Blog: A Day In The Life
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Thursday, 30 July 2009
Alps Trip 2009 (2. l'Alpe d'Huez)
This is post 2 of 3 in a series on my Alps Trip. See Posts 1 (South France) and 3 (Austria).
That day shook me up a bit, but the next river we did in France was fairly easy-going, and the next was big but not as scary. Then we had two days away from water as we headed up to l’Alpe d’Huez which is a ski resort in the Winter; mountain biking in the Summer. The first day was mostly driving, and when we arrived late afternoon Miles hired a downhill mountain bike – Miles is really into his biking so he knew which one he wanted straight away – and paid €120 for a day and a half. He rode it on the purpose-built dirt track near the centre for the rest of the afternoon (this involved him jumping it off the roof of a hut and putting a few scratches in the protective body armour he’d been loaned). We were too tired from the drive to bother putting up our tent that night. Mistake. The worst storm I’ve ever witnessed. We thought we’d be ok under a tarpaulin shelter hung up from John’s van. Mistake. We would have been ok if it had been mild rain. It wasn’t. We were ok while it was raining (at which point Miles decided he was better off sleeping in the back of the van) but then it started pouring underneath the van and wetting my sleeping bag and thermarest. Hmm. Time to join Miles in the van, I thought. But unfortunately the back of the van was full of our stuff (literally full) so with a few things taken out was just enough room to fit one person laid across the bags – this meant I was stuck with the only available option – sleep across the two front seats. Brilliant. Whichever way I turned I had something sticking in me – the gear nob or the hand brake or whatever. At least I was dry.
Anyway, morning came and it was time for me to hire a bike for the day. I wasn’t as keen or extreme as Miles so a simple cross-country bike was sufficient. I was hoping it wasn’t going to be as much as Miles’ ... and when he said it was only €22 I jumped for joy (on the inside) and handed him the tiny amount of mickey mouse money he demanded and feeling rather pleased for myself went to purchase my gondola (ski lift) ticket. We decided to do an easy blue route to get started. It started with going down a steep hill and immediately coming up the next hill. Sara said not to put my brakes on while I was on the hill and to wait till I was over the other side, so I held the handlebars without resting over the brakes – but when I got to the top on the other side I needed to brake quickly and so reached for the left brake and slammed it on. Mistake. On bikes in the UK, the left brake is for the back, the right for the front. I’ve only been on a bike once (last year – see Happy New Year 2009) since I was a kid but my instinct told me which brake was which. Unfortunately they have them on opposite sides in Europe. Crash! I hit the wrong brake – the front – and went flying through the handlebars and skidded with the bike. I cut my side up which stung a bit but I was more frustrated with the French than in pain. I got back on and continued with the route. The next route we chose was marked as a red on the map, but when we got up there (right up there, this one started much higher up the mountain) it was clear that it had recently been downgraded from a black. Not good for a novice. We ran it anyway. I fell off a lot.
Then we planned to do a longer route which was a concoction of several other red routes, on which we somehow got very lost due to poor French mapping and ended up doing many more dodgy routes than intended and ended up in a little French town in the wrong valley (Sardonne), and pushing for time (we needed to get the last gondola back and return our bikes to the hiring shops by 5pm) we got onto the right track, which turned out to be a really good one that ran through a dense woods! I had a great time, rode hard and fell off even harder! In fact at one point I fell off and skidded down the steep cliff away from the path, with my bike thrown even further down. It was impossible to get myself back up it carrying my bike as I was knee-deep in leaves. The path continued to my right as I looked back at it from below, so I edged my way to the side, trying with all my might to drag the bike with me – and after a ten minute struggle I managed to get myself back on the path. The chain had got caught up in branches or something and wouldn’t go so I had to adjust it a few times to get it to work, but then I was off – to catch up with the others. I’d been shouting them to let them know I was stuck and that I’d be further behind, they’d been shouting back to me to ask if I was alright, but neither of us had heard each other. Anyway I finally caught them up and they’d been waiting for me (Sara worrying whether I was still alive or not) and started to walk back.
We were in a real rush now so Mark & Miles sped off towards the nearby village in attempt to make it for the last bus back to the gondola which would take us back to where we started. Sara and I continued on, stopping to ask for directions on the way. It’s funny how Sara launched into her only-slightly-broken French which only confused the (we think German) couple she was talking to, but when I asked Sara something (obviously in English) they butted in and said “We speak English” which made it a bit easier for us to communicate rather than us all trying to speak an unnatural language. We eventually made it to the village, Allemond (at this point I was aching all over), and as Mark & Miles weren’t waiting at the bus stop we presumed they had made it in time for the bus and we had missed them. There was another bus about 45 minutes later so we waited for that, knowing it wouldn’t get us back in time for the last gondola, so we were thinking we’d have to get a taxi or something back to our vans. With so much time to wait I wandered into the town to find a boulangerie for what turned out to be the best two pastries (almond covered and filled croissant & pain au chocolat) I’ve ever had!
