Afro Headquarters

In a 6 day loop from the City of Grenoble through the french alps we conquered Col du Galibier and Col de la Croix du Fer, the two most challenging climbs on the Tour de France. In the process of climbing Galibier however i pushed my bike to the limit and ended up destroying the internal gear box. This was on a sunday but there just happened to be a bike place open that we had just passed on the road. I showed my bike to the owner of the store and he sayed he could not fix it, and when we took a closer look at the problem we pulled out a piece of metal that held the ball bearings in place and the piece of metal was completely warped out of shape. Luckily i was able to rent a bike from the place and continued up to the top of Galibier and the rest of the tour on the rented bike.

Back in Grenoble, we had a day to go out and find a new bike and then take a train to Italy. Many thanks to Grandma, Grandpa, Auntie Karen and Trevor for helping me out with the money to buy the bike. At the Decathalon i found a good bike with more than 7 gears and a regular derailer system instead of an internal gear system.

From Grenoble we endured 25 hours of trains and layovers on our way to Florence. We arrived at Florence Refredi at 16:00 and we were expecting Dustin to arrive at 17:30, well it turns out Dustin went to Florence SMN (5 minute train ride from the station we were at). After checking our email and finding out that Dustin was waiting for us at the hostel we told him to go to if he did not meet with us at the train station, we headed to the hostel to meet up with the one and only Dustin Thomas Dunsmuir.

The 6 of us are currently in the hill town of Saint Gimignano. Last night we went out for supper in the town, it was a cool little restaurant in one of the squares, and we ate outside and watched the tourists walk by. After supper we went for Gelato, and Grandma and Auntie Carol I know how much you love hard ice cream well i wish there was some way to package this gelato and send it to you because it was the best ice cream i have ever had.

Today we plan on biking to the town of Sienna, after spending our siesta swimming at the local community pool.

From Calvi to Bastia has been quite the experience. In the small town of île rousse we purchased front lights as we planned on riding through the upcoming desert at night. well just after midnight we had to stop because Jon could not go any further. so we ended up wild camping out in this desert. In the morning we woke up to one of the most spectacular views we have seen, would have missed it had we continued biking. Then biking up the western coast of the Cape of Corsica was breathtaking, so many awesome views and amazing beaches. Then we spent two days in Centuri, and got stung by jelly fish and sea urchines. Saturday we rode from Centuri to Marine de Sisco, the day started with an intense up hill then a nice gradual downhill then pretty much flat the rest of the way to Marine de Sisco. Today, sunday, we are catching a ferry from Bastia to mainland france. it will be a night ferry, so we will be lying on the deck watching the stars. Tomorrow we train to Grenoble, where we will start our ascent on the alps!