Homeward Bound

Monday 7/26

Got up early to have breafast with the rest of the group and make sure my bike would make the flight back to the US with my friends. One last breakfast of croissants, proscuitto and cheese, runny eggs and almost raw bacon. The hotel itself was nice with no complaints there. After seeing my sleepy compatriots off I went back to the room and took a leisurely time getting showered and my stuff packed for the flight home. The final bus to the airport left at 11am. I thought about maybe taking a cab or the train and discussed it with the girl at the desk. It would be a long train ride and after my experience the night before didn't sound so appealing and the cab ride was like 60 euros ($80 or so). I saw Stan and Patty in the lobby and we all decided to go ahead and go to the airport early and hang out there until our 3pm flight. Fortunately that was the right call. First, the bus driver dropped us off at the wrong terminal so we had to take the tram to the correct terminal. Then the line to the ticket counters and check-in was pretty long. The good thing for me, I only had my one rolling duffel since my bike was with the earlier group and flight. I would help Patty with her bike and we finally made it through to the counter and got our boarding passes. We had a few hours to kill so we decided to get something to eat for lunch and look for some last minute souvenirs. We met up with a few others who were on our flight. Everyone was upset that Delta was charging them 200 euros ($240 approx.) up front for their bikes. At this point everyone kind of resigned themselves to fighting it out with Delta once they returned home. We had a decent lunch and did some shopping. I bought a map, a Tour du France program, some t-shirts and a few other things then headed to the gate and the flight home. The flight itself was uneventful and arrived pretty much on time. The customs check-in at Atlanta Airport is messed up but I finally made it through and my son Matt and I made our connection and I headed back to the house. It would be 10pm or so before I got home. A fantastic trip in all. A trip of a lifetime.

Here endeth the blog.

Bordeaux to Paris (final stage)

