A ride through the French countryside.

For the third consecutive year, I (Phil) have come to Europe to bike in the mountains with my friend Hal. In 2013 we did a Thompson Bike Tours trip through the Pyrenees (border of France and Spain). In 2014 we did another Thompson trip, in the Dolomites (Italy near the Austrian border) and the Italian Alps. This year, we are doing a "self-guided" trip in the French Alps, with two friends, Tom and Ted.

My trip started in Geneva, where I arrived a day earlier than the rest of the crew. I rented a bike, checked into my hotel, and then took the bus downtown to Lake Geneva to stroll around for the evening.

There was a big festival (or combination of festivals) lakeside, including some displays about local agriculture but mostly just lots of food and drink booths.

Tens of thousands of people were out enjoying the evening.

My friends' flight was delayed the next day, so I did a morning ride. Just five minutes ride from the Geneva airport and I was riding on a nicely paved bike route through farm fields. The sunflowers are a bit sad because it was raining. I biked out to the mountains behind the clouds in the background, and got in some nice climbing.

I will spare you photos of all of the mountains we climbed, but here's one of them: the mighty Galibier. It just goes on for miles and miles, topping out at 8600 feet. As you can see, it's rather barren at the summit, but just a few hundred feet below there are alpine meadows dotted with wildflowers.

I love this jersey, and I thought I'd get lots of compliments on it (or at least amused looks) here in France. Nope. One waitress asked "don't you know what that means? And you wear it anyway?"

At the base of Galibier, there's a town has a make-a-sculpture-out-of-straw festival. Here's one of my favorites. 

In addition to biking, we've been doing two other things: eating and sleeping. This was on the wall of a Turkish restaurant we liked. It appears to be a beaver praying to a butterfly.

This cool-looking climb is called "les lacets de Montvernier," and it was climbed on this year's Tour de France. It's not actually a hard climb, just a few kilometers at about 8% grade...a midget compared to the big climbs. Looks great, though.

At the top of Les Lacets, there's a beautiful plateau, including this lovely view.

And here's the crew: Hal, Ted, and Tom. 

And here we area again, at the top of Col de la Madeleine. This was a beautiful, difficult climb through forests and then above the tree line. The weather looks forbidding but was actually quite nice: cool and overcast beats hot and sunny when you're climbing.