Currently laid up with a fractured calcaneus, which effectively will keep me off the bike for 8-10 weeks - but affording me heaps of time to ponder and dream.

I love mountains, having spent the better part of the last 3 decades climbing on all continents for sport and professionally. Now cycling is taking over as my main interest, and the desire to revisit the places where I first started mountaineering, the European Alps, but this time on a road bike, is becoming strong.

My life dream is definitely to friction shift my way up Galibier, d'Huez or even Ventoux, that solitary, dusty hulk so far south, on a classic steel bike, in a wool jersey, feeling strong and fit.

The names are all ingrained in me from a childhood of traveling in the back seat of my parents Mercedes and later shoe-stringing it thru all of the Alps with hash smoking climbing buddies on too long dirt bag summer trips.

For 12 years straight I didn't miss a season in the Alps, but all those roads and paved passes we labored over in my overloaded VW held no allure or fascination to a bunch of rock climbers. With cycling, this is most definitely changing!!

Riding for me is about climbing. Flats are boring if the group is not dynamic and full of ego. I can't sprint and long distance hurts. But endurance hills I do better than most of my friends, and what you're good at you learn to love. Pare this with the history and tradition of the mountain stages of the Grand Tours, and I simply gotta go back.

prettyshady will think my goals are downright mundane, as this is what he does after work Tuesday afternoon...