Le Tour De Panneur

If you've been waiting for the other shoe to drop, i.e., for the post on the Tour Dep, sorry for the delay. I've been pretty busy with work, family, riding and sleeping. A gaggle of us were down in Vermont shredding the Kingdom trails over the long weekend, which I"m still recovering from now. I hope to find time to report on that soon. Stellar riding, and lots of it.

So, as promised, here are the pictures and the map from our Tour De Panneur a couple weekends ago. Great route.

7:30am start at Island Park. Steel bikes in full effect.

Great old abandoned farmhouse on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River as we headed West. Could make a great Tall Tree club house.

This doubletrack heads North toward the escarpment, behind a drag race track. The races were on, but few people seemed to be around.

The group, minus moi, some more posey than others.

Atop the Eardley-Masham climb, at the furthest entry point into the Gatineau Park. This climb always feels awful. Back on a spring ride, a truck tried to get up but couldn't due to the amount of gravel atop the pavement. It used to be dirt. Its still hard.

More tall trees, and us. Rodd'll have to say where this is, cause I can't situate it.

Same stretch, almost a line. Pascal, Todd, Martin, Steve and Matt.

Dep stop #1.

Dep stop #2, probably. Todd's fantabulous Kirk.

Dep #3? This one is in Low, no question. We did, however, have questionable food here.

Like this. Can you guess? Yep, Rodd.

And this. Hmmmmm....

This combo was pretty good. Orange juice and Perrier make for a nice sports drink combo. Ooooohh, Perrier.

A jar of pickles combined well with the Amy's bean and rice burrito I pulled out of my pocket. I think I ate 4-5 pickles out of the jar, and the others ate the rest. Sodium-tastic. This was actually overkill, as it wasn't really that hot out. Apparently, drinking pickle juice is great for warding off cramps. I like them, so they make a perfect companion to sweaty riding.

I'd have preferred to post the map here, but all I can pull off is the link. Perhaps Rodd will plug the map in here. The map was created from Todd's GPS trace, but the battery died at Wakefield, so the rest isn't there. We took River Rd and the 105 back, as usual, which adds 40k.

All told, this route didn't actually have much climbing. The other side of the Gatineau River is where most of the climbing is to be found, as there just are not that many roads over the escarpment. By not many, I mean there are three that actually connect to other roads: Notch, the Parkway, and Eardley -Masham.

BTW, the Quintuple Pave Classic is still on for August 29th. Due to many of us being on vacation during the lead-up, including myself, we'll do a low key event compared to the Ride of the Damned. The route will be just as good, but it'll be more bare bones: assemble, ride, BBQ at the shop. 5-person teams is still the format. It'll be fun. It would be great to hear whether folks would like a more challenging route, or whether something similar to the Ride of the Damned would be just right.