Sunday 7/25 - Had to get up about 5am to pack all the stuff up, eat breakfast, load our luggage (except what we would wear and need for the day) and our bikes onto the bus and bike trailer. At 7:30 or so we boarded yet another set of buses who would drop us off at the Bordeaux train station for us to catch our private TVG (Bullet Train) back to Paris. Our tour buses would make the drive back with our stuff and eventually meet us at the hotel in the Port of Versailles area of Paris. The train was chartered by Graham Watson Cycling Tours for all the different groups in addition to ours that did similar tours. There was plenty of room and many including myself slept part of the 3hr+ ride to Paris. One of our group who had a GPS clocked the train at 188mph during our ride. Despite the speed, the ride was smooth and quiet. When we arrived in Paris we boarded another set of buses chartered by the tour group and headed to the Champs Elysee where the final stage and award ceremonies would take place. Even though we spent very little free time in Paris outside of this afternoon, this was certainly the place to be on this day. The Champs Elysee is like the Times Square of New York, the showcase downtown area of the city. It is surrounded by huge beautiful museums, the Arche de Triumphe along with high end designer retail stores. Intermixed in this are lots of great little sidewalk cafes priceless statuary and fountains and beautiful buildings that were built hundreds of years ago. That was probably the most striking thing about Paris, the mix of 14th, 15th maybe older architecture side by side to post modern. On this day, the final day of the Tour du France, there would be over one million people along the Champs Elysee. The boulevard that makes up the Champs Elysee is several miles long and probably about 4 lanes wide in each direction. It is bordered by trees then stores and restaurants. The Arche de Triumphe is much bigger than it appears in pictures and on most days (not during the tour finale) you can go to the roof top for a great view of downtown Paris. For those thinking of a trip to France and/or Paris, plan a good week in Paris to really enjoy the museums and sights. I would get no closer than about 2 miles to the Eiffel Tower. As soon as we got off the buses everyone kind of split up into different groups to do different things. Tommy and I started out with some other folks but we got separated not too far into our walk. Most people were going to get something to eat and maybe try to find a good location to watch the final Criterium stage. A Criterium is a short race course, typically of no more than a few miles, with most being pretty flat. The final stage would see the riders do ten laps around a 6+ mile course mostly on the Champs Elysee. The Champs Elysee rises at about a 2%-3% grade for 2-2.5 miles then descends down the other side. The riders would reach speeds of 20-25mph going up the grade and 45+ going down the other side. Although this stage typically is mostly ceremonial (the overall Tour winner is usually decided) there are other prestigious awards that can be determined during the final stage. In addition to the Yellow Jersey (overall TDF winner), there is a Green Jersey (best sprinter), Polka Dot Jersey (King of the Moutains) and White Jersey (Best young rider under 25). All had been decided with the exception of the Green Jersey which was being hotly contested by about 4 different riders all within striking distance. For the most part, we spent much of the afternoon, people watching, sightseeing, eating and souvenir shopping. I wanted to get a couple t-shirts and stuff for my kids, etc., so we spent a good while surveying what was available. We watched the progress of the riders who were heading to Paris from some distance away at a leisurely pace. This is where they normally drink their champagne and do their riding photos for the press, prior to the final to the final criterium. When they reached Paris and the Champs Elysee, the excitment in the crown rose exponentially. The first couple of laps were fairly tame and then there was the usual breakaway group who took off from the peleton, vying for press time, pushing the pace and hoping to have enough strenght at the end for a stage victory. Cycling has become so technical that the teams know exactly how much rope to give the breakaway before they start reeling them in. In most cases, not all, the breakaway will be caught before the end of the stage. The endurance of these athletes not withstanding, the team managers and leaders know how much is left in everyones tank and when to make their move for the final push to the finish. I heard Lance compare pro cycling to Nascar racing. Tommy and I did not find a good vantage point early on as we wandered around so some of our earlier pictures were taken from 20 people deep along the sidelines. After the finish, things eased up and we were able to get pretty close to take pictures of the parade of teams, a casual procession of each team, the riders, managers and support personel usually without helmets. Some of the teams like Saxobank which had a great following throughout the Tour took the time to mingle with their fans on the sidelines, pose or pictures, sign autographs etc. Because Saxobank is a team based in Holland, some of their fans wore Viking like helmets which a few of the riders took and wore for their final spin. One of the intriquing things about the Tour du France is the close access you have to the riders. On some of the mountain stages, the riders literally have to ride through crowds of screaming cycling fans a little over a bikes width apart. You would think that in this day and time the security of the riders would be threatened but thank God nothing crazy has happened to alter that access. I think it's one of the coolest things about professional cycling is it's close relationship with fans. I remember going to Brasstown Bald to watch the Tour du Georgia riders ascend to the top of Georgias highest mountain peak, a brutal three mile stretch with grades in excess of 20% near the top. This would be the mountain top finish after 100+ miles of racing over several other mountains and steep rolling terrain. I took pictures of some of the riders from just a couple feet away. Some of the riders who were trying just to finish the stage would get help with people pushing their bikes in some stretches. I think for the most part, cycling has a pretty astute following. Most people who ride more than just casually understand and admire the fitness, endurance and long term commitment required to reach this level of proficiency. Most of the pro riders have been involved in competetive cycling since they were teens. It takes years to build up the stamina and endurance to ride at this level day after day. I was able to get a few good pictures of some of the key riders and shortly after that we decided to try and make the bus back to the hotel. The buses back to the hotel were to leave at 7pm and we were pushing it with only 20 minutes or so to go. We figured they might move that time back since the riders arrived in Paris about an hour after originally predicted. After a few wrong turns and about a mile of walking we reached the place where the buses were to be but they had already left. We were told to take the Metro (subway system) back to the Port of Versailles and our hotel if we missed the bus. No big deal, right? After another mile of walking and communicating with French people speaking broken English we found the Metro station. When we went to buy our ticket through a machine, all the information was in French with no English subtitles. Luckily a young french guy noticing our indecision came to our aid and helped us purchase our ticket. We proceeded through the turnstile with what we thought were validated tickets. After looking at a map for maybe 15 minutes we finally found the Port of Versailles stop. It was clear across the map with no direct route as far as we could determine. We would have to board one train then get off at a station to board another train and then possibly another train before we would get on the train to our destination stop. Thank God for color coding or we might still be in a tunnel somewhere trying to find our stop. It probably took us a good hour maybe longer to get on the final train. The Port of Versailles would be like the 15th stop of 17 stops from where we boarded but at least we were on the right train. It was probably 9:30-10pm at this point. About 3 stops from our stop, 4 guys and 1 girl wearing these green sportcoats borded the train and started asking the passengers for their tickets which the checked with a handheld electronic deal. No problem, here's our tickets. Then the guy who checked my ticket said "not valid" only in French, but clear enough to know that they had a problem with our ticket. In a matter of seconds three or four of them kind of surrounded us and told us that we were riding illegally and that the fine would be 25 euros (about $32 in my estimation). We showed them our receipt for the tickets and proceeded to claim innocence which quickly turned into "were just dumb Americans, not criminals, leave us alone" talk. None of these people could speak English very well so we were at a stalemate. Two stops before our stop they literally forced us to exit the train. One of the guys used a cell phone to call what we determined to be the police. A visit to a Paris jail was not on my itinerary but it seemed it might be on theirs. As luck would have it, our dumb American act prevailed and apparently the police told them to let us go. We proceeded to our destination stop and after maybe another 45 minutes, a few wrong turns and broken english directions later arrived at our hotel. Out of 75 people, we were probably two of the last 5 to reach the hotel and we would have to dismantle and pack our bikes in our boxes, try to get something to eat, check into our hotel and get our stuff ready to fly out in the morning. Since I had someone taking my bike back on the Air France flight which was early in the morning, I would have to coordinate that as well. Eventually we met a big group of our comrades in the bar. Apparently they got in pretty late and missed the hotel dining hours and sent a few out and about to buy pizzas. We would buy into the whole pizza thing and drink wine that we purchased at the hotel bar. It was a fun time nonetheless sharing stories of our day in France. Some people didn't even stick around the Champs Elysee and decided to rent bikes and tour the city. One group bought cheese, bread and wine and had a little impromtu picnic in the moonlight under the Eiffel Tower. Our Metro story probably claimed top prize however. I don't think anyone came close to getting arrested. It was probably after midnite before the group broke up. The Air France group had to leave at like 6:30 in the morning to make their flight which I believe was at 10:30. My Delta flight was at 3pm so I would have time to kill, a good thing after a very eventful last day in France.