It doesn

July 17-18 July 19 July 20 July 21 July 22-23 July 23 July 24

July 24-25 July 25-26 July 26-27 July 27 July 28 July 29

It doesn’t get dark or quiet until late, so we went to bed around 10:00pm. I moved around and tried every possible position to sleep. It was not as good as a bed but better than an airport seat. I, of course, had to get up and go to the bathroom during the night!

21 July

(Angie)We slept until about 8:30. The sun was blasting the windshield, but we had taped up garbage bags the night before to block it out. We washed up with wet ones and dove clothes and got ready for the day. The hardest part was deciding which Postal shirt to wear! For our breakfast picnic we had bananas and croissants, then we started hiking! Right at the beginning was a little town village, the big screen TV(which would broadcast the race), Le Tour Boutique and snack stands. I would have been happy parking it there but Jerry really wanted to go to the top so we headed up. It was over 5K to the summit from here and it was steep. We met a group of Americans from the east coast, North Carolina, Florida and a couple of other places. They had some Postal office uniforms because one of the guy’s dad was a mailman. We took pictures of them and continued on up to the top. A woman and her husband from San Francisco were riding to the top – we saw them on their way down also. We chatted with a couple of other American groups – another husband wife team from Louisiana had ridden up and were on their way down. With about a kilometer to go they had put up barricades so we had to walk in the rocks on the side of the road and poor Jerry had to carry the rolling cooler. We finally made it to the top. (Jerry)The top of Ventoux is not hard to describe. There’s not a damn thing there including space. We hiked circles around the tiny finish area looking for a place to take pictures, get our LAF banner on OLN and maybe get seen by Lance. Well, that place didn’t exist! We finally parked ourselves about 125 meters from the finish. We both hated it! I finally said, “Let’s go back down before the barricades start, about 2 kilometers from the finish.” We hiked back down about 1.5 K from the finish. Angie was happy again. She got her cheerleader face back on and her pom poms out. I put the LAF banner together and we were set. We stopped in a curve so the riders would slow and maybe get our LAF banner on tv. Lance finally came by. Third at the time but he was flying compared to the two guys ahead of him and we thought he might catch them. It’s hard to describe the area of electricity and excitement that rolls up the mountain around the riders. You can see it rolling toward you like a wave. Really cool! We screamed our heads off for Lance, Floyd, George, Eki, all the postal boys as they pasted. We cheer for the other Americans as well. It’s over a lot quicker than the preparation time so we started back down the mountain. Our legs were beat when we got to the car and we just wanted to get in the long line of traffic in hopes of getting off the mountain. We chatted about the events of the day: meeting Americans, the guy riding to the top of the mountain with a rooster in the basket of his bike before the riders got there, the girl sticking her very scantly clad behind out of her car apparently changing clothes and best of all that we moved off the top of the mountain to a much better spot. We surprising got off the mountain quickly and found a hotel in a cute tiny town on our way to the next stage. A warning about cute tiny small towns in France – NOBODY speaks English there! We struggled getting the room, but did. Then struggled at dinner even more but were lucky again because a couple that happened to be eating there spoke English and translated our order for us. The food was probably the best we’ve had since we’ve been here.

previous page /continue to page 5