First ride in France: Col de la Faucille

After getting my bike together this morning, I set out for my first bike ride in France. Never mind that it was about 50F degrees, raining, and the new stem I bought back home to fix my positioning on my bike didn't fit (not to mention that I was not 100% sure where exactly I was heading). So I set out for "those mountains" in the distance - the Col de la Faucille. (Since facile means "easy" in French I was curious what lay in store. Turns out it was a cat 2 climb of medium difficulty featured in the 2004 Tour de France). As I approached the Col, the rain persisted, and I began to see my breath. I approached the village of Gex, made my may through endless roundabouts, and began the climb. (Thankfully there is a ski area at the top, and the roads are fairly well marked). About a quarter of the way up (about 1 or 2 km beyond the bottom picture), just as I breathed a huge gasp of "catch my breath / boy this should be fun" air, a French guy pulled up on my left; he was crazy, there were tons of cars (semis too) zooming up this road with no shoulders, and he casually rode right in the middle of our lane (this route made Chicago traffic look calm). We chatted for a few minutes and then he proceeded to sprint off. Humbling to say the least. To my credit, I had only ridden twice in the past two weeks, and ran last night, but he was faster than me at any rate. The first picture is about halfway up the climb looking down to Geneva (notice the fountain in the middle of the picture at the right edge of le lac - click to zoom). About two thirds of my way up, the same French guy passed me on the way down. We waved cordially. Feeling thoroughly slow at this point, I kept climbing. After I stopped to take the picture above, I felt a little rested, and decided to stomp the pedals a bit, big mistake, now I was wishing I hadn't run last night, and that I had more clothes. I was fading, thinking to myself: how on Earth am I going to make it here as a cyclist? After making it to the top, I gave a moments thought to riding down the back side and then back up. After about 2km down the back side, I realized just how cold it was (about 40F at the top) and decided to just head home. Heading back down was semi-treacherous as the roads were still wet from the rain the entire ride up. Plus every driver on the road (of which there were way too many) seemed to think they were in the Monaco Grand Prix. (As I was going down at 40mph, a driver coming up hill passed another driver less than 50' in front of me.) I contemplated stopping to warm up on the way down since I was shivering and could barely control my bike, but I could feel the air getting slightly warmer as I approached the base, so kept going (now I know why the riders in the Tour stuff newspapers down their jerseys). I think this ride is just what I needed as I am actually tired at 10 p.m. for the first time since I arrived, and hungry enough to eat a full meal. Hope to ride the Col du Columbiere (behind the mountains across the lake in the top picture) on Saturday before the Tour rolls through. Au revoir.