brentcu

We drove to Pointis-de-Riviere to watch stage 9 of the Tour de France. The town was pretty with flags and the townsfolk were all out on their lawn chairs waiting for the peloton. We wandered out of the village to find somewhere with grass and shade where we could sit and watch. Someone made a bicycle sculpture out of the big French straw bales and hey, Otto liked it.

You have to get there early to watch the ‘caravane’ of random product trucks passing by. For the kids this is the best part of the day as they wave at the folks passing by and pick up all the thrown tchotchka and junk food. The Carrefour cars handed out little King of the Mountains polka dot hats. Minty liked hers. The Vittel girl took pity on me surrounded by little girls and Mothers and handed me a whole tray of water bottles.

 

There was a good collection of Tour de France babes handing stuff out:

1, 2) The Max Max girls with the water cannon were a big hit on a hot day.

3) I’m rather fond of the gendarme outfit – I want one for Jean.

4) The Vittel ‘babe’ guy on the bike had the most extroverted personality of the day, as well as an interesting scar from knee surgery.

 

The Kleber car handed out balloons. These are some new invention with a built-in valve so you don;t have to tie a knot. Kids can blow their own balloons, as Ella is deomstrating below, but all the balloons had burst within a few minutes.

About an hour and a half after the procession started, the breakaway came into view, breathing hard, grinding away to increase the gap to the peloton. The eventual stage winner, Pierrick Fedrigo, is the Bbox Bouygues Telecom rider in the second photo. He’s a Frenchman, so that would have made the locals happy.

The peloton sped by seconds later. I watched for the Team Astana riders, waved my hat and yelled ‘Go Lance’ and ‘Allez allez!’

It was so fast I wanted to watch it again, then again in slow motion. So when we got home I did just that. It was so fast I couldn’t recognize any riders – I recognized no Lance, Contador, Cadel or big George Hincapie. This is why there are such huge crowds on the mountain climbs – it is the only place where they go slow enough that you have a chance to recognize the riders.

There’s me in an oversize USA Rugby shirt, the only clothing I have that says USA on it although the cut down blue pants do give me away as a Northwest wannabe poser fixie hipster, waving at the peloton. They are followed by the support cars with their array of spare bikes and wheels.

There were a few helicopters around taking shots for the coverage. This is how they do low angle zoom shots – they hover at zero altitude in a field behind the route and use their fancy military-design cameras to get close (see the Planet Earth DVD for details).

And the last bike photos are of a coupe of teams’ go-fast bits. The Rabobank Giants have a fancy black Shimano Dura-Ace group and the Cofidis Time bikes have a fancy black Campy Record group. Black is in for componentry.

And here we are, waving at the breakaway group on the TV coverage. That was so much fun we’ll do it again next year.