2004
- If you plan a cycling trip to the Alpes, be careful. You do not want to go through the expense and hassle of coming here only to be stupid on a mountain descent, go down and hurt yourself. A decent number of people had accidents and in nearly all cases it was a lack of IQ and skill. Remember, you didn’t grow up descending alpine roads.
- Packing your bike and lugging it around is a pain in the neck and very heavy. We’ll be glad to drop them off at UPS today.
- The French are amazingly nice and considerate to cyclists. The only time I ever felt the pressure of traffic was a short jaunt on a freeway when we were lost on a ride. The drivers in the country and villages are amazing and even though there are no shoulders, you feel completely at ease.
- Seeing the Tour de France in person is amazing, but I missed OLN. The daily TV coverage is so much more informative. If you love the tour and do not at least read French, be ready to have very little information. While there is ten times the coverage here, it’s entirely French. (They show the tour live on three channels all day!)
- Bikestyle did a great job. The accommodations were fine, travel was well managed and Tammy and I both felt comfortable at all times.
Zurich and on to the mountains...
After our amazing train ride we arrived in Zurich. Switzerland is such a different place than France. It’s much more multi-national. A lot of different languages; almost all signs were in four different languages. We spent some time at the train station getting Euros changed to Swiss Francs and checking our luggage at the rail station since we were taking a train the next morning, no need to lug it all over the place. It’s nice to be in a currency that is less than one on the dollar, however things are pretty expensive so far.
Zurich is a nice town. Seemed very orderly, similar to the train station itself. We got a pass for the city rail system to get to our hotel but I don’t know that we really needed it since nobody ever looked at it and there was no device to run it through. Guess it was the honor system at work.
The Hotel Rigihof in Zurich was fine. Tammy observed it was the dirtiest of all the hotels we had stayed at so far, but it seemed fine to me. On the plus side it had relatively fast WiFi so I was able to send all my digital photos taken so far to the server at our house for safe storage (took about 10 hours while we slept!).
Some other items of interest…
Train Update - I went on and on earlier about how great the Paris to Zurich train was. I now know that not all rail travel in Europe is so great. Our train today from Zurich to Scuol was perhaps 1/2 of a step up from a Greyhound bus! Plus, we made the mistake of getting in a smoking car and not realizing it and then having to move. Did I mention that we have too much luggage? We do. We plan on sending some back to Zurich on the train tomorrow if possible. We are new to packing for a three week trip and definitely have more than we should.
Language - Switzerland is all German. Leave your French at the border. Zurich was very good with English as well, but so far the mountains are pretty sparse on English. For some reason I’m finding this easier to deal with but Tammy is finding it much harder.
Technology - I’m having terrible luck tech-wise. I brought three compact flash cards for our cameras along. Of the cards only the 1 gig card (thankfully!) is still working. The 512 mb and 256 mb cards have both decided to stop working in different ways. The 256 mb just corrupts anything you put on it. And the 512 mb won’t format and just gives an E50 error when I put it in the camera. This sucks and we’ve left Zurich now so I doubt I’ll be able to get anymore cards. Hope the 1G holds out. I even had to get a new card reader since my PCMCIA reader seems to have gotten loopy as well and freezes the laptop whenever inserted! I think this is what killed the 256 mb card. Argh! Tammy’s theory is that it has something to do with the power differences, who knows.
As you may have figured out by now we are in Scuol, Switzerland. This is a fairly small mountain town near the border of Austria on the upper side of the Engadine Valley. We meet our hiking group in a little over an hour for dinner and orientation. We hike 13 miles tomorrow on a fairly flat route only ascending 1,000 feet of elevation. The mountains are all around us. I’m looking to my left out my window right now in this converted Engadine hotel and can see two peaks well above the tree line with a saddle in the middle. Great stuff.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
I’m sitting in the most luxurious form of transportation that I’ve ever experienced. We are taking a high-speed train from Paris to Zurich. I think we are in first class, it was required to get a reserved seat on the train and it turns out to be a fairly smart idea since we had room for our ample luggage that would have been pretty tight in the other cars.
