No riding today, but a 30-hour day filled with travelling. We left Orly Airport this morning at 07:00. After dumping our luggage at the gate, bringing the cars to their parking spot for the coming two weeks, and taking the shuttle back to that same terminal, we arrived at the luggage drop-off 3.5 hours before take-off.

All the European teams had their flights organised by the race organisation. They had dedicated one special check-in counter just for the cycling teams. Just one. We were relatively early and immediately noticed things were going way too slowly. Weighing, checking in and labelling each bike bag took at least ten minutes per bike. Do that a x100 bikes and you quickly realize that nobody is making their flight in three and a half hours.

Not much later they opened a second counter. Around the same time, the weight of the bike bags also suddenly became a lot less important. While the first riders were vigorously repacking their luggage to get below the 23 kg limit, later arrivals, including us, received a much more flexible treatment.

My bike bags are always too heavy. The limit is usually 23 kg, which really isn’t a lot. I’ve actually turned avoiding overweight baggage fees into a sport. My preferred strategy is: 1) Put a foot under the bag while it’s on the scale. If that's no option: 2) “But the bike weight limit wasn’t very clear on the website”. If that doesn't work: 3) “Look, I’m just a skinny cyclist. A few kilos shouldn’t matter.”
4) Combine all of the above with your most innocent smile. I’d say it works about 80% of the time.

Today none of it was needed. The stress at check-in made weight almost irrelevant. My first bag passed at 27.4 kg and the second at 14 kg. I could clearly see the second one had been placed on the scale incorrectly, but the guy behind the counter looked at it and said, completely surprised:
“That’s light. Is it carbon?”
“Yes,” I replied. “It’s my climbing bike. Very lightweight.”

In reality, that bag contained my TT bike, spare wheels, tools and about fifty bidons that didn’t fit in the team luggage. Anyway… we made it through.

After nine hours on the plane, including 6.5hrs of House of the Dragon, only mildly interrupted by the crying baby in the seat next to me, we landed in Guadeloupe. The next challenge immediately started: unloading, repacking and loading all the bikes into the organisation truck to get everything to the hotel.

Once we arrived, there was one final task for the day: rebuilding both bikes and praying nothing had happened during transport. Fortunately, everything seems to have survived the journey. After a minor fight with the Pinarello headset spacers, both bikes are back together, shifting nicely and ready to race.
The hotel doesn’t really feel like a race hotel. With the pool, palm trees and its own little jet ski bay, it feels more like a holiday. Bikeation, baby.

Good night. One more hour to stay awake until 22:00, then I’m officially allowing myself to go to bed and hopefully beat the jetlag on day one. Tomorrow we go for a coffee ride and Friday it is time for stage 1.