2003 Tour de France trip 7/16-7/28
for post-trip (7/29/03) diary entries...

Live (or almost live) from France, as I follow the TDF from Toulouse through the Pyrenees and on to Paris with the Graham Baxter Sporting Tours group.  --Mike--

FAMILIAR FACES AT THE TOUR DE FRANCE?  I've put up a web page with some photos of Chain Reaction customers I found while in France for the TDF this year... unfortunately, I'm really bad with names & faces, so if anybody wants to check the page out and identify a few people, that would be great!  --Mike--
 

07/16/03 2:05am- BUT AM I READY???  Good question.  Had a final proof-of-concept ride Tuesday morning up King's Mtn, bringing along a handlebar bag stuffed, essentially, with weights, along with an extra camera in one of my rear pockets.  Not so bad; did about 27:30 up the hill (with Todd, Kevin, Steve & John attending).  Handling isn't quite as fast with a bag up front, but it's workable.  Next diary entry will be in a couple days from Paris!


07/16/03 1:38pm SFO SO DO I SIT BY THE WINDOW WATCHING FOR MY BIKE TO BE LOADED or just not worry about it?  This isn't Minneapolis, after all, home of the ultimate baggage-mangling ground crews.  It's quite the display; if you're in the Minneapolis airport on your way to somewhere else, make sure you watch what goes on, right under your nose.  Stuff falls off conveyor belts 10 feet or more to the ground, guys throwing (literally) large piece of luggage that may, or may not make it to their intended bulls-eye.  Not a place I'd feel comfortable routing a bike through.  But here at SFO, watching them load & unload luggage is pretty boring.  Probably the way it should be.

So far, things have worked out well.  No extra charge for bringing my bike, and I'm still sitting pretty in seat 17C on a 777... supposedly one of the very best economy-class seats you can find (verified by www.SeatGuru.com, a pretty nifty site that tells you about seating on all the major airlines).  Would have liked biz class, of course, but that's tough to get on SFO to CDG flights (unless you're willing to burn 150,000 air miles instead of 50-80,000 for a normal seat).  I do feel a bit like I'm cheating, as this is the first time I've flown using Frequent Flyer miles.

So how many people on this flight are heading out for the 'Tour?  My guess is quite a few, based on snippets of conversations I've heard (as in, "Did Beloki really break his femur, elbow and finger?").  Still, only saw one person checking a bike in ahead of me.

On the plane, seems like I can't travel anywhere incognito.  "Are you a scientist?" the young woman asks?  Uh...no.  "I know you from somewhere.  Do you live in Berkeley?"  No, I own a bicycle shop.  "In Berkeley?"  No, Redwood City.  "Oh!  I bought one of my bikes from you!"  To which I tried to humorously reply "Probably" but she took it differently, thinking I was doubting her (which wasn't the case) and replied "No, I'm positive I bought the bike from you!"    And then somebody else on the plane was nice enough to give me some VeloNews magazines to read... as if I needed one more reason not to sleep on the plane.  Sigh.  Doesn't really matter... no matter what, I really don't sleep on planes.



07/17/03- ARRIVAL IN PARIS CDG (the main airport in Paris) remains one of the more interesting enimgas I've come across.  Normally the mass confusion occurs when you're trying to catch a flight out, but this time trying to get out was a bit of a hassle, as they had one half of the passport check area closed off for maintenance, and it seems people don't have a clue about how to queue up for such things.  Still, the most amazing thing about CDG is the center of each of the main terminals, where you have something akin to Disneyland's people-mover (if you're old enough to remember that) gone mad.  People traveling in tubes in all manner of different directions across the center of the terminal, with a trip down unavoidably requiring a trip up first.  Whoever designed the bizarre traffic patterns inside CDG probably gets a real kick out of the parts in some movies where all the lights in an intersection turn green at the same time, resulting in massive pile-up.  That pretty much describes most of my experiences there!

