I found PBP both incredibly fun but also having never ridden more than 600km very hard at time too.

The people are certainly what made this ride special: one lady actually invited us to her house for coffee and fresh figs. Of course we also stopped at numerous aid stations (I mean free coffee station) deep into the nights. The galette saucisse right when arriving into Brittany were awesome!

While Mike [Turek] and I rode together all the time (which I found invaluable) we also talked to other riders along the way. I don't remember how the conversation started but one night, I ended up talking to a French rider who was working for the GE medical instrument division next to Saint Quentin (both Mike and my wife work for GE). I also talked to a rider on a fixie (he was from Florida) and several randonneurs from Seattle. At one point Mike started talking to a group of Americans, one of them knew John M's dad (Talking then to John's dad on the flight back to Colorado he was his eye doctor!)

From Colorado, we started in the same wave as Terri, kept being passed by Paul and Vernon, saw Doug in Tinténiac, Laurie in Loudéac and Scott, Michelle and Steve in Fougères, rode with Brent, Beth and Andy for a while. Of course the couple of pre-ride dinners with pretty much everyone were lots of fun too as well as the little tours in the Versailles gardens I did with John M, then Terri, Michelle and Steve.

We also learned some valuable lessons. I think we definitively need to be little bit more efficient at the control stations, and make minor adjustments to the bikes: my saddle bag became loose at one point (but extra zip ties fixed the problem) and I manage to lose my back up light around Dreux (which I ended up not needing).

But overall everything worked for us. We did manage to sleep a lot (little irony here): from two to three hours every night, including in Villaines La Juhel on the way out (as part of our controversial plan). We had adequate clothes and rain jackets which turned out very handy for a very fresh and foggy 4:00 AM ride from Saint Nicolas to Carhaix. I had a slow leak right arriving into Tinténiac which they fixed while I was eating my sandwich, then they noticed the tire had a cut, so they also replaced it in few minutes! And I think our Colorado climbs prepared us well for the very hilly back-roads of Brittany. No real injuries, my butt suffered somehow, but a large reserve of Lantiseptic (recommended by Michelle) took mainly care of the issue. I still have some numbness in some of my fingers which never happened to me before but from browsing the web, it seems to happen on long rides...

We got few drops of rain right at the end (having check the weather 50 times before the ride, I purposely did not put my fenders), and knowing how miserable and rainy Brittany can be at time, I also feel we were very lucky with the weather.

While I was usually the one wanted to move on, and Mike was the one who wanted to enjoy the breaks, I wished we had stayed longer in Villaines La Juhel on the way back as PBP was such a celebration there. Right next to Villaines, the ride goes thru a tiny village: Hardanges, that is where my great grandfather was from. So, this was interesting too...

Some of Pascal's Photos!