PBP 1999 - The Best and Worst

by Pamela Blalock

Rather than a blow by blow recount of of fabulous ride on PBP in 1999, the following is our list of the best, worst and most interesting controls and other things we encountered on PBP (in my own humble opinion, of course). John and I spent a fair amount of time at the controls (about an hour each at most of them and 5-6 hours at the two where we slept).

We rode a tandem with a bar bag, trunk bag and two small panniers. We carried food, camera, control cards and wallets in the bag bag. The bar bag was decorated with the tassles that come in ice cream desserts all over France. (John carried the bar bag in every control as we checked in. They always guessed we were on tandem. Maybe it was having two photo numbers on the front, and not actually the silly tassles.) We had tools, spares, and maps in the trunk bag. We each had a pannier, with fresh shorts, rain and cold weather gear (jacket, jersey knee and leg warmers, gloves, overshoes - things I'd have missed if I really needed them). We did not use bag drops or hotels, choosing to eat and sleep at controls, taking what we got.

Since we took the 9:45 p.m. tandem start, we found ourselves in between crowds for the most part, This worked quite well for us. We never encountered long lines, and found all the staff at the controls very friendly and helpful.

Food

We ate at every control (except Mortagne on the way out - we did stop there on the way back). With one notable exception, cafeterias worked great for the less adept at French among us, as you could simply point to what you wanted to eat, and say, "je voudrais cette, s'il vous plait."

Best Coffee - Loudeac. This was the first place we finally got a grande cafe au lait in a soup bowl. Prior to that we kept getting little ones. After that we learned to say grande and hold our hands out wide! We were always rewarded with delicious and potent coffee, which woke me up when I needed it! NO American coffee has ever worked as well!

Best Soup - Tintineac. My best food memories from '91 were soup and sandwiches at Tintineac. I was using an all preprocessed chemical liquid diet that year, but had real food in Tintineac. The soup was just as good as I had remembered. And I was definitely happier with eating real food this time! Highly recommended.

Best Chicken - Fougeres. We arrived here the first time after riding all night. While others were ordering omelettes - as it was around breakfast time, I looked at the poulet, pointed and of course said "s'il vous plait." It was moist and delicious. The perfect breakfast.

Worst Chicken - Loudeac. Here the chicken was a bit dry, but the mashed potatoes were melt in your mouth delicious.

Most awkward cafeteria - Brest. You could get coffee and sandwiches in the main building, but I couldn't figure out where to get hot food. I later found out that you went to a table, said what you wanted (no looking and pointing), paid in advance and then headed up stairs and across a courtyard. It wasn't at all obvious to me, but I was a bit tired at that point. This was closely followed by St. Quentin en Yvelines - why was there no real food at the finish? There were some sandwiches, but you could only get sodas one cup at a time, and nothing hot. We did eventually discover you could buy bottles of Champagne - and we did! We did share it with Team Ireland (John is officially a member of the team. I got honorary membership, based on marriage) and a few other friends we made along the way.

Showers and loos

Best toilet seats - Villaine La Juhel (the only one with actual seats - maybe someone can explain why none of the others had seats!)

Most interesting toilets - Carhaix - holes in floor with foot prints to indicate where to place your feet - They did FLUSH, so they must be modern! We found most public toilets in rural France are this way, but we always refer to them as Carhaix style loos! These are also the best reason to use recessed cleat walkable cycling shoes!

Best Public Showers - Loudeac - There was a hose and a bucket, and folks stripped down and stood in the large bucket and got hosed down! I didn't actually TRY to take a shower here. This was right next to the toilets, so folks got to cross a vast stream of water to go to the loo!

Best "private" shower - Fougeres - it was marked "Femmes", and a control worker actually kicked the men out so I could have a shower in privacy. To be fair to these men, they had been apparently directed to this shower by another control worker, and actually tracked me down at the end of the ride to offer an apology, saying that French men aren't all rude. They had one of those wonderful motorcycle escorts translate. It was very sweet. There were also towels available at this control! I thought I had remembered being able to rent towels in '91, and had left my pack towel in Paris.

Worst showers where I tried - Brest had showers, but did not have towels. I can't comment on any others as we didn't try any where else.

