Memories of France 
"We're TREK!", they said...

...and we threw them out.
One of the more unforgettable moments of my trip to France was this one, outside of the restaurant we had taken over for our private party at the base of Mont Ventoux.  Things were getting pretty crowded at this prime viewing area, and we had quite a few try to "crash" our party.  Among them were the two women on the right, both Americans from the East Coast.  When told this was a private function organized by TREK, their response was an exceedingly-friendly "We're TREK!" One got the impression they wanted to play the role of big-time Lance groupies and the closer they could get to us, the closer they felt they'd be to Lance.

In a different time and place (part of that difference being not happily married etc) I'm sure I would have helped them crash our party!  But, to my surprise, everyone in our group was 100% focused on why we were there (which was to watch Lance win the 'Tour!) and they got nowhere.

In the background of this photo, you can see some of the phenomenal artwork done by our group on the street.  American flags, go Lance, Nike swooshes, all manner of stuff done with cans of spray paint.  Next time we're going to do it the way the pros do...big paint rollers are much more efficient, and more easily visible from the helicopters above!

Below are some unedited entries I typed while in France.  When reading them, keep in mind they were composed (if you can call it that) in a real-time stream of consciousness mode.  It's taken a very long time to get my trip to France "under control" on our website, and I'm still working on it.  In fact, I'm still going over more than 340 photos I took, and it's five months later (11/29/00)!  --Mike--

Entry #1- On the plane on my way to France! It's 11pm west coast time...I have no idea what time it is wherever I happen to be right now...somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean I assume, on my way to France. Yes, it's finally hitting me...at some point I'm going to catch some sleep on this plane, and when I wake up, I'll be in a strange place where people speak something other than english (But hey, at least the cars drive on the right side of the road!). Getting here so far had a bit more excitement than needed. There was supposed to be a nearly-two-hour time in Chicago between flights... but bad weather earlier in the day meant my flight out of SF left more than an hour late, and I got off the plane in Chicago with just 22 minutes until my Air France flight was to leave! And if you think SFO is a big airport... but somehow I made it... thank goodness I've gotten over the idea that grabbing the first intelligent-looking person and asking for directions isn't such a bad idea! So now I type, when I really should try to get a bit of sleep. It's quite a long haul, this day of traveling. Starting in San Francisco at 1pm, leaving Chicago at 8:30pm, arriving in Paris at...not even sure, maybe the equivalent of 4am or something like that, and then on to the famous TGV high-speed train for another four hours. Good thing I'm wearing comfortable clothes! I suppose it's a good thing I'm traveling on Air France, where the primary instructions are in French, and then later given in English. Gets you used to life as a second-class citizen! Amazing how one takes for granted that English is the way the world works (and this feeling is probably intensified from my work on the 'net). Well, just think how exciting things would have been if I hadn't been able to catch my flight...would have had to take a later plane, land in a strange place where I don't know anybody, and cross the country trying to catch up with my group. Things I'm worried about? Not too much really...mostly that I'll be a zombie tomorrow (or is that today?). The ride up Mont Ventoux isn't scaring me as much as it should, and perhaps I'll pay for that! Well, time to go. I really should have tried to sleep earlier, but alas the movie shown was Erin Brokovich, which I hadn't yet seen. Darn. I did, however, pass on the Madonna flick on the flight out! Just discovered something cool... turns out my cheapie digital watch has two separate time zones you can set it to! So I now know that I'm supposed to think it's 8:19am, not 11:19pm! OK, checklist time. Got my helmet, gloves, shoes, shorts, jerseys, seat, stem, bike computer and seat bag (with teeth!). I'm ready!

