This is the story of a ride to France with my team mate Jed Schinder. The plan was to go out for a 4 hour ride which turns around at the French town of West-Cappel, but the original plan went a bit skew and turned into an epic ride not to be forgotten any time soon...

    ..."I think we made a wrong turn at Albaquerque.", to steal a phrase from Bugs Bunny. We are on a road called "Rue Verte", or Green Street, as we roll along with a huge hill in front of us. I think to myself, "That must be West-Cappel (the big hill) and we just missed Oost-Cappel back there". I look over at Jed and he seems to agree.

    The problem is we are now at 2:30 for our ride time, we want to turn back, but point of no return has passed, we must forge ahead to our goal of West-Cappel. This is where our adventure begins.

    We push slowly on into the headwind for what seems (and I think was) 45 minutes. The hill grows larger with every pedal stroke, but so does our concern for just how far from home we are.

    We arrive at the base of the hill and it looks like a nice climb to the top. I switch to my little ring and start to tempo ride up the hill at a brisk 23 kph. The road starts off with small patches of asphalt covering some of the cobbles underneath. This isn't to bad, not to rough, but things were about to change.

    500 meters later the real climb began. A full on true European cobbled climb. This isn't the nice flat and small so they can fit smoothly together cobbles. These are the land mine size been here since Napoleon ruled Europe and made to last to the end time cobbles. I use this as a test of my fitness start to blaze up the hill. I kept the tempo and my cadence all the way to the top and finish strong. I look down at my heart rate monitor, 187 bpm, 6 beats below my maximum heart rate. I begin to think how long I'd been at that rate?

    Me and Jed weren't expecting what we were about to find. On the way in all we could see was a small church tower and expected just a few houses and a church. To our delight we arrive at the top to a full on French Villa surrounded by the remnants of an old castle wall. It was sort of place you only thought were in the movies. We look around to find a café to grab a coffee. I notice my front wheel is a little low, "Great, I have a flat". We chose a café with a back porch to it overlooking the valley below.

    Jed orders us some coffee and I change my flat. It was then that I really took the chance to look around and see what we had come upon. The sun was out, there wasn't a cloud in the sky and you could see for miles around. Top all this off with the Garden of Eden town we had just stumbled upon and you have paradise. After some coffee and craps we relax and talk. Jed looks at the map to see where we are. Turns out we are in Cassel, 25 kilometers in the wrong direction from West-Cappel. We are a long way from home.

    It's now been 3:30 hours for our ride time. We are almost 90 kilometers from home and beaten from the wind. Jed says, quite jokingly, "Man, this is so nice, let's just find a hotel for the night and stay here!" I pause for a second, look at him, and go "Ok let's do it, you got Bernard's (our team director) phone number?"

    We had it all planed out, we'd phone our friend, Jeff Louder, because we couldn't remember Bernard's phone number, and have him call Bernard to let him know where we were. We would find a hostel or hotel for the night and then get some shorts and a T-shirt from a store to walk around the town. We decided to leave for a town to the north called Bergues and if the wind has beaten us down we'd stop there for the day and get a hotel.

    As it turns out the winds were in favor of us and we made it to Bergues at almost 45 kph average and in half the time we had planned. We kept up the momentum and made it home in about 2 hours. We arrived home completely drained of energy after well over 5 and a half hours in the saddle and 100+ miles.

    So why am I in Europe? Freedom. Freedom to ride to different countries, see beautiful places, and if I really want to stay there without the worries of having to get to my work later on in the day. These are the days I live for. Where I can just get away and see the world.

    -Gregg Germer-