Also had my first experience getting taking advantage of on the trip from the airport to the hotel.  I'd arranged with Airport Connections for a shuttle via their website, which I very clearly specified a "shared" shuttle (as opposed to the much more expensive "private" option).  And, as the website stated, drivers carry machines so you can pay with a credit card.  Well, we get to the hotel and all of a sudden the 35 euro fare is 65 euros, and he has no credit card machine on-board.  Yeah, right.  This one I'm going to follow up on later.

I'm now settled in... in the strangest way, it seems like I'm back home.  Bruno, our French service manager in Redwood City, probably has a very difficult time figuring out how somebody who has such a hard time picking up the French language can possibly be as much at ease as I am here, and I really can't tell you why.  But as we were landing, there was this brief feeling that I'm "home" again.  Go figure.

But how about the view from my hotel room?  I'm staying the first night at an Ibis Accor hotel in the Porte de Clichy area with a great view of an aging train yard.  The room itself is like a dorm room just barely big enough for a single person/bed, yet it has two of them squeezed in.  It's just me for the night so it's not a problem (I booked a single room for this trip, so I could spare somebody else my snoring, as well as not bother somebody while spending a couple hours/evening updating the website.

Well, it's time to hit the road, er, Metro.  I discovered one thing I left behind... water bottles!  So I'm off in search of a bike shop, of which I understand there's one on the far side of the Arch d Triomphe.

Note to Bruno:  I'd have an easier time picking up complex (greater than 10) numbers in French if I could spend time watching their "Keno" game show... that would be the one with the very cute woman very clearly calling out the numbers.

Another note to Bruno- Just got back from my mini-tour of Paris to get the water bottles, and some tourist comes up to me and asks if I speak English.  You'll never believe what almost came out of my mouth.  "A little."  Seriously.  Something weird happens to me over here!
 

07/18/03 (I think!) ANOTHER TRAVEL DAY as we head on the bus to Toulouse.  A rather longish trip, heading from the north end of France to the South, and this isn't exactly the fastest bus in the world, but we're getting there. 

And even on a bus dominated by a reported 23 Kiwis (that would be New Zealanders, for the uninformed), there are a number of people who are from the SF Bay Area and have been to our shops, as well as Steve (a regular on our Tuesday/Thursday Kings Mtn ride) and his wife Thalia, seen in the picture outside the hotel. Glad I brought enough tools to fix just about anything, as my reputation might be on the line here!

On the way to Toulouse, we stop at several roadside places that cater to the traveling French; I'm not sure if it's comforting or disturbing that the French are no better than us in going into such places, as they're far more expensive than the same food would cost in a nearby town.  Convenient, yes, but it's not as if friendly small towns are a rare thing in France.

It's almost as if there are two Frances, and I've been lucky enough to experience both.  There's the France that caters to the tourist (French or foreign) in the most commercial (and expensive!) way, and the other France that exists for the locals (but really seems to enjoy the tourists as well).  This is my fifth trip here, and, curiously, this is the first time I've really noticed this... probably because I've spent so much time in the countryside, instead of driving through it to get somewhere.  As revelations go, I'm sure this comes across as a resounding "DUH!" on the reader's part.  But if we hadn't stopped at that last place, I never would have seen the tractor-driving groundskeeper in full Dutch (orange) uniform! 

In the meantime, we travel on towards Toulouse, which is now less than an hour away, and somewhat anxiously as we know that the time trial has been over for some time.

Unfortunately, we just heard the news that Lance isn't going a whole lot faster... Jan Ullrich won today's time trial???!!!  This TDF is wide open.  We all have far more questions than answers, and are very much looking forward to viewing the carnage (that is, the race that Lance was supposed to have in his back pocket) in person tomorrow!
 

07/18/03 11:55pm- NO CONNECTIVITY AT THIS HOTEL/NO UPDATES TONIGHT, darn!  There's this strange adapter that's needed once in a while in odd places in France, and we're most definitely staying in a slightly-odd place tonight...and I left the adapter behind, since I hadn't needed it the past three years.  So much for timely updates!
 