Entry #2- Train trip to Avignon On the train to Avignon....impressively quiet, very fast...but you know, France looks just like any other place from this vantage point! Across from us sit three guys from England, out to do the same ride we are. Now the countryside's changing to the more familiar mustard-yellow colors you see so often in photos of he 'Tour. The landscape is relatively unspoiled, with the exception of ever-present power lines that seem to cross the countryside with reckless abandon. Perhaps it's no different back home, just less noticeable because there's so much less open space than you find here in France. The weather is basic drizzle, muting the colors and taking the edge off the landscape...perhaps explaining why Impressionistic art is so strongly associated with the French. Ah...food arrives. Pepsi Max! Basically just regular old Pepsi, only they call things "Max" or "Light" (rather than Diet or Caffeine-Free etc). Sandwiches...sort of. Just a couple pieces of ham between two pieces of bread, no mustard, little mayonnaise. Somehow I doubt the TVG is known for its food... We're finally entering a region which is clearly "French" in the way most of us would think...postcard-type stuff. Lots of little villages, often with several-hundred-year-old churches sitting next door to a modern house. Patches of blue sky are replacing the drizzle from before, and mountains, valleys & hillsides are becoming more common and distinct. A completely unrelated question...why do they bale their hay in rolls instead of square bales? Coming into the Avignon region, the skies are BLUE! And mountains..REAL mountains, not just rolling hills. Big jagged rock formations too. And, at last, the first view of Mt. Ventoux. It's BIG!!!

Entry #3- My ride up Ventoux Sometimes you get the bear... ...and sometimes the bear gets you. Bear 2, Mike 0 Who would have guessed that our Sonora Pass ride of two weeks ago, was going to mirror so precisely the ride I did yesterday. The ride? It's called L'Etape du Tour, and it's held once a year over one of the mountain stages of the Tour de France, just a day or two before the race comes through. It starts at the same place, it finishes at the same place, and it goes through the same towns. Exactly the same in all respects...in fact, they call it (repeatedly, every chance they get) a race. This year, over 7,000 people decided to try test themselves against what many believe to be one of the toughest climbs anywhere...Mont Ventoux. The mountain itself doesn't seem that ominous...about 6100 feet at the top, somewhere around 800 feet at the base, and 21 kilometers (13 miles) in length. Big deal...Mt Hamilton is an 18 mile climb! True enough, but Mt. Hamilton only goes up 4,000 feet in those 18 miles. You should be getting the idea this thing is big & nasty. But wait, there's more. Add to this the fact that it comes late in the stage, after you've already tackled 3 significant climbs, and you *begin* to get an appreciation for what the real racers are going to go through tomorrow. But just as you have four senses, a mountain's ferocity is tested by more than just length and steepness. As I discovered all too well on Sonora Pass, weather can become a major player on high mountains! And so it happened that, a mere 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) from the top, I was turned back due to severe weather at the top. If I had arrived at that point just 10 minutes earlier, I would have gotten through! This was a ride that is destined to haunt me for a very long time...it's going to bug me until I get the chance to go back and finish the job. If there's one word to describe L'Etape du Tour, it's people. Thousands of people. So many people that they cordon off seven separate streets in town and fence us in, 1000 apiece. For an american whose experiencing his first trip out of the country (me), there is a strange sense of familiarity...you've seen this scene before, but where? And then it hits you...it looks like something out of a WWII movie where they're rounding up people for deportation. Our send-off time was supposed to be 7:30am, with my group arriving in the holding area at 6:45. In retrospect, this was much too early, as the formal check-in procedure is done the night before, and all you do when you arrive is get a dot for your number plate...doesn't take a whole lot of time. So you check out the different bikes people ride in Europe (some familiar, many not), and try to figure some good way of determining is someone speaks english or not (there probably isn't, short of saying something like "Was that you who farted?" and noting the response). One thing quickly apparent...Europeans don't buy cheap helmets. Nearly everyone was sporting $150-range helmets, making me feel a bit underdressed with my $90 TREK model. Something else stood out as well...TREK OCLV frames are very highly regarded in Europe! (Lance may have something to do with this...)

