Project Pyrénées

A postcard, before the postcards.

In a few weeks Eva and I are loading the bikes, throwing the tent in on top, and pointing everything north until the road runs out of flat.

Destination: the Hautes-Pyrénées. The plan, as far as we have one, is to have very little plan at all.

We’re calling it Project Pyrenees. Part training camp, part disappearing act.

The addresses, if you want to picture us. The Col du Tourmalet, with its giant at the summit and its weather that changes its mind by the hour. Hautacam, which goes up, and then keeps going up. Luz Ardiden, all switchbacks and silence. If you know your Julys, you know these roads. We’re going to ride them slowly, on purpose, in nobody’s race but our own.

The camping is the point as much as the climbing. We’ll be sleeping high, which I’m choosing to file under marginal gains and Eva is choosing to file under “why is it so cold.” We’ll wash in the gaves, the rivers running down off the snow, the kind of cold that settles every argument about whether you’re properly awake. We’ll cook simply, sleep early, and let the phone signal do whatever it likes.

That’s really the whole idea. Strip it back. No numbers to chase, no inbox, no plan beyond coffee, ride, river, repeat. A full reset, surrounded by mountains that were here long before any of us clipped in and will be here long after.

We’re going to document most of it as it happens. The rides, the camp, the good mornings and the ones where the tent leaks. Less a polished travelogue, more a run of dispatches from somewhere with a better view than my desk.

So this is the first postcard. Consider yourself warned, and come with us.

Project Pyrenees starts soon.

see you on the road

Julian & Eva