07/19/03- THIS DAY IS IN DANGER OF BECOMING "LOST" as I'm having to recreate it a bit after the fact, due to the Internet hassles.  But basically I was up most of the prior night due to uncomfortably-high temperatures in a hotel that is neither air conditioned nor quiet, so opening up the windows exposes you to the strangeness of a street that remains active 24 hours/day.  So after perhaps two hours of sleep we load up into a bus and drive maybe 15-20 kilometers outside of Foix, from which we ride  to the final climb (via Ax Les Thermes) to watch the race.  Along the way we stopped at a great little roadside store, run by an elderly couple that couldn't be happier to see a bunch of cyclists ride into town.

Got some great shots of Lance and Jan, and came across a number of our customers there (like the two drinking cokes on the climb to Bonascre).

The bus ride to Lourdes has convinced most of us on this tour that it's much better to find a way to ride back to a hotel, rather than get onto a bus after having ridden for a good distance in the heat.  There's something about sitting in your shorts and jerseys for 4-6 hours after a hard ride than just doesn't cut it.


07/20/03- WHAT HAPPENED TO LANCE???!!!  I've always said that it's not a foregone conclusion that Lance would win this tour, and today's events underscore that.  Lance dropped his lead over Jan to under 20 seconds after Jan beat him up on a climb... something that isn't supposed to happen.  We had a nice ride up the Col d' Aspin in the morning and came back to watch the race coverage in a bar/restaurant (our hotel rooms don't have televisions).  Great ride, with especially nice (a bit cooler) weather, and a pretty easy climb.  But Lance didn't have nearly so nice a day...ouch!  Still haven't found a way to connect to the Internet here in Lourdes.  Grrrrrrr.


07/21/03- JUST ANOTHER BORING DAY AT THE TOUR?  NOT!  Highlights?

• Rode a loop from Lourdes including the famous/infamous "Tourmalet" climb.  People are going to ask me how it compares to Sonora Pass & Mont Ventoux.  It's different, that's about all I can say at this point.  It seemed tougher than it should have been, but that might be partly because I didn't realize I was swallowing a lot of blood... I'd bitten my tongue pretty nastily the night before, and didn't realize it had started bleeding again on the climb until I started wondering about that salty taste in my mouth.  So I spit onto the road and noticed it was more blood than anything else... yuck!  Don't think I'd make a good vampire.
   
• On the way up the hill, stopped at a restaurant about 5k from the top, ordered (in my awful, extremely-limited French vocabulary) a glass of coke and some bottle water, and the guy not only asked if I would like ice (a rarity in France) but replaced the bottled water I'd picked out with a bottle from a cooler.  Also ran into several customers there, including Latisha, her husband (whose name is... Robert?) and another guy whose name I always forget (OK, it's a couple weeks later and he's in the store right now... it's Shawn S), but that's ok, because he was chasing up the hill after me, yelling out somebody else's name.  When he called "Chain Reaction" I got the clue that it was probably me!
   
• Invented "CytoSludge", seen in the restaurant photo to the right.  Basically, you mix up some Cytomax with the absolute minimum amount of water to make sludge (highly concentrated Cytomax) which you can then mix with ordinary water to create Cytomax.  Why would you do something like this?  Probably because you forgot to bring some plastic baggies that you could portion out dry Cytomax into!
  
  Things I didn't bring?  So far, just plastic baggies and water bottles.  Oh, also a phone hacker's guide to France (so I might hot-wire an internet connection somehow!).
   
• Got a prime viewing spot at the top of Tourmalet, on the final corner of the climb.  Great view of the top and the lead-in, with no obstructions (in other words, people).  Don't even know how it worked out so well... we just set up in front of an Imax crew that was there doing a special on the CSC team, and eventually the Gendarmes came in and requested that we move on.  We thought they meant we had to leave, but no, we just had to move about four feet further up the road, with nobody allowed downhill from us for about 100 meters!!!  I spent the four hours with a very nice couple from England, Ginny & Steve (who you can see at the right in the photo, and verify what a great spot we had to watch the race).
   
• From the top of the Tourmalet, called my wife via cell phone to let her know when the race was approaching, so she could see me on TV (Outdoor Live Network's live coverage).  Funny that I can make a more reliable cell phone call from a remote place in France than I can from my house!
   
