We have a pack of 5 doing this ride: Matt, Greg, Uncle Jim, Uncle Jim’s friend and myself. (Poor Matt got roped into this merely by association, and may murder me by the end of this trip) We plan to head off at 6am and then see how far we can get before the sun and heat do us in.

In total the ride is 175km with a total climb of 1288 meters – including two gnarley mountain passes. I’m not going to lie – I have no intention of riding down these passes and will probably opt to put my bike in the car for the downhill – for some reason I have visions of myself as roadkill on the side of the highway if I attempt to go down these passes.

So here’s to an early morning, sore butts and no flat tires!

With good reason yes, I can come up with excuses all day – including my birthday, an unplanned trip to Toronto, a wedding in Salt Spring, a work trip to Kelowna, a non-work trip to Kelowna, a weekend at the cabin… the list goes on.

Rather than blabbing about all of those things I’ll just post a fun video I found on the intrawebs…

Check this house out – 20 rooms in 350 sq/ft:

Seriously though, I wish the walls in my house moved – it would be even more amazing if when you shut a wall it had built in vacuums that cleaned the ‘room’ up for you.

Right. So here is a quick overview of what I’ve been up to:

• Fell in love with France again
• Reffed my first Derby bout
• Had a birthday party for Brother
• Played kegball
• Ran a half marathon
• Was too lazy to run the Sun Run – so cheered instead
• Reffed my second derby bout
• Spent May long weekend up at the cabin
• Got back to riding Bob (the bike)

I did find out the hard way this weekend that no matter how good your cardio is, it doesn’t matter when you attempt to ride out to Horseshoe bay (61km round trip) and your legs haven’t been on a bike in a month…. oh those hills burned… and I swear, it was uphill BOTH ways.

Needless to say, my legs are sore and I’m back on the biking bandwagon with 2.5 weeks till the Mountain to Sound relay down in Seattle.

Huge stones covered the best plots of the vineyards, the vines were old and gnarly, and I could have stayed there forever. Sadly we had to leave.

Though we did end up visiting a 2000 year old Theater in Orange – which was pretty cool considering it’s the most well preserved theater in Europe as the majority of the outer walls are still intact.

Hmmm I will now continue dreaming about my love for Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

Lunch was amazing, more on that over at Two Girls, One Cork.

After lunch we continued our drive and ended up at the base of a hike leading up to the Fort de Buoux. So we dragged mum up the mountain to visit the 12th/13th century fort (well worth the hike for anyone who is out in this area) and Jay and I took the opportunity to lean over every clifftop in order to get the best picture (and to freak mum out – she had to close her eyes in fear that we were going to fall off).

After our hike we stopped off at Le Pont Julien, a 200 year old keystone bridge that had cars driving over it as recently as 2005. ‘Keystone’ meaning that there is no mortar holding the stones together – just keystones that take all the pressure from the arch, holding the bridge up. Crazy. I’m waiting for Cornholio to try building one of his buildings this way…

We finished off the day with a five course meal at one of the local St Remy restaurants – will post pictures on that other blog… but it was amazing… mmmmmmmm food.