Tour De France - Part 3

(In what's turning into a much longer series than expected, we continue with Alpe D'Huez.)

The day had arrived, it was our first time seeing cyclists, and we jumped right into the deep end. People don't just casually check out Alpe D'Huez, it's more of a life experience. And somehow we decided that it would be a great spot to get our first taste of Tour de France spirit (not to mentions spirits!).

So, the plan was formed: wake up early and drive to Bourg d'Oisans (town at the base of the climb), pick up some beer and food in the town, pick out a low-key spot near the bottom, get drunk, cheer on Team Chipotle. Sounds simple enough.

We got to the town, followed the line of cars as we looked for parking, and then accidentally started driving right up the mountain. There was a lot of "oh crap, what do we do now?", "can we turn around?" and "this is CRAZY" going on in our car as we continued up and up the mountain.


It's not like we could just pull over and turn around to go back to Plan A. There were cyclists everywhere, cars everywhere, and drunk spectators everywhere (keep in mind, it's now 9:30 am). There's no going back to Plan A, definitely Plan B time. Our real worry was that Plan B (find somewhere to park NOW!) would turn into Plan C (can't find parking because people have been camping on this mountain for a week, driving over the top, end up somewhere back in Italy again), and we definitely wanted to avoid that.

Through some divine intervention, we managed to find a spot on the side of the road that wasn't taken up by a tent, car, motorhome, or group of drunk Germans, and pulled over. A very helpful cop informed us (in both French and through frantic hand gestures), that we had to turn the car around so that it was facing down the mountain (turned out to be a great idea when we were trying to get off the mountain later).

So, we were parked. Halfway up the mountain. With no beer.

We were in quite a dilemma, time for a big decision. We could walk back down the way we came, find a shop, and resume Plan A. Or we could walk up this mountain, find a shop, and resume the last half of Plan A (the drinking and cheering part). We decided it would be a waste to come all this way and let a silly thing like climbing a mountain get in our way. So we started up.

About 8 kilometers and 3 really long hours later, we made the summit. We picked up provisions at the top (baguettes, beer, wine... I knew bike jerseys were good for something). We then found our spot, just above the 3 km mark and began to enjoy the fantastic scenery of Alpe D'Huez.

A new plan to sew pockets like this into all of our shirts was hatched shortly after we realised how easy it is to carry bottles of alcohol in them.

The beer went a lot faster than we thought (stupid 250 ml bottles), but luckily the tour started to roll through just in time (for us to crack open the wine). The caravan came through about an hour before the first riders, and handed out loads of free schwag.

Luckily for us, our neighbors along the barrier had updates coming to their mobile and were giving us the heads up on what was happening down the mountain. Then the riders came through.

Carlos Sastre basically won the Tour at this exact moment

It was a fairly slow trickle of riders, all coming up alone or in groups of 2 or 3. The mountain had destroyed the main bunch and shattered them across all 23 switchbacks.

A slightly larger group makes it up the crazy, crazy mountain

At last, the peloton came rolling through (and probably still faster than I could ride on flat ground)

It was time to head back down the slopes. Along with a few tens of thousands of other fans. We met up with some fellow Chipotle supporters (Americans, but living in Switzerland now), who had been camping on Alpe D'Huez for a few days and they brought us down some shortcuts through all the switchbacks. We repaid the favor by giving them a (very slow) lift down the rest of the mountain.

All in all, it was a blast. Jacob got his picture on the Chipotle team website. We got to cheer on our team, and watch some fantastic cycling. Only a few hours later, and we made it out of the crowd and back to the hotel.

Check out the full Alpe D'Huez pictures.

Up next, the final part - Lyon and the Time Trial.