I’d turned my phone on when we stopped, in case Mark got back to the van and tried to ring me, and luckily he did. He’d seen a missed call on Sara’s phone (which she’d left in the van – I was the only one with a phone with me on the bike trip), which was from right at the beginning of the day when I was waiting for them after hiring my bike, but he’d thought it was more recent. He phoned me and I said we were at the bus stop in Allemond and could he come and pick us up. He arrived somewhat later with Miles in the van and both their bikes on the back. This puzzled us as we thought they’d got the bus and the gondola back and dropped Miles off to return his hired bike (as this was one of the main timing issues), but when quizzed, Mark explained that they hadn’t made it to Allemond as they took a wrong turning and ended up in the wrong village! And that Mark had hitched a lift from “some crazy-driving French guy” back up to l’Alpe d’Huez, quickly ran back to the van, phoned me and come to collect us (picking Miles and the two bikes up on the way). So when we finally all got back safely to l’Alpe d’Huez, we were a little worried about the bike hire shops, presuming they’d be closed by that time (it was about 6:30). Miles had promised to return his by 5pm, but my guy hadn’t given a time (although I presumed it would have been the same, and we presumed they would close soon after 5, maybe 6). Anyway, when we got there we saw that both shops were still open, so that I would be fine as we hadn’t agreed a time, and Miles should be ok being a little bit late. Miles was hiding in the back of the van, and got Sara to tell the guy he’d been in an accident and taken to hospital, which was why she was late bringing it back for him. He was fine and didn’t mind and gave her his driving license (Miles had left his driving licence as deposit, but my cheaper bike hadn’t required a deposit).
I took mine back, gave it to the guy, he didn’t really say anything at first of acknowledge that I was there. I pointed out that I was returning his bike and he took it from me, sill saying nothing. I said “Ok?” and as he wheeled it off, still not really saying anything, I presumed everything was ok and that I had been excused. I said “Ok then, thank you. Bye.”, just to confirm that I was going to go. He finally said “Ok. Bye bye.” Then after a few seconds said “No wait … no bye bye!” ... he was calling me back. He pointed at the bike and said “Broken!” Hmm. I don’t know much about bikes but I was pretty sure that bike wasn’t broken. I had just been riding it fine. “Sorry?? What’s the problem?” I asked. “Broken!” he said. I tried to convey my look of confusion to him in order to get some more information out of him about his allegations, which seemed to work as he pointed to the centre of the back wheel where the chain can be notched onto the gears. I gave him my confused look again and he said “Derailer!”. At this point I urged the others to join me to try to work out between us what he was trying to say. He pointed again and repeated “Derailer!” and the others knew what a derailer was. I didn’t. He was claiming it was bent. I couldn’t tell if it was or not. The others said it seemed to look a little bent but looked ok, until he shifted it into a really high gear which when he demonstrated how the chain would always fall off when the wheel span in this high gear, because the derailer was bent. Miles suggested bending it back but he explained how this was not possible. He wanted me to pay €32 for a replacement derailer. He hadn’t taken a monetary deposit or kept my passport or anything, yet he demanded a sum of money which was more than I had paid to hire the bike. I didn’t think this was fair. Surely it’s part of the cost of having a hire business, that eventually the equipment depreciates with use and needs fixing or replacing, and I think it’s unfair to put blame for damage on one person unless through reckless use. I wasn’t going to pay him for a repair on something he’d hired to many people before me. I told him this and said I was going to go. He said he was going to phone the police. I went to sit in the van with Mark and the others to ask them what they thought. John arrived on the scene and he said that derailers break really easily, if you hit a rock or something they can break, and that he breaks two or three a year. Well I was still against the idea of him charging me for wear-and-tear but thought that as it wasn’t a huge sum of money, I’d probably knocked it one of the many times I’d fallen off, and it was not worth the risk of any epic Alpine police chases with us in our Volkswagen Transporter with kayaks on the roof rack, so I decided to pay up. I wasn’t happy about it but even at €54, mine was still less than half the price of Miles’ bike so I could hardly complain. The annoying thing is I felt cheated. If he’d have charged me €54 at the start of the day I’d have paid up and felt lucky it was much cheaper than Miles’, but the fact that he’d claimed damages and demanded a further payment put a downer on the whole thing. But these things happen.
Labels: Alps, Alps Trip 2009, Featured, Kayaking, Travels
Posted by Ben Nuttall at 17:09 
