….and that’s it. Another HUMM (semi)succesfully over.Now it’s back to France and continue helping Dave getting his house ready.

This year, I have managed not to damage myself in any comedy-style, whatsoever, which is quite a feat, I’ll tell you. Year one, saw me with a damaged knee and 2nd degree sunburn (massive blisters, the size of my lower-leg). Year two, I only had a sprained big toe, but that’s quite painful when you need to shift gears. Apart from that, we had some &^%$ in our team, who insisted on limiting my fun in any way he could think of. Luckily this person was not there this year.

Left Llavorsi at about 13.00, if I recall correctly. Took a little detour through Andorra to take in the sights (I positively, absolutely didn’t go there to get cigarettes or booze, honest). I was planning on walking through Andorra La Vella, after I found a place to park. Having quite a large truck with a bike on the back, meant parking garages were out. Andorra La Vella being a very compact town (especially the city-centre), meant all outside parking was occupied. I decided to drive on and parked the truck about 20 miles from Andorra La Vella and not got some ciggies and booze.

The trick of not getting stopped by customs, I learned, was to follow the articulated-trucks and not stop at the customs-post. Worked well, going in and out of the country. Ooops

Anyway, only one picture of the drive back.

HUMM Day 2

Finally, off to Spain. Initially I was going to take my own car, attach a trailer with bike on. Dave, graciously, donated his BGT (Big Gay Truck), bike (DRZ400S) and assorted bike-clothes and protection) to the cause. Made my life a hell of a lot easier. I’m not sure if I would have taken a hairpins just as easy with the trailer as I did with the truck. Was quite fun to drive through the mountains with it. Dave had already warned me about the fact that the truck might oversteer a bit (lot’s of weight in the front, less so in the back).

The drive was going to take about 4 hours according to my GPS. When I arrived at the Spanish border, I only had to do about 100 km. It said it was going to take me about an hour and a half. Yeah right I thought. Well….. yeah right. Slow traffic, numerous hairpins does add time to one’s travel.

Below are the pictures of the drive and some pictures of the hotel by night…

HUMM stands for Horizons Unlimited Mountain Madness and I can tell you, there are mountains and going up and down them is, indeed, madness. But we are going to do it anyway. All I can do is hope not to repeat what I did last year. That was when I fell off a bike, hurt my knee quite badly and decided, being a good ole country boy, not to use sunscreen, since sunscreen is for sissies. Boy, was I wrong. I had blisters the size of half my lower leg, even the doctor was taken aback.

Anyway, this year, I decided to pre-disaster myself and sprain my big toe. Hopefully the pain will have subsided this coming Tuesday, when we will set off for the first leg of our 2,5 day adventure. I will try and update my blog as and when I get the opportunity.

We could do with a bit of money for our chosen charity:

Team Furieux Charity

Just to be clear: none of the funds received will be used by us. All money will go directly to Riders for Health.

I shall post pictures on my return, so for now, you have to make do with the menu we will devour, I’m sure:

Friday:
Assortment of horses’ doovers and charcuterie
Chicken with Champagne (well, we are in the Champagne region) with Gratin Dauphinois (baked spud slices with garlic & cheese)
Cheese
Fruit tart

Saturday:
Chef’s pâté en croute
Roast duck with green veg and pommes boulangeres (small round potato balls, IIRC)
Cheese
Genoise aux Fruits (a sort of exotic cake oozing fruit)

Below a (short) video impression of today.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1Ho57KY5ZA

Video shot by someone else attending (I’m at 33 sec):

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOB0mQ966yA

All in all a nice day with proper bikes and a good temperature (23 degrees c)

We appeared in the weather program of RTL4 nieuws (national broadcaster)

Full episode: here

I will add some (more) pictures later