Pink slip solution

The 'pink slip' solution refers to the best way to solve a set problem, that is that there may be numerous ways to solve the given puzzle, but there is one recognised solution that gives the optimal result for minimum effort.

Planning

Some time in October 2012 we started talking about a trip to experience the 2013 edition of the Tour de France. Each October marks the release of the route for next year's tour, and the 2013 assembly looked like just the ticket - a full week in the Alps including a mountain top finish on Mount Ventoux, twice up the Alpe d'Huez, a mountain time trial and a handful of other big mountain days, and the first nighttime finish in Paris. Between myself and the kommandant we therefore elected ourselves as the local organising committee and started planting the seeds of the idea with anyone who felt like riding with us.

We have often discussed doing a trip like this - it is by far the most remarkable way to experience the Tour - and this one seemed ripe for our visit. This was to be the 100th edition of the Tour, Chris Froome (who trains locally in the off season, lives just down the road, and attended the same school as I did) was looking like a likely contender for the top spot, and the route seemed just right to allow for some great days out on the bike as well as getting to see a lot of the action up close.

The format is pretty simple. We find accommodation within striking distance of the route - anything within 50km is close enough, the roads in that part of the world are fast on a bike and easy to navigate, so a 150km round trip to our designated Col and back plus spending a few hours on the side of the road watching the riders come past is quite reasonable - and make an early start on the day of the relevant stage to be on top of our designated Col before the Gendarmerie gets around to closing the roads. Daylight continues until something after 9pm in France at this time of the year so once the peleton has passed there is usually quite enough time to get back on the bike and ride home again. The tour covers a lot of ground quite fast so the next day must then either involve packing up and heading for the next designated town, or perhaps a day off-route exploring some of the (numerous) notable climbs that didn't feature in this year's edition of the race.

The published route was reviewed in depth over multiple cups of coffee and more than a few artisanal beers until we had settled on what seemed a workable plan for a 10-day trip in France. We would fly out on a Friday, collect a couple of rental cars in Marseilles, and drive 150km north to Orange - where we could launch our assault on stage 15 climbing Mount Ventoux (on Bastille day no less), then continue in the cars up through the Alps to catch the individual time trial, the double ascent of Alpe d'Huez on stage 18, and the start of stage 19 to Le Grand Bornand (which took in 2 hors categorie climbs over the Glandon and Madeleine), ultimately dropping the cars off in Grenoble (about 500km from Marseilles) from where we could catch a TGV to Paris to see the finish and wrap up the trip.

Bookings

Our success in putting something together rested heavily on getting a group of 6 to 8 committed riders on board, and the biggest consideration here is always the perceived potential cost of an excursion. A commercial trip from South Africa can sell for as much as R60 000, and a lot of the people we were chatting to therefore had this high on their list of concerns. Thankfully it has become relatively simple to secure the relevant bookings with zero deposit so in December 2012 we were able to secure provisional hotel bookings across France as well as car hire and airline prices and get this out to the various interested parties. At this stage the sum total of these bookings was R18 000, of which R9 000 was the air ticket, so with this highly appealing price tag we sent out an email with a simple requirement: Buy an airline ticket if you're interested in joining us.  These prices rose quite steeply in the next few months - it turned out to be quite important to get the various elements secured early.

Our ultimatum brought in a group of 6 eager participants - Connor the Kommandant, Sugar, G-Spot, Mark, Pierre and myself - and we set to work refining our itinerary now with this group in mind. This meant changing the initial bookings from a hotel just outside of Grenoble to a ski chalet in Oz en Orsains (only available in 1-week blocks, but then again I can think of few nicer places to spend a week with a bike), from where we would be able to access the Alpe d'Huez by cable car, and releasing our accommodation in the region of the time trial at the same time.

Our cost breakdown per person was then as follows:

Flights (JHB-Marseilles; Paris-JHB on Air France): R8 000
Extra luggage (for bike): R1 400
2 nights Mornas, dbb sharing (for Ventoux): R2 000
5 nights Oz, 10-bed chalet between 6, self catering (for Alpe d Huez): R2 000
2 nights Paris, sharing, bed only: R3 000
Car hire (1 large van, 1 station wagon for a week between 6 people): R1 800
TGV:R550

All of which adds to a very reasonable R 19 000

At this point we were getting into March and the specifics of the daily routes were slowly becoming clearer. The official website of the tour now showed the major towns that the tour would pass through on their route profiles, and www.climbbybike.com helped our planning by releasing the specifics of the routes that the Tour was using to get up the various Cols (which meant juggling some of our route choices to fit in) Most of the big Cols have 2 or 3 options available for the ascent, so it was quite important to know which side you would be ascending along the race route. It is relatively straightforward to work out what route the tour is following through the mountains once you know the climbs they are using and the towns that they will pass through along the way.

We received an unexpected bonus at this stage as the tour organisers announced La Randonnee de Tour on their website - a fun ride around the final circuit on the Champs Elysees perfectly timed to fill the afternoon in Paris before the arrival of the Tour, and a chance for us to venture out onto this hallowed ground immediately preceding the arrival of the peleton. Google translate communicated that this was a 7.5km 'walking tour' of the Champs, but we figured we would be able to get our bikes out on the road, and who was going to be able to walk the 7.5km circuit in the allotted hour anyway. At R50 a head the risk of disappointment seemed pretty low too.

Finally with a few weeks to go in June the organisers release the time schedules for each day's stage. For planning purposes the roads are closed to all traffic about an hour before the arrival of the promotional caravan, and we were able to confirm that we would just be able to complete our various route segments before the gendarmes sealed the roads. The critical points in our schedule were the closure of the road at the summit of each col - the caravan ascending the col much faster than we would be able to, and therefore it was important that we were starting each climb in good time to be able to top out before we were taken off the route. There is an accurate time plan for this caravan on the tour's website to figure out when this is scheduled to occur, and the timings applied on the day were within 10 minutes of our predetermined road closures.