The train is amazing! It’s silky smooth. The chairs are like miniature lazy boys. There are power connectors for your computer. We situated ourselves in one of these double units so we could face “the right way”. I was getting motion sick after only a few minutes so we needed to switch around. They served breakfast, a traditional hot chocolate and croissant kind of thing. Sorry, no WiFi on the train, I checked. 🙂
If something like this existed to get us from Minneapolis to Chicago, a distance I believe shorter than our trip today, it would just be great. Chalk one more up for Europe!
It was a little confusing getting on the train, as Tammy said because it’s just so simple. You just get on after all. Didn’t really know what to do with the luggage or where to go. Airport terminals are definitely more internationally friendly than train stations but we finally figured it out. I got a bit grumpy trying to figure out what to do but have no fears, Tammy kept me in my place. 🙂
Heft On Wheels
Most people that know me know that I used to weigh quite a lot. Then I weighed a lot less. Now I weigh a little bit more, but by no means quite a lot. I went through a bit of a learning experience later in life. I’ve often thought that if I were a good enough writer (something I’ve been enjoying doing on my blog by the way) I would write a book about the experience.
I just finished reading a book that I think would be very similar to the book I would write. Heft on Wheels by Mike Magnuson recounts his transference of his obsession with drinking and smoking to riding his bicycle. Magnuson’s book is a fun, quick read and I felt a kinship to him in reading it. We shared many experiences, while still clearly being very different people. For example, he finished at the head of the pack in the Cat V race he tried while I was shot off the back very early on!
I should think it would be interesting to meet him some day. Perhaps on a ride.
Last Call from Paris!
In my last note I mentioned how confusing Paris was to get around. Amazingly enough I think I’m starting to get the hang of it however, of course just as we are only a ‘wake up’ away from leaving on to Switzerland. We spent much of the last two days zipping around on the Paris Metro and doing a little more exploring. Tammy did a little shopping today, although the city doesn’t really fit her shopping tastes from what she can tell.
City of Light
Last night we hopped on the metro after dinner to do some night photography. I brought my little portable tripod (thanks REI!) and did some fun ‘bulb’ exposure shots. For those that are not aware, that means taking pictures where you leave your shutter open for a very long time. These shots were taken with 20 to 30 second exposures. I dig this stuff probably because it’s really easy to create a shot that looks so cool. I’ve put three above that I liked particularly well. Paris get’s to be both the City of Light and the City of Love! Pretty lucky, both light and love!
Anniversary Art
Some of you may know that Tammy and I decided when we got married that our wedding presents were going to be art, and that after that we wouldn’t get each other anniversary presents but instead together get a piece of art. As you’ll know from reading our site this is only our 2nd anniversary, but the tradition continues. We went out today to find a piece that we really enjoyed and came out even better than expected. The beginning of the search was a bit disappointing as we got excited about €15,000 paintings that we obviously weren’t bringing home. We then returned to a gallery we had visited shortly right by the Louvre called Art Club. We found a a piece called Allez Saute! that we thought was great – and now it’s ours! It’s by a young Parisienne artist named Corniere. She had a number of pieces but this one we particularly liked and it fit our budget.
Kilometers
We’ve decided that we like kilometers. Let’s get these in the states as well. They are great for bike riding. The numbers are so much higher and they just go by so fast! Plus you can use the abbreviations k’s which is just so cool. While we are at it, let’s chuck the pounds and ounces and go for grams as well. Although, I don’t find ordering a 240g steak nearly as exciting as a half-pound steak.
My feet and legs are tired from walking around the city all day lately. That’s maybe not such a great way to begin a week-long hiking trip in the Alpes! We head out on the train to Zurich tomorrow morning. I don’t expect to be online much, if at all, so you probably won’t see anything else from us until we return. See you all soon, when we have to return to reality!
The Stepford Wives
Oh boy, we did it again, went to yet another movie in Paris. This time the Stepford Wives. Fun movie, probably better to rent. This time the theatre had air conditioning, what a plus!
Paris Update
Yesterday was our 2nd anniversary. It seems like it’s been so much longer than two years, in a good way that is. We spent the first half of the day exploring Paris by foot. We walked around in the 8th, 9th, 10th, 2nd and 1st sections or arrondissements of Paris. You see, Paris is laid out in 20 of these arrondissements, I’m not going to try to get into a history lesson of the reasons or layout of this, you can read about that out on your own.
