Okay, I think we made a good decision when we chose to abandon the event. At that moment we were simply unable to continue riding. Now we had a new problem, how to get back to our hotel about 300 miles away. This event like all randonneuring events provides no safety net for riders who cannot continue. It is an understood that riders are on their own if they abandon. We found the local train station in Loudeac and inquired about getting back towards Paris. A helpful agent put us on a bus which took us to St. Brieuc. We were grateful to get that bus but we could hardly keep our eyes open let alone sit upright, and that bus hit every little roundabout in France. We kept tipping over in our seats! From St. Brieuc we caught the TGV train direct to Paris which was a 2 ½ hour ride at 100+ mph. We then had to take a local train back out to the suburb of St. Quentin where we are based. There were 15 other riders who came in on our train and there are dozens of trains an hour. This is when we had our first clue that this year would be historic for the event!