Go away rain...

So its been raining for the past 2 days and looks like it will be raining for most of the next week.  And I don't have a set of serious rain gear!  It was 50 degrees and rainy yesterday, went for a 3+ hour ride with AJ anyway wearing my winter gloves and booties, but after they got completely soaked my hands and feet went numb with about an hour left to ride.  It was a good workout though, we pushed each other through a hard set of intervals.

La Forestiere recap:
The race last Sunday did not go as well as I had hoped, the cage (carbon, why???) of my rear derailleur snapped off about 7 miles in to the race.  I was somewhere around 20th place at the time and was feeling good. Thomas Bonne (one of the other guys here) raced also and was up ahead of me in the top 15, when the guy directly in front of him had a bad wreck on a nasty downhill section (same place my derailleur broke).  Thomas stopped to stay with the injured rider, he had gotten knocked out and ended up with a bad concussion and a broken hand.  It turned out Thomas knew him from mountain bike racing in Denmark, I guess its a pretty small scene.  So, he accompanied the injured rider to the hospital and helped him out a lot, and I took both of our bikes back to Premanon.  Bad day for us, but I hear the guy is doing fine now after some hand surgery.  At least I got a cool t-shirt for my 50 euro entry fee.

My Dad and Stepmom were here Monday and Tuesday, I met them at the Hotel Arbez in La Cure both days and we had some delicious and very rich French lunches and desserts, mmm...  They will be moving to Lyon, France in October and were out here scouting out an apartment, so came to visit before heading back to pack up everything in the US.  Dad has been talking about moving to France for a while, and I guess they decided to finally do it, pretty cool!  They had good luck and some help from friends, and found a nice place in Lyon.  I plan to take the train down there at the end of October, visit for a little while and drop off some extra luggage and one of my bikes, then take the train down to Rome to visit my cousin Antonella in Castel di Sangro, Italy.  Spending about a month down there, then probably back to Lyon for a French Thanksgiving with my Dad, then to Geneva to catch the plane home November 28th.  I'm really looking forward to seeing Lyon and relatives in Italy!

We had some great riding this week before the rain started coming down, Wednesday was a pretty long day with a good amount of climbing - a Cat2 climb from the Tour this year that went under a cliff, the road was closed but we cut through anyway.

Fast and fun descent, then the first part of the Tour climb up from Saint-Claude but extending it a few miles with a turn onto a pretty steep road with more switchbacks.  Great views of the road and valley down below.