Bike and equipment

We got our bike used from a friend who was switching to three-wheelers. We had not taken long trips on it before this one.  It is a Ryan Recumbent, probably about 10 or more years old.  It has a 20-inch front wheel and a 26-inch rear wheel, 27 gears.  I put on a new dearailleur (  ) and index shifter just before leaving.  We put on new tires and tubes on both wheels.
We bought Arkel panniers - their GT-54 model, about their biggest.  After all, we had to include everything for two people.  These bags had interior waterproof areas and exterior rain covers.  We used both a lot.  We had no problems with the bags and all our stuff stayed quite dry, even when camping in heavy rain (it always dried out enough to dry the tent and rain fly in the morning).   The Arkel bags were really excellent, with a range of pockets, very easy to put on and off, and all around excellent design. We had another small bag for daily items, like our boxed wine glasses.
In the weeks before the trip we needed quite a lot of mechanical and parts help.  When we took a pedal off, the crank threads were stripped, so we needed a new crank.  This was the left front crank, which drives the chain - a tandem-only part.  In all these matters we got a great deal of assistance from Cayuga Ski and Cyclery, here in Ithaca New York.  They were very helpful, saving boxes for us, advising me on many matters (like new shifters), and getting and installing the new crank our very last week.

GPS

We bought a Garmin Quest GPS before leaving.  It was fairly useful and fun, but had some problems in our use of it.  First of all, since we bought it in the United States, it had the US "Base map."  I didn't know this until I called Garmin with a curious observation before we left.  We took a trip to North Carolina with it.  I hadn't understood yet about downloading maps.  It showed all the major towns and highways, but the directions were usually somewhat wrong and there was no detail.  At the same time, when I figured out how to download maps and download the relevant areas of Garmin's Europe v. 8 City Navigator, I found the opposite: there was good detail in the downloaded areas, but when I zoomed out, more than the 5 km range, there was nothing.  It turns out that you can only have one base map on these GPSs, and that depends solely on where you bought it.  So I can have Europe detail, but no big picture of Europe.  This was actually fairly annoying, as often we wanted to see the bigger picture.  This made it even more important to use paper maps.
The Quest does come with a nice handlebar mount, which worked perfectly for us.  It never came out unexpectedly, but was easy to put in and take out.  Beth always took it out when we left the bike.
It has a kind of flap that opens out for the antenna.  This almost poked my back the way we had it, but didn't bother me and it still seemed to get a good signal right up against me.
It did lose its signal when we were in heavily wooded areas.  It also usually lost its satellite signal in cities with fairly tall buildings, like Strasbourg and Colmar.  If you got to an open square, though, it would regain signal.
The device claims 20 hours of battrery service and we probably got a good share of that, maybe 10-15.  We had a plug adapter (Radio Shack) for the charger, which accepted the European 240 volts directly.  Several times we asked people in the campground office to charge it for us, which they were always willing to do.  Again, our French language abilities helped here.
Probably the main problem with the Garmin was that we were quite often on bike paths that it didn't have.  It showed us then more or less where we were and where we were heading.  We could then use this along with the bike path maps we got from the tourist bureaus. We also had regular maps of course.  This was really a lot for Beth, the stoker/navigator, to figure out.  We often had to stop and guess or ask someone, especially to find our way back onto the bike path after being dumped in some little town.

Books

We did find some useful books, though of course the web was a great source. We bought the Lonely Planet Guide to France, Let's Go France 2006, Guide Officiel 2006 Camping Caravaning, Cycling France (Lonely Planet) and Cycling France (by Jerry Simpson). Each had its place. The Jerry Simpson book has a lot of opinions and interpretation about France (helmets are unnecessary - outdated bad advice; say "Bonjour, Madame" and "Au revoir, Madame" when entering and leaving shops - excellent advice).
Beth thought of a great way to take relevant parts of large reference books.  We obviously couldn't carry a book of camping all over France with us when we were going to be in only two specific regions.  We first planned to photocopy the relevant pages, but that would be low-quality paper and not very resistant to a little moisture.  So Beth carefully cut out the pages and sewed them on the sewing machine.  This made a very nice little booklet that held together well.

Bicyclists in France

As is well known, the French take bicycling very seriously.  It is embedded in the culture about as deeply as baseball or football here.  There are local clubs and teams, as well as everyday pleasure cyclists and commuters.  We saw a lot of all these types.  On the bike paths in the evenings especially there would be small groups of usually middle-aged men in full gear.  They looked very fit.

Bike path maps

From the bike tour books and web descriptions, we knew there were bike paths in this part of France - all over in fact - but the descriptions were very specific on how to find them, leading us to think that you needed careful directions.  Several mentioned that maps of paths in various areas were available in the tourist offices.  At first, we found the tourist offices all out of the main Alsace bike route map - they hadn't even kept photocopies, and they said it would not be reprinted until next year.  Finally we found one and went on to find a variety of them.  
They were certainly very useful.  Once you got on one, usually the signs were clear.  The main problem was coming into a town or village and then trying to find the bike route out the other side.  A chance to ask people.

Bike paths

There is currently quite a strong push for bike paths.  These are composed of a variety of actual routes.  Sometimes they are small regional roads that are not used much.  They have signs saying they are only for "cycles ou ayants droits" - cyclists or those with special permission.  We were pretty sure that the special permission is abused, as sometimes we'd see groups of teenagerrs speeding along on them.  But usually they were great.  Sometimes too the bike paths were just the edge of roads shared with cars, with special marking and signs for bikes. These were fine too, though rarely as pleasant as the bike-only paths.

Dedicated bike paths

Sometimes the bike paths were clearly built only for bikes or walkers.  Occasionally (in our experience especially the ones in Germany along the Rhine), these were not paved.  Often they were very pleasant, passing through woods.  Later you'll see some of the beautiful and elegant bike paths through the vineyards and the pretty well developed ones along larger roads.