Sleeping facilities

We slept in Brest and Fougeres. Between the two, Fougeres wins hands down. The sleeping building was separate from the control and cafeteria, so it was quiet. It was also split up into small rooms, with wakeup times. Brest had one large building with sleeping on one side, control in the middle and cold food, coffee, showers and toilets on the other. Even with earplugs, the noise was deafening. Despite having been up for a couple of days, I barely slept 2 hours. Hard to imagine having trouble sleeping at that stage. But it actually was enough. We also carried silk sleep sacks and space blankets with us. The space blankets were never unfolded, but we used the sleep sacks. They were a godsend between me and the itchy horsehair blankets at Brest.

Miscellaneous

Decorations - Many of the controls had great decorations with art from local school children. Villaines la Juhel and Mortagne au Perche had the best displays. Mortagne au Perche edges out Villaines la Juhel for the best thanks to the two bikes completed with stuffed operators on the stage pedaling non-stop throughout the event. I remembered these from 1987 and 1991 as well.

Best freebee - Villaines la Juhel gave out postcards complete with stamps, so you could post off news of your ride along the way!

Best approach wall to a control - Mortagne au Perche followed closely by Brest. Glad we brought the low gears! John and others have told me that the climb to the control in Brest was brutal, but I have somehow blocked it out!

Worst series of turns to navigate through to get to control - Fougeres, followed closely by Brest, which didn't have loads of turns, but didn't seem to have many well placed for seeing at night arrows.

Best spectators - Villaines la Juhel - who had crowds of cheering people all the time, although if you arrived when a local did, get out of the way quickly. A comment on crowds. It was great to have folks cheering us along the way. It's one of the things that makes PBP so special, but it sure would be nice if non-riders would give riders priority for toilets, food, FRESH air and stairrails. There was an awful lot of smoking, and lots of people sitting on the stairs next to the rails, that I desprately needed to hold on to walking up and down stairs as I tried to keep my legs from cramping.

Best arrows
What can I say here. The reflective heads sure were nice, but they were equilateral triangles, so until you made out the rest of the sign, you couldn't be sure which direction they indicated. Also speaking of those reflective arrowheads, I really began to worry as we left Loudeac, and many of the arrows were missing the reflective heads. I began to worry that the budget for arrows had been stretched thin! Fortunately arrows with heads began reappearing after a few miles. But speaking of a thin arrow budget, did it seem like arrows were rationed in some places, or was it just positioning. One thing we finally caught onto was that straight ahead arrows were often placed parallel to the road, which is pretty typical of french sign posting, but hard for cyclists to pick out at night, especially those stressed about getting lost and riding lots of extra kms. We noticed this most as we approached Brest in the wee hours of the morning. It did seem that arrows were put up by local clubs, and styles varied quite a bit throughout the course. My only suggestion to the ACP would be to recommend that arrows be placed FACING oncoming riders and their lights, and to be generous with them. My theory that they'd run out of arrows was dashed at the end where extra arrows were on sale. We bought two.

Best ride escorts - The motorcycles were great. Really great, and the one who brought us in for the last ten miles, especially after John took the wrong exit off the roundabout. The motorcycle came back for US! Maybe it was the tandem, maybe he saw the ear to ear grin I had on my face. All I can say is it erased any memory I had of this ride ever being tough, or hard or in anyway unpleasant. Every other 1200km I have done, I have finished saying never again. This time, I had already starting planning 2003!

Best cycling company
uhoh, here I may get myself in trouble, but I'll try not to. Roy and Susan, our tandem friends from Connecticut accompanied us the first day all the way to Loudeac, where they wisely chose to sleep. We have done many long rides with these guys over the last two years, and they are incredibly fun to ride with. They are also incredibly modest about their strength and speed. It is great to have another tandem to ride with. Tandems and singles can mix together, but often it's lots of work and awkward. It's always great to have another bike that rolls along in a similar style. This was the great thing about the tandem start. We got tandem companions. We also thoroughly enjoyed riding with Derek and Kim from Australia, albeit for too brief a period of time. Derek and Kim, got knocked off their tandem early in the ride, as another bike took a sudden turn directly in front of them, after arrows seemingly appeared at the last minute. We were riding alongside them at the time, chatting away merrily. Kim was taking great pride in explaining all the fertility symbols she'd painted all over the tandem. This must win as best decorated bike, BTW. Anyway, showing the Australian gutsiness, they completed the ride, although Kim's hand was swollen enormously, as well as her knee and Derek's hip took quite a battering too! Finally there were a couple of French guys who were just too strong for us leaving Fougeres on the way back. We also saw them a bit on the remainder of the ride, and lots of smiles and nods were exchanged. Enough so that they offered us Champagne at the awards ceremony on Friday!