I find Paris to be an incredibly hard city to navigate. Nothing is at a right angle. Years ago I saw this TV show where they were studying the patterns of spider webs. They did a study where they gave some spiders a very small dose of hallucinogenic or psychedelic drugs. Sure enough, the spider webs lost their concentric patterns and turned into these jumbled up messes. If you overlayed one of these jumbled spider webs on a map, that would be Paris. Everything is named, no numbers, which adds a little bit more adventure to the challenge. At least in Manhattan you can rely generally on the street grid, no such luck in Paris.
Our hotel is great. We are staying at the Hyatt Regency Paris-Madeleine. This is definitely the nicest place we’ve stayed thus far. We intended it to be a little oasis in the middle of our two structured trips. The amenities are wonderful, however there broadband is horrible. I can only get around 12 kbps of bandwidth, no good. Tammy has decided that this is now her favorite hotel ever, dethroaning the previous holder of that position which was the Hotel Monaco in Denver.
We walked our way from our hotel through a variety of shops and got to La Sainte-Chapelle. We checked out the courtyard of the cathedral but didn’t go inside, the lines were terrible. We then went over to Notre Dame and walked through the inside of the cathedral. Amazing stuff. The effort that must have went into constructing these things. Wow.
After a lot of walking we got a pass on the Paris “yellow & green” open top buses and circled our way around much of the city.
Paris isn’t that hard to get around without knowing French. Tammy’s extremely rusty and fragmentary knowledge of French from school has been very helpful. Also, so many words are similar in English that it’s fairly straightforward to make your way through a restaurant menu or read signs. It also helps that many in Paris speak either very good English or enough to get through purchasing something.
We had dinner at the Latina Cafe on the Champs Elysees. It was wonderful food and great ambiance. It’s owned by a Latina or Salsa radia station and clearly there was some serious dancing going on at this place from time to time.
Today was a full blown tourist day. We slept in and made our morning voyage to the patisserie for some breakfast. We then headed to the Louvre.
Yes, that’s a picture where you aren’t supposed to take one. We headed straight for the Mona Lisa (which seems to be a popular place to head to right away). Going to the Louvre was like taking a bubble bath in art. It’s huge. Gargantuan. So big that it would take weeks to take it all in. We only had three hours plus or minus. We strolled through the museum as if we were soaking in a huge bathtub overflowing with bubbles. We didn’t take the time to question why the bubbles existed or what would become of the bubbles, we just enjoyed that they were there. We swam in art. And just like a bubble bath, it sticks with you after you get out. The power of art is almost hard to take at such high volumes.
After our bath in art, we perused some local shops and had our ugly American lunch in Paris. We went to what I must imagine is the American oasis for travellers in Paris. We visited the Hard Rock Cafe Paris. This place doesn’t even bother to put out French menus. The waitress came up and spoke near perfect English. The food was as normal as we would get in Bloomington. The water even came with ice! Didn’t have to ask.
Can you believe it’s taken me until now to put up a picture of the Eiffel tower!
After taking our temporary trip back to the states for some lunch we headed off to the Eiffel Tower. We took a bunch of pictures and were bothered by some of the people that you run into at the super-duper tourist spots in Paris looking to scam you for something. The Eiffel Tower has only three floors: pretty high, really high and stupid high. We walked the stairs to pretty high. Both Tammy and I are scared of heights so really and stupid high were simply out of the question. I also have an extraordinary fear of heights when combined with open air stairs. Luckily the stairs were not the metal grates you can see through or there is no way I would have made it up. I was clinging the railing making my way up stair by stair. The tower is really neat, we are going to make a trip back tonight when we do some night photography in Paris.
That’s it for now, this has gotten long and we are going to get dinner. I’ll probably put up one more thing before we head for our hiking section in Switzerland and I expect there will be no Internet anywhere on that trip. Au revoir!
Spiderman Deux
Tammy and I went and saw Spiderman 2 this evening in Paris. I always think it sounds kind of wierd to go to a movie when you are on vacation, but it’s always a lot of fun. Anyway, movie was very good, better than the first. Luckily it was in english with french subtitles. The theater had no air conditioning and was rather a dump, and the tickets were only €9.50! Ouch! Paris is not a cheap city.
