The Alps, Tandem Style

The Alps, Tandem-Style (Or How NOT to Get from Annecy to Nice). Misadventure I in a Series.
By Jesse Czelusta and Paige Coulam
Photos by Paige Coulam and Innocent Bystanders










“What about this way?” I traced my finger across Michelin Map #721, along the twisted yellow and white back roads leading from Annecy, over the French Alps, into Italy.
“Definitely not,” said The Bear. “Three mountain passes. And the Col d’Iseran.”
The old tandem leaned against the shop wall. I had spent the past several days fixing this geriatric beauty of a bicycle—Reynolds steel tubing, 18 speeds, cow-horn bars for the stoker, well-preserved paint job, yellow Mavic stickers, the name “Bertetto” decaled in white capitals on the down tube. As near as I could figure, the frame had been custom built for a pair of serious cyclists sometime circa 1975, raced a few times, and retired shortly thereafter. “Bertetto” was about to embark on a different sort of journey, as evidenced by the dilapidated orange baby trailer cum luggage wagon attached to the rear axle.
“So you don’t think Bertetto can handle the Alps?” I jested. “Or are you referring to the engines?”
The Bear didn’t smile. “Better stick to the valleys.” Nicknamed as much for his size and stature as for the similitude of the sobriquet with his real name, Kevin DeBear is a former Olympic downhill skier who has crossed the entirety of France six times by bicycle (once in the dead of winter). He visits Annecy a few times a year for downhill mountain biking and to help his friend run a bike shop during the busy high season. I had only known Kevin for a day, but already I could tell he was not one to mince words. “Taking a tandem across the Alps is a recipe for a break-up.”
A few months ago, I had dreamt up the notion of bike camping across Europe with my girlfriend on a tandem. As adventurous and athletic as Paige is, I had been too embarrassed to make the sales pitch. A car-less PhD economist who wears glasses and quotes Huxley, I figured I was sufficiently nerdy without donning a helmet and mounting a bicycle built for two. After all, Paige had been living in SoCal long enough to absorb a bit of Hollywood’s shallow and moneyed aesthetic.
Or so I thought until four days ago and a phone call from Paige in Los Angeles to my cell phone in France:
“Don’t laugh at me,” she said. “But I have an idea.”
“I won’t laugh,” I replied, but prepared to squelch a chuckle. My girlfriend’s typical idea involves hitchhiking, light beer in a Camelback, an illegal jump from a pier, flaunting police orders by hopping a fence to take sunrise photos of Mayan ruins, green chile salsa, or all of the above. And those are just the pre-breakfast ideas.
“Do you think you can find a cheap tandem bike there in France?”
“Are you serious?” I asked.
“Why not?”
Off the top of my head, I could think of three major complications. Although Paige was an avid traveler with a strong pair of legs, she wasn’t a cyclist and had never been bike-camping, much less in mountainous foreign countries on a tandem. How was she to know that second-hand tandems were hard to come by (Complication 1)? That an Alpine climb on a tandem with improper gearing ranks somewhere between “water boarding” and “child birth” on the discomfort scale (Complication 2)? That it was impossible to get a tandem onto some trains in the (it-would-never-happen-to-us-of-course) event that you became ill and couldn’t pedal anymore (Complication 3)?
I neglected to raise these issues. “That would be the coolest thing we’ve ever done.”