Worst Tandem Company - an unknown single bike rider. Somewhere on the way to Loudeac, we hooked up with Mark and Julie, who also happened to be on a CoMotion tandem. Since Roy and Susan and John and I also were riding on CoMotions, we naturally felt an affinity and tried to ride together. Unfortunately this one single bike, kept latching on to whichever tandem took the lead, and THEN refused to pull through if they pulled off waiting for the next tandem to pull through, when he'd repeat this same behavior. Basically it meant the tandem that had just taken a pull could not get a good tandem draft as reward. We finally gave up in disgust and stopped for water. Actually we needed water and the kids were so great standing out by the side of the road for hours offering water and hoping someone would stop.

Best stuffed company - P.B. Bear. He was be closely drafted by the very chatty and raunchy joke telling Chris Avery. If only I could remember some of those jokes now. P.B. Bear was likely the only "participant" who actually wore his SR medal throughout the ride.

Best tandem appreciating single bikes - At some point on the way back from Brest, we passed a couple of singles on the down side of a roller. We played the back and forth game briefly, until they decided to enjoy the draft to Carhaix - where they bought us drinks! We saw them a bit throughout the return, and they rejoined us for the final leg, helping greatly with navigation as they were local, and also taking the best shot of us on the tandem, simply holding the camera out!

Best jerseys - The Germans. And I got one. I took three jerseys to trade. The Autralian Kangaroo was also pretty cool, but I couldn't find anyone willing to trade. Rumour had it, they might place another order, so we might yet get one. I also managed to get a Danish one, and one from a local French club. Let me just suggest if you wan't a Danish one in 2003, bring size 5 jerseys to trade. They aren't petite, although I did find one fellow who agreed to swap for a size 3 BMB jersey!

Best atmosphere - Everywhere. This event is like no others. The cars treated us with respect. The locals cheered for us, and offered us water and coffee when we desparately needed it, and when we didn't too. You just couldn't stop everywhere, and I felt guilty NOT stopping. The bloomin' bikes in villages throughout were so cool. Don't expect to see this anywhere but France!

Best section for riding - Loudeac to Tintineac, coming back. There were a billion little towns in between these two controls, each on top of a mountain, each with a church that you could see from the previous town, and knew you had to climb. We were prepared for this section to be brutal. It was the most tandem friendly section of the ride, with incredible rollers that we just powered up, getting faster and feeling stronger the more we did it. Poor Tim, the single biker who'd joined up with us, was amazed, especially as we claimed at the start that it wasn't tandem friendly!

Best welcoming committee - John Dalton. Our hotel was 10 miles from the start, and I wasn't looking forward to riding back. John Dalton is an Irish ex-patriot living in Belgium. He had driven out to translate for his Belgian friends at the RM meeting. He decided to meet us at the finish and graciously offered to give us a lift back. Thank goodness for S&S couplers! We were able to disconnect the front third, and fit the tandem into his tiny transit van in two peices.

Things we forgot and needed the most - Petzl headtorch and ibuprofen. Even after writing an article for Ultra Cycling on PBP lighting, and recommending this headtorch, we forgot to bring one. And having 4 at home, we held off buying a fifth. These things are crucial for finding arrows at night. We will never forget one again. I also can't believe I forgot to bring any sort of anti-inflammatory. Somewhat early on, I was starting to have some pain around my knees, and decided some ibuprofen would be nice. I asked at the Croix Rouge, and was told I'd need a doctor's prescription. I found my doctor, Roy, who didn't give me a prescription, but did give me 4 Alleve tablets, which got me through the remainder of the trip. I later found out that one can get ibuprofen tablets in pharmacies without a prescription, but they are kept in the back (not out on a shelf) and you have to ask.

Things we hauled around the course and didn't really need, but were happy to have anyway since conditions could have been very different - Wool jersey, rain jacket, overshoes, legwarmers, gloves and headband. We were actually having coffee in Brest when the rain hit, so we missed it. Otherwise conditions were pretty darn good, albeit a bit hot during the day. The sun is quite intense and there wasn't much shade, so it felt hot most days. The temps did drop at night, and my knee warmers and armwarmers saw lots of use.

Well that's enough reminiscing for now. Hopefully there were more bests than worsts.If you did the ride, I hope you enjoyed this little reminder and it brought back fond memories for you. For those who haven't done PBP, I simply can't recommend it enough. If lots of this article doesn't make sense to you then do the ride - it will become clear. There is nothing else out there like PBP. PBP is simply the BEST!

Click here to see the pictures.