Before entering the Pyrenees we collected our extra gear and sent our third and final package to Susana’s parents, lightening our load that much more. But it was largely a symbolic gesture, like throwing a deck chair off the Titanic, since our bikes are still tanks.

The Pyrenees are great, much like the Cascades at home, but with granite rather than volcanic rock, so the mountains are much steeper. And even though many of the peaks are at 2000 meters insteead of 3000+ like in the Alps, they’re every bit as steep.

With all the writing on the road cheering on cyclists from this Tour de France as well as years past (Ulrich, Voight, Vino, Beloki, Basso, and “Armstrong on the Moon”), it occurred to me just how great it was to ride these roads. You can’t shoot hoops at Madison Square Garden or play catch at Fenway Park, but you can ride the same roads that you see the professionals riding on TV, with all the painted cheers, too.

And speaking of the pavement, I was face to face with it early on the climb to Portet de Lers. I was waiting for Susana, enjoying the scenery and hardly moving at all, when a barricade caught my handlebars and knocked me over. Fortunately it was an empty road and nothing came of it and we went on, just a stupid mistake that could have been worse.

While Susana gets nervous the day before big climbs, I remind her that the pros do too. In Hell on Wheels, a documentary that followed Team Telekom in the 2003 Tour de France, each night Erik Zabel, a veteran sprinter, would confess to the camera how nervous he was about finishing the climbs in the allowed time.

But Susana had no problem today, as we crushed our record and climbed 2155 meters (7070’) over three Cols that took us into Spain for 18 km before returning to France atop the Col du Portillion, which was also part of this year’s Tour. We celebrated by purchasing the most expensive wine in the grocery store (Ok, it was €7.50, and a small store).

On the Col de Menté, we rode by the memorial for Fabio Casartelli, the Italian Olympic cycling champion who crashed and plunged to his death near that spot in the 1995 Tour. He was a teammate of Lance Armstrong at the time and years later Lance won the stage and dedicated the victory to Fabio. I’m usually not one for memorials, but this one was quite nice, a statue of a winged bicycle wheel.

With our focus purely on cycling these last few weeks, we’re in much better shape than when we reached the Alps, even better than when we started the Pyrenees. At this point, climbing is all I want to do. It’s part Zen, part intoxication, and the agony is all but gone.

Susana says she likes listening to the cowbells clanging around from the cows as they chew on grass on the way up. In fact today she reached the top and exclaimed, “I have a disease, and the only cure is more cowbell!” (with apologies to Christopher Walken).

Today marks another milestone for me: reaching 3629 km (2255 miles), this trip becomes my longest bike trip, surpassing my 1995 Nebraska-Canadian Rockies trip.

Tomorrow we have an easier day (I call them rest days) with only the Col de Peyresourde before we reach the pinnacle of the Pyrenees on Wednesday, the Col du Tourmalet.