COMPLICATION #1
The first shop I entered was Sevrier Sport, a location de velo just south of Annecy, the site of the final individual time trial in the 2009 Tour de France. It was morning, high season, and the shop was bustling with Dutch, German, and English tourists seeking to rent bicycles to ride around the lake. I waited my turn.
The shop owner approached. “Bonjour, Meisseur. Que est que cherche? (Good day. What is it that you are looking for?)” Brusque, business-like, somehow not unfriendly.
“Je cherche un velo d’occassion,” I said in my stilted French.
The shop owner recognized my accent and broke into English colored by a South African lilt. “Every bike you see is for sale…” He made a sweeping gesture with his arm, pointing to his army of touring bicycles.
“Do you have any tandems?”
“…except the tandems. We have a few, but only for rent.”
“Oh well.” I could feel the disappointment cross my face. “Can I check out the other bikes?”
“Sure. Just give me a moment to help my clients.” He moved past me to address the next person in the queue. “Bonjour Madame. Que est que cherche?”
I surveyed the collection of heavy, sluggish touring bikes that filled the small shop, spilling onto the sidewalk. They were all designed for flat, comfortable riding. I was starting to doubt my chances of finding any bike, much less a tandem, that could make it up a 30 km hueres categorie climb with grades of over ten percent. It seemed that there wasn’t any supply for our peculiar demand.
The shop owner returned a few minutes later. “What kind of bike are you looking for?”
“My girlfriend and I want to ride to Nice. We were hoping to find a tandem. But we’re open to other possibilities.”
“Let’s take a look. I sell most of my bikes at the end of the season. I don’t have a tandem…”
He paused and looked at me for a moment, the first time I had seen him stop moving since I had entered the shop.
“Do you know your way around a bike?” He asked.
“More or less,” I said. “I’m not a mechanic, but I do most of my own repairs.”
“Follow me.”
He led to me to the garage behind the shop and introduced me to “Bertetto:” Dysfunctional brakes. Questionable shifting. Sticky stem. Componentry incompatible with anything manufactured post-1990.
“It’s perfect,” I said. “How much do you want?”
He paused for the second time. “I’m Paul.” He offered a firm handshake. “To Nice you said? That’s about four-hundred clicks, depending on how you go…Tell you what. You get this bike working, and you and the bird can ride it to Nice. I won’t charge you a penny.”
Three days, one stem, one headset, one seat, two shift cables, three brake cables, two brake levers, one coke-can seatpost shim, one baby trailer, countless shop rags, and enough chain grease to lube a ’72 Ford Pinto--and we were off.

COMPLICATION #2
“Paige!” I implored/growled. “Keep pedaling!” I was struggling to keep the bike upright as we ground our way up one more 14 percent grade at 30 RPMs.
“Sorry,” she managed to gasp in Highaltitudese.
We stopped to rest 100 yards later at a flat spot in the road. Through the beads of sweat and rain, we turned to admire yet another postcard-worthy view. The Val d’Isere lay below us, the summit of the Col d’Iseran above. At over 2,700 meters, this intimidating Col is the second highest paved road in Europe (if you toss out the goat path in Basque country that some sly Spaniards have recently paved, presumably in order to piss off the La Bonnette/Iseran “plus haute” crowd in France). The second-highest in Europe, and we were going to climb it on what was very likely the world’s oldest racing tandem with a baby trailer. To be more precise, we were going to finish climbing it tomorrow, as it was getting dark and cold, and I could sense that my stoker was in need of rest.
“Over there, maybe?” I pointed to some grass near the edge of the road.
“I don’t know,” Paige said. “Can’t we get farther from the cars?”
We had been spoiled by two nights of beautiful mountaintop campsites and two more of cheap, quaint French hotels. The thought of pitching the tent amidst cow dung and engine noise wasn’t appealing. We pedaled onward, upward, into increasingly lush and scenic mountain pastures. The sun was setting over our shoulders, a damp pink glow spread across the icy streams that laced the valley.

