another two km, rising constantly but lightly, then time to turn left...

and onto the Côte de Ballaison.

First vineyards, first turn, first 'Halo shot' of the trip. I saved it due to the opposing arcs it created... you can't have it all in a phone-cam,

or a cam-phone! ;-)

Therein starts the 3km rise toward Ballaison, another easy, steady climb to work out the thighs and warm us up under the sun, in facing the strong headwinds from our left side ...


Just passing the vineyard, a bucolic hillside rises up towards 600+ meters.
(NB: the Lac Léman is perpetually maintained at or near 373m above Sea Level) The village of Ballaison sits to the upper right of the photo-panorama I soldered together.

This approaches the 8km point from my lakeside apartment in Switzerland, with 2+km to go to the summit of the Côte.

Here's the 'downtown', in Ballaison, and I'll follow the arrows pointing right, which (in better light) are indicating Bons-en-Chablais, the town astride the foot of our Col.

From the signpost, another 700m upwards, gently, to a rapid, three-turn descent of only 2km.

Across rolling agricultural land, past some trailers occupied by immigrants from 'The East', and then it's into Bons... Bons-en-Chablais...


After crossing the RR tracks, and winding up an approach to the traffic light, awaiting our turn to climb straight up past the church, into the menacing clouds that formed en route. Bons sits at about 560m, so we've already done from 375m to 475m (out of Hermance), from +/- 530m to 690m (base of Côte to summit in Ballaison), and now to begin 'The Climb', of some 8.5km at a 4.6% gradient, from 560m to 944m: some total ascent of +/- 660m for a two hour, 50+km tour!

A short warm-up, then a left turn follows.

This Col is easy, fun and with long straightaways that dominate; as seen on the map, the first major turn is to the right, and after crossing through Marclay, the opportunity to look horizantally across to Ballaison, at again the same altitude, is a good mark of progress.

As indicated, turns are coming, and in this photo, Ballaison sits in the light-coloured band on the right side of the intermediate ridge. In the far distance, are les Juras (mountains)...

Spinning my triple easily (has it come to this? Will I ever climb again without a Granny-gear? Bwaaaaah), I enjoy the transition to forest land, and reap the magic of a series of small waterfalls, such as the one shown here to right below.

Without noting it, I'd guess the distance from home to be about 18-19km, and this photo to be situated at about 800-850m over the sea.

I shot a movie of that but the wind noise was so existent that I don't think posting it as such would be a pleasure for the ears...

Waterfalls means the road is winding higher, shade is cool and the trees cut down the force of the wind...

The last section again is straight enough, until a last hairpin turn takes us up onto the final straightaway, within the rising clouds, looking southward towards Mt Blanc, itself obscured for another photo-visit.

Half a click, then 300m to go, nearly up, easy-faster-gearshift higher farther and Voilà!

On y est : there we are!

The Col de Saxel, at 24.6km from Rancho Ghetto, the ZENcastle-in-obscurity... to return, point them downhill, do it all again, only ...

Faster!

COURAGE, cyclists who are tempting their Fate...

ç*”*”*””*ç”*”* ZENmud ”*””*ç*”*”*””*ç”

Tour de FRANCE : Saturday to Grand Bornand

ZENers,

It's Thursday morning here, and you've heard rumours of the film I'm creating for my day at the Tour de France... patience!

Using a new software, isn't the best way to rapidly go from Computer to YouTube to my Blog...

Update 19 February 2008: here is the YouTUBE AT LAST...




Anyway, Saturday was a perfectly SCORCHING summer day, just as it was last year, when Our Hero Floyd Landis wailed up those Cols towards Morzine, and regained 7 of the 8 or more minutes he'd lost when bonking the day before.

I live near Geneva, on the shores of Lac Léman, and I was about 60+ km from le Grand Bornand, where Saturday's stage would arrive. My ride across the French 'countryside' involved one of their "N" roads ('National route'), the equivalent in the US would be a 'US Highway' like Route 6, which comes across Colorado and winds its path out across Utah and Nevada...

Around the first foothill, across the valley of the Arve river, born in the glaciers of Mount Blanc, to the foothills of the Massif des Aravis, is about 55km, or about 32 miles. My only problem, was an increasingly loud, grating Bottom Bracket, the axle which unites the crank arms and allows the pedaling action.

So I thought it unwise to climb too high up the pass Col de la Colombière. As well, I really wanted to see the finish, and I knew if I stayed on the lower half of the hill, I could watch the beginnings of the tactical assault, yet still early enough that the sprinters' 'Gruppetto' would still be less than a kilometer or two behind the stronger climbers.

So I found a tight, climbing left-hand turn, which crossed a beautiful small brook, and had plenty of shade for the four-hour wait, plenty of relief from which to take films, and a gorgeous old stone bridge that served well as a backdrop to the action: the corner was so tight, that no one sane would think to stand there.

I met a nice family from Telluride, COLO (aka To-Hell-You-Ride), and the wife mentioned that they had only gone climbing in the Dolomites of Italy, and 'by hazard' found that their drive back to Paris would cross the Tour route: their finding the same corner as ZENmud allowed us to reminisce about the Colorado Rockies (ZENmud hails from Vail, you see........).

Anyway, I was travelling light, took no food but a cereal-bar, found a café, at the base of the ascent, wherein I purchased a liter of water, hoping that the sponsoring Aquarel trucks would be lenient on their passage... four hours anywhere at an altitude of 8-900 meters is thirsty time.

So waiting and chatting with strangers, seeking the faces of anyone I knew, knowing various comrades were across the ranges, towards Italy or Val d'Isère, was a warming thought.

