My grandmother pointed out in a email that I hadn’t talked much about the other people along on this tour, so here’s a very general introduction! The group is roughly 50 people, but we’ve sorted out pretty much by language.
First is the French-speakers, mostly actually from France, including our hard working chef du course Marc, who works for the AF3V, a French organization that helps organize cycle routes, including the long distance international EuroVelo routes like the EV6 that we’re following. Overall there are about twenty French, with a number of them only doing a few weeks of the ride instead of the whole route, which included a few Belgians who were with us the first week or two of the ride.
The French include a sub-group of three polio survivors and their support riders. The polio survivors are all riding hand pedaled lightweight trikes – I’ll get a photo up when I can, they’re fascinating machines.
The next largest group is about 19 strong and are all from Hong Kong, a number of whom don’t even speak much English, nevermind other European languages.
Finally there are currently ten English speakers, five Yanks, two Brits, a Kiwi couple, and some arrogant twit from Canada.
During the day when we’re riding we tend to ride in groups of two to six or so. Bigger groups of cyclists tend to be awkward, in my experience. We tend to sort by both language and riding ability/comfortable cruising speed on the road.