“There!” she said, indicating a stream-side spot 100 feet below, hidden from the road. We pulled off, unloaded our gear, left Bertetto locked and slightly concealed on the side of the trail, and hiked down the rocky trail to the valley floor.
A beer-ad brook, picturesque pines, budding wild flowers, golf-course grass--we had again won the Alpine Bike-Camping Lottery. This, as we were learning, was not difficult in the laissez-faire Alps. Pick a spot, pitch your tent. The only interference you are likely to get is from marmots, who may possibly be the broadest demographic in these high European meadows and who, as we also learned, are fond of provisions carelessly left outside of tents. Although we lost a precious kilo of mountain cheese to a happy fat marmot, our furry nemeses had yet to evolve the palate or technology necessary to consume our constantly-replenished cargo of Belgian beer and Haute Savoie wine.
We set up camp and opened a bottle of the latter while the beer chilled in the stream. I spread across the tops of our panniers what was becoming a typical repast-- baguette, goat cheese, peppered artisan sausage, fruit “borrowed” from a local orchard, 49-euro-cent dark chocolate, everything bathed in olive oil and/or generic Nutella.
I offered a toast to my fellow pedaler: “To Iseran. And to your legs.”
“To Bertetto. And to Rosalend!” said Paige, referencing Le Cormet du Rosalend. Our first Category 1 climb, the almost-too-pretty-to-believe summit lay 80 kilometers, 3,000 meters of elevation change, and 2 days behind us.
“Yeah, that was something.”
But if Rosalend had been something, I knew that the next day would be something else—our first Beyond-Category Climb. These off-the-chart leg slayers are the same mountains that have been breaking riders’ spirits ever since the invention of asphalt. The same mountains that cause Lance Armstrong to drop the poker face, grit his teeth, and reveal his lactic-acid-filled soul. The same mountains that—literally—killed Tom Simpson, a much-loved British cyclist in the 1967 Tour de France. (His famous last words? “Put me back on the bloody bike!”)
And we were going to tackle one of these majestic beasts on a decrepit tandem with woefully inadequate 39-27 gearing.
“We’d better get some sleep,” I suggested as the long-lingering summer light faded into 10-PM darkness.
The next morning brought fair weather, in contrast to the previous day and a half of rain. We postponed our departure as long as we conscionably could, eating breakfast, drinking camp-stove coffee, stretching, dipping in the icy stream, taking scenic photographs, chatting with an older French-British couple (Their wisdom? “You two should move to France and fill that trailer with babies!”) When finally we could delay no longer, we headed back up the trail to meet Bertetto and the day’s fate.
My legs were feeling good as I clicked into the pedals. “How’s my stoker?” I asked cheerily.
“I’m OK,” said Paige. “Tired. My back hurts.”
Despite this less-than-optimistic assessment, Paige was pedaling well. We chugged along, our baby trailer reduced by two days of eating and drinking from its fully loaded, 80-lbs “triplets-size” to mere 60 lbs “twins” status. Though we tried not to glance skyward at the summit, some 1,000 meters above, fate has a way of commanding attention.
Describing the next 14 kilometers is difficult. The problem must be familiar to anyone who writes about cycling. As one American sports writer put it, “I don’t consider cycling a real sport. It’s just a bunch of skinny guys turning their legs in circles for hours on end.” True, but I challenge him to reexamine his opinion while riding the last half of the Col d’Iseran. For me, the phrases “epic ascent,” “steeped in cycling lore,” and “Holy *&^t! I can’t believe we are going to make it to the top!” kept returning to mind. For Paige, I am guessing the soundtrack was something more along the lines of “these mountains are gorgeous,” “I’ve had about enough of staring at his ass,” and “Holy F*^K! Are we ever going to make it to the top??!!”
We alternated sitting and standing, standing and sitting. Switchback after switchback, I eyed the road ahead for a place that was flat enough to simultaneously allow us a rest and a marmot’s chance of remounting Bertetto (tandem U-turns on narrow mountain roads lined by sheer cliffs are ill-advised)—but none came. My legs burned like Tabasco, and, for the first time on the trip, my arms were following suit as I fought to keep Bertetto vertical. I could hear Paige’s respiration accelerating, until my own effort became so pronounced that I slipped into that love-hate purgatory that endurance athletes will recognize as supra-lactate threshold exertion; AKA “Cardiovascular Hell.”
The spray-painted kilometers-to-go marks ticked by like molasses at 0 degrees Kelvin.
“Keep…it…up!” I wheezed clichéd encouragement to Paige. I knew that if she let off even an ounce, we would be hiking our way to the top, our cycling shoes tucked deep in our panniers along with our pride. “Al…most…there!”
Except that “almost there” doesn’t signify much in places where time moves backwards. Months afterwards (generally following an evening capped with one-too-many Belgian beers) I still awake in the middle of the night and swear that I am on that mountain, panting along, mired in high-altitude pain, 3 kilometers from the summit of Iseran…
Even timeless moments pass. We did not stop, we did not fall, and shortly thereafter we found ourselves at the top.
Touristy pictures in front of the large sign marking the summit. Browsing marmot-adorned postcards. Cool breezes and sunshine. The lactic acid flushing from our muscles. Paige sneaking over-priced candies from a roadside monopolist whose job it was to jovially and profitably gouge every passing car, motorcycle, and bike with irresistible gummy sweetness.
Somewhere between the marmot postcards and the borrowed candies, we were approached by a haggard-looking British cyclist. He had just ridden all the way from Paris. With luggage. Over the Alps. 1,200 kilometers. In six days. He looked Bertetto, Paige and I over. Then he paid us a 2,700 meter compliment:
“I thought I was crazy.”