Entry #4- Thoughts on the French Young girls practice flirting on *everyone*, without discrimination. Glad my daughter's not French. Or hopefully I'm not naive and don't realize that this is the way all young girls are! In Avignon, while walking around the town after the race, I finally had a truly "French" encounter. This middle-aged woman came up to me on a street corner (near the carousel), and was trying to have a perfectly normal conversation with me, long after it was painfully obvious I didn't speak a word of French! She just went on and on and on, often times holding up fingers for numbers, but it wasn't the time that she wanted. I thought for a bit that perhaps she was drunk, but failed to see any obvious indications of that, aside from her cheery demeanor as she continued to speak French to me, without the slightest actual communication between us. Something I noticed first at the hotel, and later elsewhere...in many instances, when they quickly discover that you don't speak their language, they make *zero* attempt to help you understand something, and even increase the tempo of their speaking (as if that will somehow even decrease the possibility of communicating even further). That wasn't the case with this woman, as she was clearly trying to ask/tell me something. More observations about langauge- you'll notice almost *no* multi-lingual signage in France, even though in many cases it would be to their financial gain. For example, retail stores, be they small or large, seem to go out of their way to encourage language as a barrier to spending money! But curiously, it was exactly this sort of thing that fascinated me most, and I had an intense (and unfulfilled) desire to try to get past the language barrier and communicate, at least financially, in a meaningful way. We were unfortunately given very little free time to do so. It's very unlike me to be so extroverted in unfamiliar circumstances...typically, it takes me a very long time to get to know people and, given the option, I'll usually choose something safe and familiar over new and adventurous (unless it's on a bike!). But here in France, it's entirely different. I have not one felt unsafe or out of my element, which is peculiar indeed in a land where any language other than French appears to be considered hostile! But I long for spending a day, on my own or with a small group, say, no more than four, cruising through a medium-sized town from one end to the other, figuring out what life is to those that live there. OK, truth is, I could literally eat my way from one end of town to the other, at the numerous small eateries one finds everywhere. More than anything, what I missed on this trip was exactly that opportunity. I recognize that we were under very tight time constraints, and marvel at the ability of those who organized this event. At once point there were 30 of us to keep track of, and it just wasn't considered practical to "set us loose" for extended periods of time. In fact, I have a feeling they (ironically) considered that having all of our meals figured out in advance was a very positive thing for us...and, beforehand, I would have thought *exactly* the same! But this trip has brought out a different side of me that I didn't know about, or at least have done nothing to nurture. By the way, regarding food here in general, whether at the fanciest restaurants or the hotel at which we stayed, it was nothing you wouldn't find back home, with the exception that more detail was given to presentation, and, perhaps, a bit less to the actual quality of the food itself. Certainly nothing came to my plate that challenged my rather bland preferences in any way!

Entry #5- Disneyland/art imitating life imitating art One of the *most* fascinating things about France is that, in some ways, you've seen it all before. It's as if everything is a metaphor or a repressed memory of something in your past. Let's take the very nice restaurant in Avignon, for example. If you're familiar with the Pirates of the Caribbean ride in Disneyland, there's a restaurant inside named the "Blue Bayou" this is remarkably similar! And when you're walking down the streets at a crowded time of day, one cannot escape the feeling that you're walking through Disneyland, perhaps Main Street (ironically, it's actually Main Street *USA* in Disneyland...not the type of place you'd think would be similar to something in France!). At other times you feel like you're on the backlot of a Hollywood studio, you know, one of those tours where you marvel at how accurately it appears they've recreated a European town in the middle of LA, and then come to your senses and realize that all they've done is create something that looks like what you'd *think* a European town looks like. Well, guess what? They've got it down so good that you just may think that Hollywood looks more European than France does! One thing that's inescapable...unlike the US, their buildings and houses are typically monotone shades of peeling beiges and browns, with an occasional lavender window shutter here and there. The beauty comes from the surroundings. Garishness, where it exists, comes from the excesses of the land, rather than a paint brush. In the French countryside, there is no competition between man and nature for beauty. Villages in the valleys blend into surrounding trees and hills, and those up high seem to be outcroppings of the rocks themselves. How different from America, where we go to such great lengths to "beautify" the exteriors of our homes by choosing from a palette of whatever the currently-popular colors are, chosen to set up apart from our surroundings, as if they're monuments to testify how far removed we are from the land. But there is *one* thing that does scar the land...the ever-present power lines that loom over the countryside, crossing otherwise virgin pastures, bringing power to their villages and the super-fast trains that take you to them. Here and there you see, off in the distance, the towers of what might be a nuclear power plant that feeds them...but a short distance from Avignon the train passes right next to a fairly large one, with only one of its three large cooling towers adorned with anything attempting to take ones mind away from the dangers held within (in this case, the image of a child in a field).

More Chain Reaction Tour de France info Memories of TDF 2000 trip Mont Ventoux citizen's race Bikes used by lance in TDF Mont Ventoux & Avignon pix More photos of TDF 2000 trip Photos of the pack, Lance included, at the base of Ventoux, as well as a great shot of Fred Rodriguez and George Hincapie prior to the start in Avignon 1999 Tour de France scapbook My encounter with Mont Ventoux (L'Etape du Tour citizen's race)

Last updated 05/06/05