Fin de Course or Intermission, Act II
The thing that I liked most about coming to see the Tour de France in person were the sights and sounds that you never get to see on TV. The energy of the people on the roadside. The caravan coming through. The thrill of the peloton. Running the Tour de France is an amazing job. The race is assembled like a rolling caravan throughout the country and as soon as it goes by the roads are restored to normal circulation. One of my favorite things in watching the tour was the special truck that drives right at the end of the race behind everything. It’s a non-descript vehicle and on the back with red letters on white are the words
Fin de Course
I don’t know exactly why I found that so special. I told Tammy it was like a classic movie where they actually put “The End” on the screen before rolling the credits. It just seemed well suited.
If I can extend the metaphor, we have finished the first course of our trip and are sending off the hectic days of the Tour de France in favor of relaxing days of strolling the streets of Paris and visiting museums.
Before we leave the cycling, a couple of notes:
That’s all for that. We’re going to transfer to our next hotel and I’ll probably post some more frequent notes before we head off to Switzerland. I’ll try to get some photos up as well. I’ve been copying all the photos we’ve taken so far to the server at home but it takes some time to transfer 2.5 gigabytes even on the high-speed in the hotel.
Tour de France 2004 Stage 20 - Montereau to Paris (Champs Elysees)
Today we saw what we came here to see, history being made. Lance crossed the finish line on the Champs Elysees this afternoon to become the first person in the history of cycling to win six tour victories. We really wanted to make the Tour de France trip this year on the chance that this may happen. I was skeptical, but was proven very wrong with Lance’s commanding victory this year.
We had to leave early from Beaune and get back on the bus for the trip to Paris. The stage was the most attended by far. People were eight deep along the barricades on the Champs. Tammy and I tried to find a good spot but were unable to get situated really well. We ended up walking a few kilometers and got off of the Champs to a point where we could at least see over the barricades.
There was a break in the group but the peloton caught them. The speed of the group was incredible.
Tour de France 2004 Stage 19 - Besancon to Besancon
Today was the best ride of the trip. Tammy and I figured that while we had suffered up some mountain climbs we hadn’t really gotten any distance in. We decided that since today’s ride would be “flatter” (this is a relative term) we would do the 115km option. We left on our bikes straight from Beaune and rode to Besancon for the time trial. We rode with a fast group in a huge bunch for the first 70 k’s and then fell off the back. The speed kept getting faster and it was very hard to stay on. We’d get shot off the back and then have to kill ourselves to get back on a wheel. Then we realized that we were on vacation and I could stare at a rear wheel in Minnesota. Time to smell the flowers!
We let the group ride off. It’s amazing how fast they ride off, in minutes we weren’t even able to see them. We pedaled along and had a simply great ride along the valleys in rural France. We went through so many small villages, stopped at a bakery for some pastries, went along rivers. It was simply wonderful.
We ended up clicking off 125 km which is I believe 78 miles or so in the Queens measurements. That is the longest ride Tammy has ever done topping her previous 67 mile record. She’s now saying that she might do a century with me. She’s doing great on the bike. Clearly the running and workout out she’s done has paid in spades.
The time trial was great. Lance pounded a resounding fist of authority on the tour besting Ullrich by just over a minute. I was able to see the podium presentation for the first time. It was also the first time I heard any booing. There are many people who believe that Lance dopes and there were a number of boo’s as he received the stage victory.
We headed back to the bus and rode back to Beaune. After a banquet dinner in the hotel we took a walk in Beaune. I just couldn’t live with the idea we would be at this great village and not even see it! I wish we would have had a day to spend there as it looked like an incredible town.
I Need a Vacation From My Vacation
I’m writing this entry on the bus ride back to Paris. We got up again at 6:00 am so we could head into Paris for the final stage of the Tour de France. I’m looking forward to seeing Lance win a record setting sixth tour. This leg of our trip is about to end and that will be fine. We’ve been up at 6:00 am every day, riding, standing outside watching the tour and typically not getting back until 9:00 pm for a quick dinner and back to sleep. The next few days of more leisurely activity in Paris will be appreciated. I certainly will not miss this bus either.