• Once again got some great shots of Lance and Jan.  More importantly, I seem to have figured out how to snag the Aquarel bottled water they toss from the Caravan.  Well, they don't actually toss it, you have to grab it out of their hand.  I've scored three so far, but this last one (on Tourmalet) took some effort... seemed like she didn't want to let go of the bottle.  Would I have pulled her off the truck if I had to?  Hey, somebody's got to let go, and it ain't gonna be me!
  
  I should admit that it's not too tough getting great shots of Lance and Jan on this tour, as they're kinda focused on being at the front of the pack.
   
• Since the race continued on past the Tourmalet, finishing at the Luz Ardiden ski station about an hour later, I used the cell phone to call her to find out what was happening at the race.  It was obvious this was a pivotal stage, with Lance and Jan (plus three or four others) crossing the Tourmalet well ahead of the main pack.  I then asked her to call back for the final kilometer and gave the play-by-play to other english-speaking people in the area.  At first I thought that, at $1.29/minute, that's quite a bit of money but heck, people spend lots more than that on the Psychic Hotline!
   
• Being at the top of a big climb, followed by a big descent, some riders grabbed windbreakers from the team car for the trip down, while others stuffed newspapers under their jerseys.  As the clouds had moved in pretty heavily, and I had no windbreaker, I decided to "go pro" and try the newspaper thing myself.  It works!  Fortunately, newsprint stains wash off with soap & water.
   
• Wonder where all that goat cheese in France comes from?  Goats, duh!  Wonder where all the goats are?  On the Tourmalet!  We're descending through the heavy clouds and come across an area where there must be, literally, thousands of goats.  All over the hills, and no fences.  What keeps them off the road?  Turns out nothing keeps them off the road!  When they want to cross, doesn't matter if there's heavy traffic or bikes, they just go.  First one, then a couple more, and finally a virtual stampede of goats.
   
• On the way back from the Tourmalet, made several train connections back to Lourdes.  By train connections, I mean hooking up with very strong, fast groups heading out in various directions.  Really steep climbs seem to be my nemesis these days, but give me rollers and flat stretches and I seem to be able to hang in very well, nearly always surviving the final cuts (meaning that riders are being blown off the back until you're left with some machine-like madman that can do 45-50k and, instead of backing off, you take your own turns at the front).  I was so relieved this guy didn't take the left turn towards Lourdes, for three reasons.  First, there were a couple of moderate climbs that would blow me apart.  Second, I needed a break.  And third, I really needed to relieve myself, something I hadn't done since much earlier in the day, since there aren't facilities at the top of the Tourmalet, and we were waiting four hours for the race to come through.
   
• After dinner I was sitting outside our hotel, with a bunch of Aussies and Kiwis (they had a purpose for being there, that being to drink beer...I was nursing my Schweppes Bitter Lemon) when a couple of women pull up in a car and look like they were having a very bad day.  Aussies and Kiwis being the helpful folk they are ask how things are going (not well, as one of the women works for Sports Illustrated and was trying to find a place to upload a story on the Internet... sound familiar???).  So the women working for Sports Illustrated dictates her story via cell phone while the other woman sits down with us and has a glass of white wine.  Turns out she works for Eurosport (European TV sports network), and is a commentator for their Tour de France coverage.  Hmm.  I recognize the voice, so I ask the question- your name?  Christy (or maybe it's Kristi).  As in the woman I made fun of on this very website last year for making a fuss about Botero's beautiful blue eyes.  Christy as in wife of Phil Anderson, famous Aussie racer of days past.  Christy as in teller of some great stories, inside poop that will never make in into print, about the goings-on of the TDF.
  
  OK, I can tell you want to hear more about Christy's TDF scoops, don't you?  You want to hear how she predicted Lance would win today's stage (and by two minutes, which might have happened if not for the crash).  You want to hear about just how hard that crash was and what happened to his bike (that he didn't know about until after the race).  You want to hear her explain that, no matter how tough this race is, Lance is coming back to try and win #6, but that he won't, because no French person alive will let him ruin the memories of their great heroes (Anquetil etc).  So, OK, she redeemed herself quite nicely.  HOWEVER, she takes great pride in commenting on what's actually going on in the race, as opposed to doing fluff pieces (she won't, for example, do side pieces about the horrible traffic jams that accompany the race)... which seems a bit at odds with her comments last year about which riders had the nicest eyes.  I even mentioned that I recalled her piece at last year's race about Beloki's "beautiful blue eyes" and she immediately corrected me... those were Botero's beautiful blue eyes!  And did so in a way that convinced me that she really thinks they're special.
   

