Sunday, June 6, 2010

Preparation ... pppppp



Remember the 6 P's ...
prior preparation prevents p**s poor performance.  
Well, the same goes for a trip to the Arctic Circle, especially in a little plastic toy.  

Since the Lotus has a Toyota engine and gearbox, there's no need to worry about it.  And of course our TCS breakdown cover will look after the Lotus should anything happen.   (TCS is the Touring Club of Switzerland and the equivalent of the AA, RACV, AAA depending on where the blog-reader lives).

Unfortunately, Toyota reliability does not apply to our human forms, so some good workouts are required in advance.  

As we live at the foot of a Monte Bré, lots of seriously cardiovascular hiking and biking are available from our front door.  

This was this morning's leisurely (!*!*!) ride from home to Bré village.  A few times a week and we'll be ready for 9 hours a day in those little carbon fibre Lotus seats.




For those of you who must have the statistics, the shore of the lake is 250 m above sea-level, our apartment is 300 m above sea-level, and Bré village is 820 m above sea-level.

You can continue upwards on dirt tracks (easy on foot but also possible on a mountain bike) to Monte Bré at 950m, to Alpa Bolla at 1,100m (where there's a lovely refuge that serves coffee, beer, cake, etc) or even to Monte Boglia at 1,500m.



If you like graphics, get a load of this.  It's a site (http://www.everytrail.com/) that I found recently, and it's great for showing big hikes like the Tour du Mont Blanc, but it also works for any trip that you'd like to record.  It shows an animated trip on googlemaps, and inserts a slide show or the speed/height gain as the trip progresses (toggle between them).   Clever, eh!

PS:  If it's too small and the pictures obscure the map, wait till it finishes its run.  Then it displays on option "View Larger".  Click on that and it'll give you a larger display in a separate session.  When finished, just close the separate session and return to the blog.


Ride to Bré



Plan your trips with EveryTrail iPhone Travel Guides





1 comment:

  1. I can't see how riding your bike up a steep gradient will stop your butt getting numb on an 9 hour journey in the bone rattler ;-)

    ReplyDelete