The show begins as it does, often with the French police screaming up the hills in cars, vans and motos; our 'highlight du jour' was the little French Peugeot police car that FUMED a sinister amount of pollution, while the crowd HOWLED and ran for cover, escaping the clinging blue fumes that he laid upon us like a wet blanket of death... GASsssssssspppp

Then the sponsor's caravan, a truly French spectacle which can be best understood if you seek the great animated film 'Les Triplettes de Belleville', which was written and directed by Sylvain Chomet, and personally a ZENfave film...

How to show the hundreds of thousands of TourFriends along the route, the commercial aspects of this spectacle, is difficult, unless you form a parade about 25km long, pursuing their own company's image while racing by the very fans, some less than some centimeters away from cars doing 30-80km? How to throw 'gadgets' so as not to leave scars?

And then... what's that noise? The Helicopters!

Down across the valley, the heli's are following the leaders, and we all revive our lost adrenalin, to anticipate when the leading police cars, Commissaires' cars and police motos will give way to the screams of racing fans lining the stretches below us!

And then it's THAT MOMENT... Taking films means not being 'in the moment' directly, anxious to maintain camera angles and ensure proper enregistering of their passage...

So hang on, you know by now what happened, and within hours or days I'll have put my YouTube films in this and subsequent posts.

COURAGE ...

ç*””*”*”*ç*””* ZENmud *””*ç*”*”*””*ç

Sarkolepsy...

Well ZENistas, what a weekend for those of us in Europe, watching both the French presidential election and cycling's Tour de Romandie, a six-day event that focuses its courses in the French-speaking cantons of Switzerland: Genève, Fribourg, le Vaud, le Vallais and Nuchâtel.

It's no surprise that crystelZENmud was in favor of the Socialist candidate, Madame Ségolène Royal, mother of four and pseudo-sister to a nation that knows it must change, while porting that cultural fear that always comes with change...

After all, twas the French themselves that stated “ Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose ”

('The more things change, the more they stay the same')... however they now have chosen Nicholas Sarkozy, son of an immigrant father (Hungarian), and a French-Greek mother.

What would change, if Angela Merkel and Ségolène Royal were to meet, perhaps in the summer of 2009, with an American NON-Bush president? If it were, say, a 'Hillary'???

Before sharing my observations on this man Sarkozy, allow me to do the ZENmud thing: the long-range...

This just-completed presidential French election occured one year before the US presidential election is slated to take place: after 2009, both countries will be seeking a new president, or by re-election, renewing their faith in their current office-holders (speaking in Post-November 2008 ZENterminology).

That would be nearly-simultaneous, in 2012: France will enter the summer knowing its destiny, and the United States will, hopefully, span the Christmas and New Year's holidays knowing their own president-elect is to start functions in late January 2013.

How the next four years will pan out, is hardly foreseeable. Hopefully the US government would find the means to close permanently this painful Bush-psycho-chapter in the middle-East, America's self-insinuated disaster, in the last years of this first decade of the new Millennium.

How will France reduce its Statist economy, always the Continental Liberals' goal, while not forcing perpetual strike activities by targetted 'recipients de la largesse de l'Etat'? Income taxes exist still, that range up to 60% of salaries; the immigrant youth block, with unemployment rates at nearly the same stratispheric levels, may not see the connection between falling tax rates on the 'overburdened' rich, and falling (presumably says Sarkozy) employment rates on the 'overstigmatized' poor, most often depicted as those living in the 'banlieus' of Paris, or other large French cities.

Did Sarko say anything positive? He called on the USA to substantially address the reality of global-warming, as well as encouraging its leadership to take a vibrant lead in commercializing the better aspects of renewable energy resources. Let's give the man one point...

Is ZENmud pessimistic about the coming reign of Sarkozy? Yes...

Is ZENmud as pessimistic as he was when Bush the Lesser 'stole' the election in 2000? Yes...

But the singular hope that differs between supporting the pain of a Bush election, and supporting that same pain from Sarkozy's election this last weekend, the Sixth of May 2007, is this: in the French system, legislative elections follow the presidential second round, by a month.

That means, unlike in our all-in-one-day national election cycles, that the French have a month to react and digest the news of the incoming President, and react accordingly as they vote for the Parliament with whom he will work...

Imagine if Bush was 'elected' as he was, in 2000, and then separately received the Congress with whom he would then work? Maybe their system has even more 'checks and balances' than this system we've used for over 200 years...?

COURAGE les françaises, et français!

ç*””*”*”*ç*””* ZENmud *””*ç*”*”*””*ç

Ségolène a des atouts....

Mes chers lecteurs et lectrices français,

Soyez tous et toutes les bienvenu(e)s!

Ici, on parle plutôt l'anglais, comme vous pourriez bien voir en surfant mes posts.

Ici, on discute souvent les problèmes mondiaux, provoqués par l'administration Bush aux Etats-unies... mais c'est plutôt un vrai régal de parler à propos de Ségolène Royal, et les choix venant à vous, les françaises et français, dans les deux prochaines semaines.

Mais il y a parmi nous, ceux et celles qui pensent que le jour est venu, pour une nouvelle France, une France équilibrée, une France socialiste, sociale, qui pourrait encore faire vibrer l'Europe entière...

Voir le deuxième grand pays Européen passant dans les mains d'une femme capable, après l'arrivée d'Angela Merkel en Allemagne, ce serait un fait qui peut chauffer les coeurs de celles et ceux qui ne souhaitent que vivre en paix, en soutenant des familles, en protégeant les marchés et les employés.

Donc avec ce 'post' sur ce blog, on s'annonce d'emblée avec une force ZEN, pour que les français se rendent compte d'un avenir historique qui est à leur portée, si Madame Royal devenait La Présidente de la République française...

Vive la France!

Votez tous encore une fois...

COURAGE, les français, et françaises!

ç*””*”*”*ç*””* ZENmud *””*ç*”*”*””*ç