07/22/03- REST DAY, RIDE DAY, WORK DAY.  For the Tour de France racers, this is a well-deserved day of rest after yesterday's gnarly, back-breaking stage.  For the many people in France on tours built around the race, this is a day they don't have to worry about finding a place to watch the race and just go out and ride.  But for me, this is a work day... a day I have to get everything on the website caught up and downloaded to the Internet, because I have found the mythical Internet Cafe!  Along the way I found a very friendly elderly Frenchman who saw me looking at a map and wanted to help... he spoke zero English, and that combined with my miniscule French... well, let's say it wasn't the exchange of useful information that made it such a pleasant experience, but rather that someone would step out and help someone.

To get to the Internet Cafe you first must find the marketplace at the center of a town that has no center.  That's the tough part!  But once there, you've discovered a sort of not-so-secret treasure... the place where the locals go to buy their food, a place where zero English is spoken but everyone is very nice, and where you can buy a huge 150cl bottle or Orangina for just $2.50 euros.  Oh, I suppose I should also mention three different pastries for $3 euros total.   Sorry, but the hotel "breakfast" consisting of a greasy croissant, a very hard roll, cereal & warm milk just doesn't cut it for me.

07/22/03 6:17pm GRRR!!!!!!  I skipped out on all the fun today so I could get the website updated, but something's gone wrong (for the second time in a month) with our ISP so everything's getting totally garbled.  Wonderful.  Like I can easily deal with it while in France???!!!  Still waiting to get a reply from the ISP; hopefully things will get fixed soon, but I don't know when I'll be able to get back on-line again.  As I said, GRRR!!!!.  Hopefully by the time you read this it will have already been fixed.


07/23/03- COL D' AUBISQUE IS AWESOME!  Here I thought the Tourmalet was the monster hill of the Pyrenees, but after today's ride, I'm thinking the Pau side of the Aubisque has to be the meanest monster of them all, possibly (yes, I'm really saying this) even worse than climbing Sonora Pass.  Thankfully we climbed from the Lourdes side, which is simply long and moderately steep.

So what could it possibly have over Sonora Pass?

• Cattle.  Lots of cattle.  Big HUGE cattle that just meander slowly down the one-lane road as if they own it... and they do!
   
• Scenery.  Sonora Pass is spectacular in a granite sort of way, but Col D' Aubisque has a bit of everything, including places where the road is built into the side of the mountain, so you feel a bit queasy about easing off the brakes.
   
• Tunnels.  Dark semi-scary tunnels that you enter quickly and realize you're wearing your sunglasses and can't see the road, and you're thinking of that line out of the Blues Brothers about it being dark outside and wearing sunglasses.
   
• Restaurants.  Great little places to grab a bite or a coke or bottled water.  Sure, they're not cheap, but they'd be a bargain at half the price.  That $2.50 euro coke I had at the top of the Soulor (a pass that precedes the Aubisque) was priceless... I felt so much better after it.  I definitely had a coke and a smile!
   
• Part of a great loop, beginning in Lourdes and heading up over the Col d' Aubisque, down into Pau (where today's stage began) and back to Lourdes.  Of course, I was riding with a group considerably faster than my capabilities, but hung on until the final 8k into Lourdes.
   
• All the better when you get back in time to watch Tyler Hamilton win a stage of the Tour de France on TV!
   

07/24/03 12:58am JUST FINISHED PACKING as we're finished with our five days in Lourdes.  It's with mixed feelings that I leave the Pyrenees behind; a number of mountains have been left unclimbed (including the famous Hautacam, which I had to skip since I was trying to run down the web update issues), but it does seem time to move out of this strange town and head for Bordeaux, where we'll ride in from about 100k out of town to see the stage finish.  Then it's a night in Angers, with a two-night finale in Paris.

