Only 8 short hours after we got in place today

Only 8 short hours after we got in place today, the riders blew by to finish the day. One thing Angie and I have noticed is that the French don’t have much respect for other people’s personal space. In spite of the fact that we had gotten to our spot early, several French folks, young and old, overweight and ..um…way overweight, those that hadn’t had a shower that night and those that hadn’t had a shower that week, decided to crowd in and squeeze us out just as the riders got to the finish. Angie politely banged one man in the head with her umbrella until he finally gave up and left. I put my camera backpack on and used it like a blocking dummy to kindly invite people to stand elsewhere. It was like trying to beat back a hungry pack of wolves with a piece of spaghetti as they eventually crushed us against the barricades. But we did succeed in getting our sign on OLN and I did get a couple of shots of Lance as he zipped by to retain the yellow jersey. We barely saw Lance put on the yellow jersey at the awards ceremony though the crowd, then we made a beeline to the car to get to the next town and the next stage.

On our way to Cluses, we barreled down the autoroute at 150 kilometers an hour (about 90mph) still being passed regularly. We both noticed that the mountains were tapering off. There were still some climbs tomorrow, but much shorter and the mountains were starting to roll over more gently. Not the intimidating giants that go on and on …up and up. Maybe Lance can stay safe tomorrow and have something left for them at the time trial Saturday.

We found our hotel. Nothing special or cute tonight and the dinner was only moderately bad. We won’t eat there tomorrow. Another day of fun is over and we are already talking about next year. We’re all out of mountains and only a major disaster can keep Lance from his fourth consecutive Tour victory. Hopefully the media won’t let the cancer survivor part go away from such a tremendous accomplishment. Today when the guy from OLN ask us how we got so interested in cycling, I simply smiled at him and said, “I had cancer”. He just smiled and nodded with approval, as he understood.

26 July

(Jerry)We got up and went to breakfast in the hotel. There was, of course, bread, bread with chocolate, cereal with hot milk and more of the same stuff we’ve had the past two weeks. It’s going to be nice to have an ice-cold glass of milk again. Actually it’ll be nice to have an ice-cold glass of anything. We left for Bourge-en-Bresse, where the stage ends today. We’re not sure how far it is from the hotel, so we hope to find the Office of Tourism and get a route map and directions. It is very nice that all of these small towns have an Office of Tourism. Well, we drove about 5 minutes, looked up and we we’re at the finish line for the day. I turned down an alley and parked. Our crazy dumb, good luck was still holding out. We walked to the start and set up near some bleachers 25 meters from the finish line. We thought the bleachers might give us some protection from the French people’s desire to pack us in like sardines – and smell the same! We set up camp, put out the Stars and Stripes and the LAF sign. We like to get those out because they attract other Americans as well as general attention. Angie has started calling me the Photo/Press Hound because I get the attention of every photographer, cameraman or reporter with a pencil to get pictures of our sign or write something up about LAF.

Nobody back home would believe it because I’m generally so quiet. Of course Angie has continued her USPS cheerleading bit and had plenty of cameras clicking today. Our favorite Le Tour Boutique girl is set up behind us today. We have seen her at two previous stages and become friends. Today Angie taught her to say “Howdy”. She had it down pat after a little practice, then she asked, “Does this mean I can come to Texas now?” We went back to our camp as she continued to greet people with her French “Howdy”, instead of Bonjour.

Our visitors started soon today. It’s always a surprise to see where the Americans are from that stop to see us. The first today was Rob Leipheimer – Levi’s brother. Levi was a US Postal rider last year but left to become a team leader of the Belgium Rabobank Team. Rob is a Trek Bike dealer in Montana. It was fun to chat with him and his dad walked up as we were talking so we took some pictures. We swapped email addresses so I could send him the pictures. Next a guy from Santa Barbara, CA, then our friends from San Francisco that we met yesterday, another guy, Samuel from Tulsa was riding his bike around France catching some stages. A couple from Austin stopped, Karen and Robert. They ended up staying with us most of the day.

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