Tour de France 2004 Stage 18 - Annemasse to Lons-le-Saunier
Today we left Grenoble and departed for Beaune where we will spend the next 2 nights. We rode on the bus to the stage about an hour from Beaune and got our bikes to ride the last big climb of the stage. There was a category 4 climb at the end and we planned to ride from the stage finish to the 20km to go banner and back going over this climb both ways.
Unfortunately for us the climb was an absolute brute going opposite of the race. At least twice as steep than the other side so I would say we did a category 3 and a category 4 climb. 🙂
It was great countryside and we turned to head back. We cut the time a little short though and the jandams (the Frnech cops that line much of the route) kept on stopping us in the last 5k making us walk. It turned out to just be a section as we got on after a while and were able to get back into town.
The stage finish was extremely crowded. We waited in the finishing chute and saw the riders come through there. It was an interesting spot to be in since they weren’t going crazy fast which resulted in some nice photos.
Tour de France 2004 Stage 17 - Bourg d'Oisans to Le Grand-Bornand
Today was the dreaded day of the tour climbing two Hors (beyond) category climbs. Tammy took a sick day today and stayed in the hotel to accelerate her recovery (I’m glad to say I think it helped a lot). I took the shuttle to the stage. The plan was to ride about 40k to the base of the Madelaine and then climb up a ways to watch the tour. We ran short on time so we just ended up going to the base of the mountain and climbing.
The Madelain is a beast. It’s a 19.8 km climb with an average gradient of 7.8%. Technically it doesn’t pitch up the way Alpe d’Huez does but it’s nearly twice the length. A fit recreational rider will take 2 hours to climb the Madelaine. Two hours. That’s two hours of going up, constantly. The roads in Alpes are never flat. They just go up at a constant rate. There is no recovery flats, just up. You look up the road panting and sweating and it’s just more up. Forever.
I didn’t finish the climb. I ran low on water after an hour of climbing. In that hour I made it about 7 km up the climb and 600 vertical meters. The entire climb is around 2000 meters so I did about 1/3rd of the climb. That was enough. I am after all, on vacation.
It was another great day for the tour and I got to watch “le train bleu” on the front. Floyd Landis did a piece of work for Lance today that will redefine him as a domestique. It was amazing to watch.
We watched the stage on the tour bus as we drove home. There was a huge roar in the bus when Lance sprinted in the last 100 meters to take the stage from Kloeden. He seems to be incredibly on form this year.
A Glass of Ice Water
What happened to refrigeration when Europe got their hands on it? There is nothing that is really cold here! I’ve been on a search for “la glacie” (ice) and anytime I get my hands on some I drink a half-dozen glasses of cold water. Even the soda out of vending machines isn’t really cold, but just cool.
I’m trying not to be an ugly American on this one. I’ve found France to be great. But c’mon, bring on the ice!
Tammy is obsessed with water.
Tour de France 2004 Stage 16 - Bourg d'Oisans to L'Alpe d'Huez
Today was the most hyped stage of the 2004 Tour de France. When the tour route was announced last fall they had placed all the mountains and the individual time trials at the last half of the race. This would leave the race very open until the end. As it turns out, Lance was able to get good time in the Pyranees so it wasn’t as open as hoped.
We skipped riding today because of the insanity of the crowds and Tammy was coming down for real with the cold I came here with. We took a shuttle bus up to Bourg d’Oisans which is at the base of the L’Alpe d’Huez and watched the stage at the start.
I wont go into all the details of the stage since you can go to a Tour de France site to read about that but Lance won the stage with command and I was able to experience my defining moment of the Tour de France.
Tammy was feeling quite bad so before the stage ended she took the shuttle back to town. I stayed and took pictures as the riders started the time trial. The crowds were enormous even on the base of the climb. As Lance went past and the procession of what must have been 30 cars behind him went by, a number of us ran across the street to this little bar to watch the stage. This is where I had my “tour moment”.
I was under the awning of this little bar. There were probably 40 or so people crowded under and there was a 13" TV on a stool on one end. The rabbit ears were stuck up to pull in the race coverage. Under this little awning at the base of the mountain were French, German, Italian, Americans and more countries. Everyone spoke different languages but all we’re passionate about the tour. We stood there in a group glued to this tiny TV watching the race progress up the Alpe.