Hard to believe the trip is well over half over!  I'll have to read over my own entries to see where the time went.  I could end it here, without mentioning that I went out for a beer with my Kiwi friends... note that, for me, that's a beer, as in one.  Now that I've got my annual beer out of the way, I feel like I can get on with the rest of the tour!


07/24/03 9:40am GOING UP SOME OF THE GRADES in the bus, heading towards Bodeaux, you cannot help but notice that the sounds of the engine straining remind you of how your legs felt on your bike the preceding day.  The weather outside is questionable; not raining at the moment, but it has been off-and-on for most of the night, and there's a good number of us who are thinking that a day of sight-seeing in Bordeaux might be preferable to a 100k flat ride in the rain.  We've got probably another hour or so to get to our drop-off point for today's ride; the plan is to ride the last 100k of the course, trying to stay ahead of the caravan.  Shouldn't be too tough, I mean look at what Tyler Hamilton did to win the stage yesterday (a very long breakaway), and we'll have the advantage of riding in a group!


07/24/03 11:43pm THANK GOODNESS WE'VE SAID GOOD-BYE TO LOURDES!  Actually that's a bit harsh; the area surrounding Lourdes is spectacularly beautiful and a great place to ride.  But the town itself is a mess... hopelessly confusing to get around in, a hotel that has such a poor phone system that you cannot connect to the Internet (a common problem with area hotels), and a Disneyland-like atmosphere built around a famous Catholic shrine (St. Bernadette) that will challenge the most tacky, crass, commercial (almost disgusting and certainly depressing) exploitation of human suffering that you'll find anywhere.  That does sound a bit harsh, doesn't it?  Perhaps I'll remove this paragraph later, when I'm of more sound mind.  In the meantime, let me tell you about today's events-

• Got out of Lourdes (and checked into a really nice hotel in Bordeaux; too bad we're spending just one night here!
   
• Rode the last 100k of today's stage into Bordeaux, trying to keep ahead of the peloton.  Didn't quite go as planned, as they shut the run down for the caravan before we could get into town.  Kind of exciting riding ahead of the race, knowing that rolling road closures behind you are gradually catching up.  When they wouldn't allow us to continue on the course, we switched to a more direct course into town, hoping we could get to the finish line first.  Exactly who we were kidding I'm not sure, but we did come close, and possibly would have made it if it weren't so confusing trying to navigate old French cities.  We missed the finish by ten minutes at the very most.
   
• More opportunities for adults to act like kids as the TDF Publicity Caravan flew through the area we'd been stopped (by the road closure).
   
• Had a terribly embarrassing time as somebody mistook me for a racer (was it my unshaved legs, my official tour-issue handlebar bag that all the riders use, or my much larger stature than the typical tour rider that this person somehow missed?).  OK, so what happens when one person is trying to get your autograph and snag your water bottle?  In very short order you've got a whole mob of people who think you're a real live TDF racer.  And it doesn't even stop when you explain to them that you're not... they think that maybe you're a former TDF racer, or perhaps an official on a US Pro Team, because, after all, you have a TREK bike.  It was weird beyond belief.  At 47, I suppose it should be considered flattering that someone would think I looked the part of a Pro Racer, but I think what it really means is that the TDF is popular well beyond the cycling aficionado.  In the US, just about anybody who sees bicycle racing as sports entertainment is probably someone who knows a fair amount about it.  I don't think we have the same sort of "casual" fan they have here in Europe.
   
• Need to learn more French!  The fact that I'm very sure of myself (meaning I'm not concerned about being embarrassed... not that I wouldn't do something embarrassing, but I'm confident while doing so!) means that I can more easily fake my way through things, appearing to know much more than I do.  Thus a limited French vocabulary on my part evokes a major elicitation of French on theirs... and I become simply dumbfounded.  I suppose I should just go up and say "Je parlay Anglais?" Or simply "Do you speak English?" but doesn't that kind of dumb everything down a notch or two?
  
