Tri en France: Rocco's first Ride

Today Rocco and I set out for our first adventure. I debated taking a camera and then decided not to because I didn't really intend to stop.

I had done some googling and I figured that the best thing to do was ride along the Loire. So the first thing I set out to do was find the Loire. CHECK. Then I was getting confused about whether I was supposed to ride east or west, but I knew the Loire was south of my house and the Atlantic was west so I went east. I think.

First I found this awesome deserted road. I mean, it was neither completely deserted nor totally awesome. It was a little chopped up and had some sand on it that made me nervous about handling, but if anything went wrong it was unlikely that I'd hit a car because there were about 5 for... 5 miles. Some parts were very cool because I rode through some forest and later under some tiny little bridges. Eeek.

But as most good things do, it came to an end and I was back on a busy road riding through some random city. There are lots of signs that have bikes with slashes through them which to me means I can't ride there.... but then there are bike lanes on the other side of them...? I don't really know, but I generally stick to the bike lanes and ignore the signs because they confuse me and it doesn't seem like anyone ELSE pays attention to them.

After that I decided to follow some signs towards Angers. Then I ended up on a highway.... which is apparently allowed in this country? Cycling on highways... uhh ok. Nonetheless, it freaked me out so I got off after a few minutes and found a round about where I could turn around and follow signs back to Nantes. (This is about 40 minutes out.)

So I'm back on a very busy street (though not a highway) following signs back to Nantes, and apparently my nice convoluted route out could be literally cut in half, because I was home in 20 minutes. Soon enough, I began to realize that was completely necessary because as soon as I got off the bike my abs were throbbing in pain. It was one of the worst little "episodes" of ab pain I've gone through, but as we know I get those. I'm starting to just get used to them at this point and I really think they're just from fatigue.