I think part of the reason why Americans don’t get bike racing is we need an us versus them. Yankees versus the Dodgers. Ali versus Foreman. If you remove the “versus” we don’t get it. We are a very bivalent country (republican or democrat, pro this or anti that, yes or no, black and white). As this international group watched the race everyone was cheering for everyone. Ullrich came through the first checkpoint with the best time and the group roared. Lance came through and bested the time and there was another roar. It was a celebration of the achievement, of what is possible. Not a celebration of the defeat of another.
I’ll remember standing in that bar watching that crappy 13" TV every time I watch the tour.
I didn’t get an opportunity to climb the L’Alpe, but that’s okay. I will come back some other time to do that. This was just as good.
Tour de France 2004 Stage 15 - Valreas to Villard-de-Lans
This is the first day that we actually get to see the Tour de France on the road. We went out for the short ride option today since I was recovering from my cold and Tammy was of course starting to get the early symptoms of it. There should be a way that you can trade vacation days for sick days! 🙂 We took the bus from Grenoble and cut out a moderately steep and very long climb out of the town to make our ride a little easier. We rode the bus up the switchbacks of the mountainside and got off near the top of the climb and spun along with a bunch of about 20 riders. We headed out a few kilometers and got onto a loop that Lonely Planet describes as the most scenic cycling route in France and one of the best in Europe.
We did a steep and fast descent into a canyon on a road that was literally cut out of the side of a sheer face. The speeds on the descent were a taste of what we would get coming up hitting around 60 kph (sorry, all my computers are set to kilometers for this trip so you will need to do the conversion on your own). While that isn’t terribly fast for a descent let me describe the conditions. The road was very windy. It was maybe 10 feet wide but somehow was a 2-lane road with active oncoming traffic and you couldn’t see around the sweeps because as I mentioned it was cut into the side of a rock face. Oh, the other side over the barrier? Few hundred feet to a nice R.I.P. Yeah, I took it easy. Little did I know this was easy compared to what was coming up. Tammy took it even easier. She learned through this trip that there is something she hates more than climbing - descending.
We then climbed out of the canyon and I found out this was another preview of things to come. This was just some road climbing out of the canyon. Please note, this is not climbing a mountain as I thought it was while doing it. When getting to the top I asked the ride leader and he kindly informed me that “no, the mountain is coming up”. And did it ever…
We stopped in a small village in the foothills of the Alpes and filled our water bottles. Many of these old villages have a public fountain or spring in the middle of town which makes it great for cyclists. You just fill your bottle up with great, cold spring mountain water. Wonderful. And thankful since none of them have any stores. The houses and buildings were amazing.
After trying to figure out where we were, we descended a few kilometers and for the first time, turned onto the course of the Tour de France. Let me take a moment to pause here.
I now fully realize what an intimate sport cycling is. Imagine going to the Indy 500 and being able to drive your car around the track a few times before the race, just for fun. Or going to a baseball game and hitting a few balls at the plate while the crowd streams in. That is what you can do at the Tour de France. Riding your bike on the alpine climbs of the Tour hours before the race itself comes through with the huge crowds on the side of the climb was just incredible.
We got to the bottom of the descent and turned left to climb the 1,374m Col de Chalimont. The climb was 11 km with an average gradient of 5.8%. The first few k’s (kilometers) were steeper than the top. After about 3 km I had given up on “keeping a gear in reserve”. You see, cyclists will usually not shift into the easiest gear on their bike when climbing mostly to have a mental reserve if it gets really hard. Forget that! I was panting my way up the side of this mountain going about 8 kph with my heart racing a 100 yard dash! Tammy who was lucky enough to have a triple chain ring (she has a whole set of gears for climbing which I do not have) was spinning along working hard in her “granny gear”.
I did have to stop after about 8 km and 40 minutes of climbing. The entire climb took around an hour. Tammy didn’t stop and actually made it to the top before I did. The crowd on the side of the road cheers on anyone climbing. Allez! Allez! It really does make you go longer and harder than you could otherwise. Of course watching the tour riders ride up this mere category 2 climb afterwards is a little humbling. 🙂
We then did a 10 km descent into the village where we stopped to watch the tour. We settled in a round-about that the tour would cross twice. They would come off a steep descent rocketing along and do a 180 degree turn into the town. Do about 3 k’s and then come back through the other way to do a quick 3k climb to an uphill finish.