  I'm also noticing an ever-increasing number of people who are willing to come to you aid if you look like you're having difficulty figuring something out (like how to navigate old French cities!), and, when they discover you know very little French and they know absolutely zero English, they still try to help, 100% in French, as if somehow you'll understand.  You search for words and street names that, in context, will be of help... but the plain simple truth is that you're both very grateful for their efforts and saddened by the lack of success.  You almost want to say "Oui, oui, Merci!" Simply to encourage them.  But of course the best thing to do is simply learn some basic French.  Gee, I've only been saying this for four years now...
   

07/25/03- JUST ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE although, if I were to design paradise myself, I'd probably engineer in a bit more time to sleep!  The rest of the folk in this tour are either off to sleep or out drinking a few more rounds, while I get to spend a couple hours a night on the website.  Not such a bad life though... if not for the website, it would be a whole lot harder to justify these trips to France!  So how did today go?

Starts out in the town of Bordeaux, where we had stayed in our first really nice hotel.  The usual of getting up early enough to have breakfast and be out on our bikes by a bit after 8am, with everything moved out since we're moving on to a new town.

• The ride?  We rode the first part of today's stage, literally from the start all the way to the feed station about 110k into the race.  Unlike other days, this one wasn't too hilly and actually had a tail wind in parts. 
  
  We set up a pretty good pace, and I eventually (and unwisely) decided to go with a faster group that had become unsocial and split off.  I need to keep the testosterone a bit more in check!  Anyway, we're cruising along at a good clip until we notice there aren't any more people at the side of the road, waiting for the race to come through.  Nor any police cars hauling gendarmes further up the course.  Nor barricades.  After about a kilometer and a half we figure we probably overshot a turn and head back.  Sure enough we had missed the turn, and sure enough there were some people hanging out there that recognized us and were having a pretty good time at our expense!
  
  However, the official story is that we were riding so fast that we would have instantly vaporized had we tried to make that corner, and it took fully 1.5 kilometers of gradually slowing down so that our brakes wouldn't melt.
   
• Lots of people in the various villages cheering us on, especially younger kids who would hold out their hands for you to slap them as you rode past.  Some of them don't quite get how it's supposed to work though, and instead of lightly slapping them, you get a very solid hit!  Fortunately we're wearing gloves so we have the better end of the bargain.
   
• Now, for those who notice there are very few heavier folk in France, well, that might be true in the cities, but I think they're all out here in the countryside!  Generally wearing old t-shirts and often with substantial beer bellies, these aren't the same people you see hanging out in Paris.  You definitely get the feeling there's a different class of people, a very friendly class of people who work the farms and mind the small towns.  But the coolest thing really are the kids, lots and lots and lots of little kids, mostly 6-12 year olds I'd say, boys & girls, who are cheering you everywhere along the way.  Some of them even do a "wave" like you see at a baseball stadium!
   
• Time travel.  From the get-go, you're trying to keep far enough ahead of both the race and the publicity caravan that they don't kick you off the road.  It's a bit strange knowing that, as you head further up the road, there are forces coming up behind you that will kill your plans... so the faster you ride, the longer you can hold them off.  So in a way, the faster you ride, the more you slow down time!
   
• The feed station was more interesting that I thought it would be... I really didn't expect the teams to have their "runners" all lined up, waiting for the peloton to come by and grab their feed bags... but that's exactly what happens, not to different from how a mail train used to snag bags at the station without stopping.  I've got photos of it on our race photos page.
  
  I'd add more, but it's 1:30am in France and I have another early morning as we leave from the hotel for an easy ride along the river, and then take the coach out to watch the final time trial.  --Mike--
   

07/26/03- A COLD DAY IN HELL FOR JAN ULLRICH, and a tough one for spectators at the TDF's final time trial.  Rain, rain, rain and wind combined to make what should have been a relatively easy, non-technical race into a real mess.  Still, overall another great day-

Found a blue-collar French bar/restaurant to hang out during the race; it combined that perfect ambience of a TV tuned to the race, a roof to keep out the rain, a relatively minor (for France) amount of cigarette smoke in the air, a menacing dog to guard the bathroom and very interesting cuisine!

