Tickets reserved...

Well, I managed to get two tickets to Paris for a grand total of 175,000 frequent flyer miles.  We will be flying on US Airways through Philadelphia.  In addition, Nathan will be coming from Eugene to Phoenix the night before and we will fly out together from Phoenix the next morning.

The only downside is that to get tickets for this number of miles we actually had to leave even a day earlier.  Therefore, we are leaving Phoenix on Thursday, July 12th and come back on Tuesday, July 24th.  This is going to mean that we are in France for 3 days longer than the original plan.  I know there are worse things than spending extra time as a tourist in Europe, but that does mean additional room nights, additional food, additional rental car days, additional tourist expenses, etc.

The tickets are actually not purchased yet, but are just on hold.  My plan is to call everyday over the next few days to see if I can push the whole outbound trip back one day.  If they will do that with no change in points required, I'll do it.  Otherwise, we'll just suffer and spend an extra day in France.

This is a big milestone for our trip.  For a while I thought we would not be able to pull it off because of the difficulty finding tickets for points, so now that we have these tickets in hand we are definitely going.

Potential good news regarding tickets to France

By being a bit more flexible on my dates, I can get the number of miles per ticket down to something more reasonable.  Originally, two US Air tickets were going to cost 240,000 miles.  However, if we fly out a few days earlier, we can save over 30,000 miles per ticket.  Therefore, it looks like we are going to spend a few more days in France, but there's worse things than that, right?!

Hopefully, tonight is the night that I will be able to make the arrangements.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Finding flights...

Planning the flights for this trip is absolutely brutal. I'm trying to use points for the flights because tickets are $1500, but I don't have enough points in any of my accounts for 2 tickets. On top of that, we need to get down to the south of France which is over 500 miles from Paris, but most of the airlines don't fly into Toulouse which is much closer.

Long story short, I need the following:

• One ticket from PHX to somewhere in France that can be bought with points, and
• One ticket from EUG to the same place in France that can be bought with points, and
• Both flights must arrive around the same time, and
• The arrival time must give us enough time to drive to the Pyrenees.

My head hurts just thinking about it...

Tickets to France

Hey, thanks Olympics for making tickets to Europe really difficult get get around Tour time.  It looks like tickets are running around $1100+ and US Air (my primary airline) is charging 120,000 points per round trip ticket to get close to the travel dates I need.

After reviewing options, we might actually fly into Madrid then home from Paris as Madrid is a little easier to get to and actually closer to Bagneres-de-Luchon than Paris.

We might also just go ahead and rent a car while we're there.  That would surely make getting around a lot easier and extend our range of sightseeing options a lot.

Proposed itinerary

Here is the proposed itinerary for our trip to France.  We've got to make our flight arrangements soon since we plan to use points, so I am trying to nail this down with Nathan.

1. Leave for France on Sunday, July 15.
2. Arrive in Paris or Toulouse on Monday the 16th (Toulouse is much closer, but we may not be able to get there depending on the airline, etc.).
3. Spend th 16th getting ourselves down to Bagneres-de-Luchon to our apartment.
4. Spend the 17th in the Pyrenees checking things out. This is a rest day for the peleton and a jet lag recovery day for us.
5. See the arrival in Luchon on the 18th. This would be a full day of tour goodness.
6. See the departure from Luchon on the 19th, then after the hubbub in the morning dies down, make our way to Paris.
7. Spend the day of the 20th in Paris doing tourist stuff.  I would also like to eat a brioche on the left bank while smoking and staring off into the middle distance if we can work it in.  It just seems like the thing to do.
8. Spend the day of the 21st in Paris doing tourist stuff, or optionally travel down to Chartres where the individual time trial will be happening.
9. Spend the 22nd at the final stage in Paris.
10. Spend the 23rd in Paris or northern France doing tourist stuff.
11. Fly home on the 24th.

Training setback

Training was going along very well until Saturday when I came down with some kind of bug.  Since I had ridden 3 times already that week, I told myself I'd just recuperate on Saturday and go for my long ride on Sunday.  Well, Sunday came around and I felt even worse than Saturday, so there was no riding that day either.
Long story short, I got in no long ride last week.  I don't think this is going to kill my training plan, but still, I hate to suffer setbacks.  I'll be back on the bike tomorrow night, but Wednesday is a travel day, Thursday night looks like I've got a client event (going to a hockey game it sounds like!), and Friday will be another travel day.  It looks like the best I'm going to be able to do is 3 rides this week, but I should have a good chunk of time for a 4-5 hour ride on Saturday.

First 100 mile week in a while

Last week I had the first of what will be many 100 mile+ weeks.  I rode 5 times, including a 44 mile long ride on Friday.  This was pretty impressive considering I was travelling every day last week except Sunday and Friday.

This week I'm scheduled for a 4.5 mile long ride, so the ride lengths are starting to get up there...