Before the tour the caravan came through. The caravan is essentially a parade that drives about an hour in front of the race in part to clear the road but mostly to give more opportunities to the sponsors. The Tour de France is free, 100% funded by sponsors. The fans love the caravan and it provides a good diversion after you’ve been waiting there for 2 hours in the baking sun.
The tour experience on this first day was really amazing. It’s not like any other sporting event I have ever experienced. First, the race goes by you so fast that you see it for minutes, yet thousands crowd the road as it goes by. The electricity in the air and the love that the people have for this event drowns out the commercialism of the sponsors. I was perched in a spot waiting to see the riders come down the descent and around me were men and women, young and old and everyone was eyeing a tiny piece of blacktop at the top of the descent. At the first site of a rider the group erupted in a roar as they came down. It was amazing to experience. The lead group came through as the crowd cheered. Personally I could hardly get a picture off. I was just fumbling around at the first site of the tour, Lance in the lead group down the descent, the speed and power of the race. It was amazing.
A few minutes later the yellow jersey group came down with Thomas Voeckler still in yellow. Voeckler at this point had held the yellow jersey longer than any French rider in the last two decades. He’s under 25 and looks like a kid. And, the French love him. Another roar erupted as they went by. It’s hard to describe the energy and experience of such a brief event. I’m simply not a good enough writer to do it justice. But it was amazing.
We ended our day with a very long and fast descent back to Grenoble. Tammy described that descent as the hardest thing she’s ever done on a bike. Your hands and arms ache on these descents because you must brake smart and hard at the right times. You cannot brake all the time or you will blow a tire. So you must let your speed get up to 50-60 kph and then as you get to the switchback brake hard and come out. It rained a little on the descent making it even worse. We had dinner around 9pm in Grenoble and called it a day.
In Grenoble!
Tammy and I are in a smoky Internet cafe in Grenoble…
Sounds like the beginning to a good novel. :-) However, this keyboard is french! And it is shockingly similqr yet different. Forget qwerty, it’s azerty!
Anyway just letting people know we have arrived. The keyboard and smoke are too much! We ride tomorrow…
Au revoir!
Ready to go...
I was pleased to wake up this morning feeling better than yesterday. A good nights sleep thanks to Nyquil and variety of other incantations seemed to have helped me out. Hopefully Tammy wont get any whiff of this quick cold.
The car is completely loaded and we’re just waiting to head to the airport. Tonight we sleep on the plane and wake up tomorrow in Paris! Tammy is starting to get really worried about the flight. She hates flying. It seems like we have half of our house with us for this trip. Putting both cycling and hiking in a vacation means you end up needing to bring a lot of stuff with you.
The Tour de France has been awesome the last two days with Lance showing that he does indeed have what it takes. I’m terribly excited about seeing it all in person!
The next time you hear anything from us will be from France!
I Can't Believe It!
I got a cold the day before we go to Europe! Argh!
It’s Chris Tersteeg’s fault – he gave it to me. I’ve got a depth charge of vitamins, medicine and other herbal things trying to get me better. Hopefully it’ll pass soon.
Bikes are boxed up, bags are 95% packed and carry-on is ready to go. Tomorrow we sleep by the Eiffel Tower.
Chequamegon Fat 40 — I'm in!
Way back in February I submitted my entry for the Chequamegon Fat Tire race. I’ve done the “Fat 40” for the last three years and it’s always a great time. Of course, while I’m slogging myself across the 42 miles (there are 2 more miles at the end just to slap you around a little bit) I don’t always think it is so much fun.
The Fat 40 is limited to 1,700 riders (there is a shorter 12 mile race that comprises another 800 entrants but I’ve never applied for that one). This year I received the wrong notice back – the one telling me I did not get selected in the drawing! See, over 3,000 people applied and there is a lottery. I was not one of the lucky ones.
There was only one more option. They have an essay contest “50 Ways to Ride the Chequamegon”. I entered it months ago and have been waiting, and waiting. I just got my letter today telling me…
…your essay was selected as a winner in this year’s contest.
Yes! Now I get to suffer with everyone else. I also get to suffer with my brother-in-law who I convinced to enter for the first time ever (he of course got selected in the lottery right off).
Time to start training! Eek!