This past July, Bill Strickland, the Executive Editor of Bicycling Magazine, and his wife Beth joined us in the French Pyrenees for the 13th edition of L'Etape du Tour. For 2005, Stage 16 was the selected leg for the Etape du Tour and it covered 112 miles from Mourenx to Pau. Along the way, each cyclist would go over 4 Pyrenean climbs (most notably the Category 1 Col de Marie Blanque and the hors categorie Col d'Aubisque). Below are some selected quotes from his article which appeared in the October 2005 issue of Bicycling Magazine.

"It's the maddeningly best-kept secret in cycling. You and I - with our absolutely average VO2 maxes and recreational-rider-watt-per-pound power ratios - can race the Tour de France. Just one stage, but that's like an astronaut lamenting that he has walked on the moon only a single time...It kicked my ass - and I loved it!"

"I entered L'Etape courtesy of Velo Echappe', a luxury bike-touring company that did everything for me but pedal the bike. Lodging for my eight day, $3,795.00 trip was exquisite ( a rarity in Europe), support was impeccable, and the riding group was strong."

"After the final mile of 12-to-13 percent grades up the Marie-Blanque, the 5-percent approach to the Aubisque felt easy. But the 10-mile climb keeps turning the screws, kicking up 9-to11 percent for miles at a time. The left side of the closed road was the passing lane; the despairing right was for the walkers and the collapsed; loose sheep, goats, cows, and horses took whatever line they wanted. Animals, all of us."

"Hors Categorie. Getting beyond categorization is just what I'm after. I've come here for the revelatory vision quest, the electric-sports-drink acid test, the anaerobic crowbar that will pop open the doors of perception to the pro world. I want to know what it feels like."

"We're obliterating the fields in front of us, passing bobble-head husks of humans who propel themselves up even this easy slant with their gasps rather than their legs. And then the Aubisque gets serious. The last 7 miles kicks you in the face. Short stretches fling up somewhere around 15 or 16 percent, there are long kilometers of 10 and 11 percent, turn after turn around the mountain, the summit always out of sight. The people here are saying something new: Courage. No exclamation point. Pronounced Cohr-ahge, its lilting, romantic sing-song carrying as much import as it's meaning.

This is the Tour! Time slows. People walk, lie down. The road surface tops 100 degrees. My body becomes nothing but an oven baking up a nice batch of brains. Cour-ahge is all there is, because there's no nobility, no heroism, no more dream. I'm going 9 miles an hour, 34 X 27, and I am nothing but a guy who rides his bike at lunch and maybe 50 miles on weekends. I start to feel cold. My legs quiver. I plod up, half the speed of the pros."

"I roll over the summit without celebration. I'm shivering. Beth and I plunge without thought 5 miles to the base of the Soulor. This mile-longish climb tacked like an after thought onto the end of the Aubisque is the most crowded of all the mountains. People pack the road four deep, and as we thread up through failing riders, the fans close in on the tiny lane, just like all those scenes on television. Beth is on my wheel and the crowd folds into and over us and we're in that mythical, magical tunnel of sound and backslaps and it's filled with a roar - an actual, deafening roar - for my wife: Femme! Allez Femme! Bon something something Femme!

It's as if I'm making pace for French national hero, six-time polka dot jersey winner Richard Virenque. It's every Tour dream you've ever had, every time you've been out alone on a climb and imagined plowing through a sea of noise and humanity, and when I roll over the top of the Soulor with Beth, I'm in love."