COMPLICATION #3
“Ti fa male?” The nurse gave a gentle karate chop to Paige’s right kidney.
“Does this hurt?,” I translated, entirely for purposes of making myself feel useful rather than for any real contribution to medical communication.
“AAAAHHHHH!!!” Paige nearly jumped off the stretcher.
“Si,” I said to the nurse.
It was 6 AM and we were in the downtown emergency room in Saluzzo, Italy. Paige’s condition had been worsening for days. At first she thought it was the riding. So she pedaled more. Then she thought it might be the food. So she ate more. Then she assumed that she had caught some sort of bug at the airport. So she took some medication. Finally, at 4:30 AM on August 16, with her fever approaching Hueres Categorie levels, her pain having reached the point where she could no longer sleep, I put my foot down.
“I’m taking you to the hospital.” The fact that she didn’t object was evidence that I should have put my foot down sooner.
We had arrived a few days prior in Saluzzo, an unplanned stop dictated by Paige’s flagging condition. We had been pedaling across what was supposed to be the easy, flat portion of our journey, a steady tailwind accenting the heat. Using my watch and the regular kilometer markers posted alongside the road, I calculated our average speed at 34 kilometers per hour--a nice change from the snail’s pace that we had managed going over Mont Cenis/Moncenisio, the mountain pass that marked the French/Italian border and the end of our Alpine battles.
Our plan had been to reach Cuneo in time for the August 15 festivities. Feragosto (roughly translated, “August stop”) is a grand Italian holiday, for which virtually no Italian knows the reason (the ascension of Mary) but that literally every Italian celebrates by going on vacation (and closing up shop for days or weeks). We had been riding through Italian ghost towns for three days. Every outhouse, henhouse, and negozio was closed for “ferie” (“holiday”). I was anxious to reach Cuneo, a sizeable, historic city that I thought would improve our pizza-gelato odds substantially.
“Bertetto e’ grande nella pianura, no?” (“Isn’t Bertetto great on the flats?”) I remarked to Paige as we sailed along past fields of corn, grapes, pears, peaches, kiwis.
“I don’t feel well.”
I suppose one should expect a non-cyclist to complain of discomfort after completing three major Alpine climbs, riding in intense summer heat, sleeping every night in a tent, and living on 15 euros per day. But it wasn’t like Paige to be this miserable under any conditions.
“Can we stop for a bit?” she asked for the eleventh time that day. We had only been riding for 15 minutes since our last break.
Spotting another shady pear orchard, I steered Bertetto onto the shoulder and turned to examine my stoker. I didn’t like what I saw. Pale, bleary-eyed, sickly--if Paige had been a pear, I would have said that she was ready to be made into cider (which, at less than a euro for 1.5 L, must have contained its fair share of rotten fruit).
“Let’s find a cheap hotel in that town up the road.” I was hoping she would shrug off the suggestion. She did not. This turned out to be fortunate--an hour later we were checked into a cozy albergo in the precise center of a picturesque Italian city, enjoying our first bath since France.
“That was a good idea you had, getting sick,” I said as I sank below the warm surface of the water, which was turning grayish-brown with accumulated road grime.

We spent the next few days exploring Saluzzo’s cobblestoned streets, perusing the local market, eating at restaurants, and generally wallowing in deserved laziness. The only problem was that Paige wasn’t getting any better; in fact, she was getting worse. Our goal of riding Bertetto to Nice was slipping away as the date of our return flight approached.
Our pre-sunrise trip to the emergency room confirmed our fear: we would not reach the Italian-French Riviera by pedal power. After karate chops, blood tests, x-rays, an echogram, and several hours surrounded by elderly Italian men screaming, “Aaaaayyyyaaahhhhh!!! Aaaaaayyyyyaaaahhhhh!!!” (which seemed to be Italian for “THIS F*&^ING SUCKS!!!”), Paige’s diagnosis was official: infections in both kidneys.
“Can I ride a bike, doc?” was Paige’s question (Tom Simpson would have been proud).
“Lei puo andare en bici?” I translated needlessly. We both knew the answer:
“No.”
Which, roughly translated, means: “No.”
I sensed that Paige was as disappointed as I was. “That’s OK,” I said when we got back to our hotel. “We rode the tough part, that’s what counts. We’ll make it to Nice someday.”
“Aaaayyyyaahhhh!!!” said Paige.
Two days later, we arrived by train in Torino, from whence we planned to catch a connecting train across the Alps, back to Annecy. I approached the bigletteria.
“Due adulti e una bici per Annecy, grazie.” (“Two adults and one bike for Annecy.”)
The clerk eyed Bertetto and our baby trailer, which was now stuffed with olives, sundried tomatoes, Sangiovese, and sundry other items intended for importation. Together, bike and trailer measured over three meters in length and 100 lbs in weight.

