Realizing that we would be riding for long periods in the mountains, there were two major changes I thought we needed.  First, our trip to Boulder CO two years ago, and the hot-hot-hot rims we got on the descents there, convinced me to buy a drum brake.  Second, Amy has had trouble riding for more than an hour or so, due to RSI.  So I wanted to search for more ergonomic handlebars for her.

I also made a short list of things we might need in Europe that would be unobtainable there, like extra-long brake cables, and a spare rear hub.  The LBS convinced me that was overkill.  I had hoped to buy an iQue Palm GPS unit as well, but they are not yet available.

There were four parties the weekend before we left, including a big one we threw for Kepler's first birthday.  By Sunday night, it was time to pack the bike, and I was exhausted.  I took my time packing up, though.  I was worried about damage to the drum brake, so I figured maybe I should take it off.

Never do that unless you know your hub!  I failed to loosen the set screws on the brake side.  Thus, I ended up pulling the press-fit end cap off the drive side of the hub.  The forces involved did more damage than that, too, since when I put everything back together (with the help of my friend Anton), the hub would no longer freewheel.

Now I was worried.  I had a zillion things to wrap up at work, a problem with my rear hub, and 40 hours until our flight.  Amy agreed to bring the bike into the LBS while I was at work.  They took the hub apart, reassembled it, and said everything seemed fine.  No charge.  What a relief!

I managed to pack the bike in our soft-sided case in a way that seemed safe for the drum.   I usually pack the beam (and sometimes the captain's handlebars) in a separate duffel.  The rest of the bike fits pretty easily, with room for shoes, bottles, etc.  Usually, I put clothes in the side pockets.  This time, to save weight, I packed the empty spaces and the side pockets with styrofoam panels and those air-packs you get from Amazon and other online stores.  That worked nicely.  Borrowing an idea from the mailing list, I locked the zippers with zip ties in an unusual color of blue, so I would be able to tell if the security people had opened the case.  I was also careful not to pack any electronics in the case, to keep it as innocuous on the x-ray belt as possible.

The next day, we set out for our first ride, an easy 35k jaunt from St. Raphael to La Napoule.  I could tell something was stiff inside our rear hub, but the bike seemed rideable, so off we went.  The ride was not as pretty as we had hoped.  I had envisioned something dramatic like Highway 1 along the Pacific.  Instead, most of the coastline was built up, so we just had a road on rolling terrain with occasional glimpses of public coves.  After about 7k, the drum brake started dragging.  I thought that was very strange, and we got off to check it out.  I found that the skewers were wicked hot!  The heat had probably caused the drum to expand.  I decided right there we should ride the hub no more, and we locked up, caught a bus back to our car, and came to pick up the bike.

I took off the front section and we put the bike in the back of the station wagon.  Amy started calling bike stores while I drove us back to Nice.  I was rather disappointed with the quality of the bike shops there.  One place we went was willing enough to help, but was so slow to grasp the design of the DaVinci drive that I worried about their competence.  The other said on the phone they were willing to help, but reversed themselves as soon as I walked into the shop, without even taking a look.  Instead of a little help with sleuthing the problem, I got a lecture (in French) on how I shouldn't come to France with a bike having such an unusual part without bringing a spare.  I asked if there were tandem specialists anywhere in France, and they gave me the number of a place in Marseilles.  I called them, but apparently European tandem hubs are narrow than American ones.  I reckoned I was going to have to solve this myself, so I asked the store what I would need for disassembly, and they sold me one thing I didn't already have with me -- a Shimano Hyperglide lockring socket.

We drove to a quiet street, where it was finally late enough in the day that we could place a desparate call to Todd at DaVinci.  He talked me through disassembling the hub the right way, while I sat in the middle of the street following his directions (you can see I'm cradling the phone on my shoulder).  We could not sleuth the problem together, so (after some calls to Doug and Jeanette at White Industries), we arranged for a new hub to be sent from California.  This would take 4 days.  I had planned for some days off, but not so many in a row!

That night, we ate paella in the Marche aux Fleurs, and drove to our hotel, the Relais Cantemerle in Vence.  It is part of a chain that call themselves Relais du Silence, so we had fun shushing each other any time either of us talked.  This got funnier and funnier the longer we stayed there (and seemed also to be correlated with our wine consumption).

Friday, Amy went shopping at Galeries Lafayette in Nice, while I hung out on the boardwalk.  We ate at the Marche aux Fleurs one last time (pizza), and then headed back to Vence.

Tuesday was windy and cool.  It had rained the night before, and the Mistral had started.  We drove to Comps-sur-Artuby, and made a false start on the D955, where we saw a huge flock of sheep walking on the road.  Amy thought they were very cute, but we needed to turn around.

We headed back to ride the D71 into the teeth of the Mistral, stopping at Balcons De la Mescla.  The road goes along the south rim of the canyon, climbing then descending to the dizzyingly high bridge over the Artuby.