Hello,

Would like to share with you how a few of us spent their Sunday...

Well, as announced we had our 4th ride today. Once again, I really enjoyed my day, thanks to Roberta, Nathalie, Kevin, Jani, Martin and Dovi who were able to make it today.

It all started with a coffee in Bains des Paquis at around 8.45. When we arrived with Roberta and Nathalie, Kevin and Jani were already having breakfast. Then, Martin and Dovi showed up. We chatted a little bit as usual to meet the first timers and introducing people that had never met before. So far, 15 out of 26 bikers on my list have participated in at least one ride. Hopefully, we will manage to go altogether for one ride before the end of the season, which is still loooooong... :o)

Today's idea was to make it shorter than the previous one (on my butt's request and also because bad weather was forecasted for the afternoon), so Jura was to be our playground again.

We agreed to ride up to St-Cergues, a biker's classic, then catching the Marchairuz pass (1449m, already done on the first ride) to end up in the valley of Joux. Stop for lunch by the lake of Joux then north to Vallorbe through the Mont d'Orzeires pass (1061m), down to Cossonay and head back to Geneva taking the "route du vignoble" through the vineyards.

Things started smoothly, riding in the countryside heading to St-Cergues. We passed through Collex, Bossy, then Chavannes des Bois, Cheserex and Gingins. Some of us had their right hand itching and needed to relieve themselves and also to free the horses under their butts on a few long straights. That sound of the V-twins overtaking you…mmmhh…brrrrrrooooaaaarrrrr…

As said, St-Cergues is a classic ride, but not only for bikers…we weren’t the only ones on that road today…
Martin and Dovi got loose and took off ahead…only to be stopped a few hundred meters ahead by cops…oooops…anyone saw the f***** radar??? Jani, Nath, Roberta, Kevin and I all passed through luckily.
I went back to Martin and Dovi and their new friends to enquire about the situation (another biker just had his license taken away and was putting his bike on a trailer…). When I arrived, Dovi was safe but Martin had followed the cops to their car probably to get at least fined or, in the worst case, become a pedestrian again for a while… One cop came to me, asked if I speak French and asked me to help them out with Martin.
It was actually a quite “funny” situation where Martin was spelling his address or whatever, with the help of his Danish license…seems that the cop was somehow losing patience filing his form…which actually played in Martin’s favor.
The cop then started a speech saying that well, 80 km/h…lot of complains…not a racetrack…and bla-bla-bla…then, said that we don’t need to be too happy about this or yell it around, but they would let him go for this time “because we were riding as a group”… We didn’t want to wait for them to change their minds and took off rapidly to join the rest of the group which was waiting for us in St-Cergues. My guess is that Martin’s Danish license and the language barrier saved his butt… Would that be the magic formula? I need a Chinese license asap!!! :o)
Anyway, we joked about it but this is a lesson to learn…St-Cergues is a lottery…

Martin and Jani pushed it all the way to La Cure with me, only to find that the duty-free shop closed…we then headed back to have a drink with the rest of the group.

Ride to the Marchairuz was great, nice road through the woods, long straights and large curves and very good road conditions. Some gravels on the way down to Joux valley but no big deal. Few pictures taken then.

We stopped in a restaurant by the lake of Joux near Le Lieu for lunch…nice place but unfortunately no more tables on the terrace. Anyway, we were all starving so this was secondary.

We were ready to hit the road again at around 2.30 with some big black clouds threatening. Nathalie decided to head back to Geneva ahead due to a painful wrist caused by a hard clutch.

We faced a little shower on the way to Vallorbe, but nothing bad…a few drops to wash off the bugs and flies… Then, we actually took the wrong road to Cossonay, ending up on a narrow and rather bumpy road through the woods, still nice though…
It became very windy between Cossonay and Aubonne but still dry. Aubonne-Nyon on the vineyards road with a nice view on the lake. Nyon-Geneva on the lake road where we had another shower when reaching Coppet. Stopped in the Agip station in Chambesy to say goodbye at 16.30, 1h30 behind schedule.

To summarize, once again: nice roads + nice sceneries + nice people + nice food + nice weather (almost) = great day!!! 7 hours and about 200 kms. One thing to highlight: international people with international bikes. We had a Triumph, an Aprilia, a BMW, a KTM, a Yamaha, a Suzuki and a Honda…Geja, we missed your Harley-Davidson… ;o)

Thanks again to all of you who made it and hope to see the other ones on a coming ride…in a couple weeks probably…

Cheers,
Pikachu

PS: those interested to join as riders or passengers, please do send me your email address for the mailing list...

PikachuJun 19, 2006 @ 04:36