Allan Reeves is the French Connection

Mill Valley personal injury lawyer Bill Veen won't ever forget his own brush with bodily harm. It was the summer of 2005, and his tire blew out while he was careening down a narrow road on a bicycle in the Pyrenees mountains in southern France.

"It was either turn the wheel and get the rim on the ground and fall or go over a cliff," he said. "I decided to fall instead. It was right before Lourdes, of all places."

Veen escaped with a few bumps and bruises, along with a bevy of memories. Although he's ridden in major bike tours all over the West Coast, Veen considers the bicycle tour of the Pyrenees the most spectacular of the bunch, and he has Allan Reeves to thank for it.

Reeves, a 43-year-old personal trainer and cyclist who lives in Mill Valley, has turned a familial connection into a growing business with a host of perks. Reeves was born in France, and although he's spent all but two years of his life in the U.S., growing up in Bolinas and attending Tam High, most of his family lives in France.

"It is as much for me coming home over here as it is being in California," Reeves said from France. "Everybody is over here."

An avid surfer during his youth, Reeves caught the cycling bug 15 years ago and started coming over to France to see family and riding the countless small, well paved roads with little traffic that wind their way through the countryside.

"I've been coming to France every summer for the past 15 years and bringing my road bike with me," he said. "At first, it was just to give me something to do. Over the years, I've gotten to know the roads and shortcuts and everything because I ride them every year."

At the same time, Reeves' aunt inherited her family's estate, Chateau Pitray, and started a bed and breakfast there, in the Bordeaux wine region. Reeves decided to start bringing guests to the chateau on food, wine and cycling tours, including friends and his clients from Five Points Fitness in Tiburon.

Now in its fourth year, France from Inside has expanded to multiple tours a year and a variety of itineraries. Reeves now spends at least three months a year in France.

"If this blooms into something that gets bigger and more consistent, I'll be over here more," he said.

The bike tours vary from those that stay near the Chateau and come back for meals and include day trips. For a trip in July, Reeves took a group by train to Bordeaux to see the decisive time trial stage of the Tour de France. Other trips, like a 1,000-mile ride through the Pyrenees, where so much cycling history has taken place, are much more cycling intensive.

"Fit cyclists get an opportunity to ride a bike in a great place with great roads and with all that cycling history that as developed over 100 years in the Pyrenees," said Reeves, who has logged more than 70 days of riding in the Pyrenees over the years. The next Pyrenees trip begins Aug. 27.

Reeves said the key for him is to be flexible, depending on the interests of the group.

"But I just love to do that Pyrenees trip," he said. "It's so beautiful, with all of the things you would expect for the French countryside. Sheep, horses, cows, you name it. The number one obstacle when descending these hills is livestock or their excrement. It might even be fresh."

That certainly might've softened Veen's fall.