“Non puo andare con la bici,” the clerk stated flatly. “You can note go weet dee baisickle.”
“What?” I said.
“You can note go weet dee baiseeckle. Too beeg.”
“What?” Paige said.
“NO BAISSEEECKLE!!”
“Then how are we supposed to get back to France?” I asked, the color in my voice matching the color in the clerk’s cheeks.
“Non e’ possible.”
“What do you mean it’s not possible?”
“NON E’ POSSIBLE!!” The clerk shouted, and waved the next customer past me to the counter.
“Aspetta, per favore, signore. La mia ragazza e’ amalata, e abbiamo bisogno di tornare en Francia per un vuolo.” (“Wait, please, sir. My girlfriend is sick and we need to get back to France for a flight.”)
“Allora lascia la bici.” (“So leave the bike then.”)
The thought of returning to Paul without his/our tandem was too much.
“Aaaayyyaaahhhh!!!”
We spent the next several hours practicing our Italian and discovering that most employees of the Italian train system are genetically engineered to be less helpful than brain-dead corpses on valium. The best they could do was to tell us to go all the way to the coast, some 600 kilometers out of our way, and even then couldn’t give us a guarantee that we’d be able to return to Annecy with Bertetto, much less in time for our flight. They had no clue regarding French train regulations, and the information offices of Italian train stations are protected from the Internet by an impenetrable force field.
We checked car rentals. $600. “Aaaaayyyaaahhhh!!!”
We checked flights. $800. “Aaaaayyyaaahhh!!!”
Finally, we waved the ultimate white flag of surrender. I made the call.
“Hi Mom…Yeah, we’re in Italy…Are you online? How can we get from Torino to Annecy with a tandem?“
A few minutes of Googling are worth more than all the train information offices in Italy. “Have you thought about going through Geneva?” she asked.
Thank God for Moms. And thank God for the eighth Italian train clerk with whom we spoke, who happened to be a cyclist.
“Si, puo prendere il treno per Geneve con la bici.” (“Yes, you can take the train to Geneva with the bike.”)
We bought three tickets—one for Paige, one for me, one for Bertetto. Exhausted, we checked into the first reasonable hotel we found.
The next morning we awoke early. A night of peaceful snoring seemed to have done Paige good. Cool mountain air bathed the quiet streets of Torino. As we began to walk Bertetto toward the train station and the final leg of our journey, I glanced over my shoulder.
I stopped. To be sure, I rubbed the sleep from my eyes.
“Hey, Paige, check that out.” I pointed to a sign that we hadn’t noticed the night before. It advertised the name and address of our hotel: Hotel Nizza, Via Saluzzo.
My stoker finished my thought. “Looks like we made it to Nice after all.”

Author Bios:
Jesse Czelusta is a recovering cyclist and would-be freelance writer from Bracken, Texas and Manhattan Beach, California. His fondest wish is to live on Huxley’s Island. He rode the entire route of the 2008 Tour de France, without a support vehicle, on the same days as the Tour itself, to honor the memory of Rick Shelton, a friend and fellow cyclist.


Paige Coulam is a physical therapy student and would-be freelance photographer from Aptos, California and Manhattan Beach, California. Her fondest wish is to replace the Bud Light in her Camelback with Saison Dupont. In addition to the University of Southern California, which already holds legal claim to her first two unborn children, she will be forever in debt to any reader who sponsors her with a digital SLR camera. She will repay such generosity with breathtaking photos and all the grade V joint mobilizations you can handle.



Annecy, France

Saviglauna, Italia

Roseland, France

Val D'Isere, France

en route to Saluzzo, Italia
- The Tandem Mis-Adventurers