Some epics rides finish with a ceremonial parade. A fluff piece to coast through, round up the numbers on the week and generally feel amazing about oneself.  Breauxdureaux ended by tackling a 3300 foot, soul crushing climb straight out the door of the hotel under a stiflingly hot humid coastal sun. Some hyper territorial mountain dogs guarding a herd of goats halfway up didn’t make it any easier.

But we made it, in various states of disrobe, dripping sweat from every pore of our bodies. Breauxdureaux’s final climb was history. It was finally time for the Med, with nothing but 4000 feet of downhill between us and the water, a final rally with the boys, one which would imprint itself on our memory banks as a fitting end to the Best Trip Ever.  

We traversed ancient fortifications along the French Italian border, plummeted down ragged trails through coastal forests, then suddenly found ourselves deep in the dense civilization of the coast. Instead of trees and rocks defining our path, we swept between stone walls, wire fences, and manicured hedges following ancient right-of-ways. 

We were jolted alive one last time by this fresh onslaught of sensory overload, an exotic finale to a most memorable trip through the Alps. We ripped down this endless maze of  narrow, twisting paths through villages tumbling down the hillside to the sea and then suddenly, just like that, popped out of a side street into the traffic of mid-day Menton. 

Like a school of brightly colored fish we mobbed our way through a few blocks of traffic, following Blaise, darting past cars until we rolled through a relaxed, traffic free piazza, ducked into a tight arched passageway on the far side, and saw the beach. Through the tunnel, across a boulevard and onto the promenade where we stopped and stretched aching muscles under the hot Mediterranean sun and breathed in the smells of salt water washing up on the beach. 

We stood, bikes in hand, engulfed in a current of deeply tanned Sunday summer vacationers flowing along the promenade. With an unspoken mutual agreement, we smiled and moved to a nearby café for ice cold Aperol Spritzs, followed quickly thereafter by a plunge in the opaque turquoise waters of the Med that we’d been dreaming about for the past 7 days. 

Before our bikes went back in their cases there was one last mission to fulfill. A lap of the most famous street racing track in the world, the Monaco Grand Prix circuit. 45 minutes later we were taking turns carving around the famous hairpin and lining our mountain bikes up in the grid slots that had been used by Lewis Hamilton and company earlier in the summer. But despite the five figure price tags of our carbon wünder-bikes and the latest in enduro-chic fashion, we were barred from sullying the Sunday scene in Casino Square itself.

Dinner was under a 50-foot tall wall of bougainvillea at a beach side restaurant overlooking the bay in Cap-Ferrat with the sparkle of lights from a dozen super yachts anchored offshore.  A stunning location and a stunning dinner, but as we sat there eating in one of the world’s most glamorous locales, in our minds we were all reliving those long, glorious days of blue skies and golden light traversing the alps. Passing the nights in small, mountain villages and comfortable, low key, welcoming inns, riding trail after trail, every one of which was the best ever, until the next. An adventure surpassing even our most exaggerated expectations and hopes.