And while at this bar, at which none of the local patrons nor proprietors spoke one word of English (and were relatively proud of it), we made friends with a couple of older guys, one of whom is shown here, who did their best to communicate with us without English and us with extremely limited French.  Even treated me to a couple drinks; their ritual for good friends is apparently a very strong cup of coffee, some extraordinarily-strong liquor (don't remember what it's called, translates to something like "Water of Life") that makes Tequila seem weak, and all washed down with wine.  I passed on the wine part.

And, of course, got some photos of Jan and Lance.  Not great ones; tough to get good photos when your lens is constantly getting fogged up and rained on!  You can find the photos on our TDF race photo page.

Sleep?  What's sleep?  When I get back I'm going to need a vacation from this vacation!  The bus is way too cramped to allow me to work on the website while traveling, and we do spend a lot of time traveling!  By the time we got to our hotel tonight it was midnight, so my daily ritual of snagging all the photos off the memory cards, viewing them for "keepers" and processing them for the web, then typing things up and uploading them... well, it's 1:14am right now, and people wonder why I sometimes skip out on breakfast????

Tomorrow's the big day of course- the ride with 9,999 other cyclists along the final part of the TDF course (look for me to be wearing the yellow jersey... along with the other 9,999!) and then, a bit later, the TDF itself comes through.  As they say, film at 11!

Oh, what's so important in that photo on the right?  Nope, not Lance riding off to his 3rd-place in the time trial (barely visible at the extreme left of the photo).  No, the most important thing here is that Lance is the last rider through, which means the yellow TDF arrow signs (which direct the riders) are fair game... including the one my friend snagged from the light pole shown here!
 

07/27/03- CAN YOU SPOT ME IN THIS PICTURE?  I'M THE ONE WEARING THE YELLOW JERSEY... Things are winding up here, as I get ready to head out to watch the final stage of the TDF.  But first there was this wild ride through Paris this morning with 9,999 of my closest friends.  Tell you more about it later; for now, time to go see the race!
 

07/28/03 12:17pm (France Time) TIME TO COME HOME!  It's been a great trip, and watching Lance win his 5th consecutive TDF was just part of it.  After a very long day that included the obligatory standing for hours and hours and hours on the final circuit, most of our group headed back for the hotel.  This I don't understand... Paris in the evening is Paris at its best!  The long evening hours (it's quite light until 10pm) are quite pleasant for long strolls, and I probably walked six miles or so after the festivities ended. 

You also discover new hidden secrets about the race itself- for example, I had no idea that the best way to access the riders after the race is on the back side of the Arc D' Triomphe.  Check it out- this Telekom rider heard these folk yell out for him and cruised on over to accept a string of beads.  One thing you learn is that the riders do hear you when you yell for them!  In fact, Stuart O Grady came by and snagged an Aussie flag from a member of our viewing team during the post-race procession!

And yes, even Lance responds when you yell loud enough.  We thought he was only going to pay attention to the crowds on the opposite side of the street, but we gave it a shot and, sure enough, he heard us, turned and waved (as you can see in the photo).

But all things come to an end, and so must this trip.  I'll add in some more details after I get back; doing this "live" is definitely a bit of an undertaking, when you consider there really isn't any "free" time budgeted anywhere in the itinerary, what with all the riding and driving and race-watching.  The smartest thing I did was to get a single room, so I don't disturb anyone while working on the website.  Yeah, that's it... has nothing to do with my snoring!
 

07/28/03 9:20pm (Pacific Daylight Time) HOME!  If only they had transporter devices, like on Star Trek, instead of 11 hour plane flights and horrible terminals (not SFO, which is pretty decent, but rather CDG/Charles de Gaule, which is rather awful).  It's now 6:22am according to my computer, so I've been up for just about 24 hours, and I think that's about all I'll be up.  Tomorrow it's back to the way the world normally works, with a ride up King's Mtn in the morning, and a full day at the shop.

THE MOST IMPORTANT thing is that my PMU hands for my kids made it home safely.  I'd been told in no uncertain terms that I wasn't welcome back without them! 

 --Mike--