Tour De France - Part 5

Alright, seriously though, finish this drawn out series already, right?

Right then, just the time trial left. Our last adventure into le Tour de France and we went out strong.

It was a fairly easy 3-hour trip from Lyon to catch the time trial finish in Saint-Amand-Montrond. That means we only had to wake up at 5:30 on Saturday morning to get there "on time" (better known as "way too early"). We were rewarded with our early morning and punctuality with some fantastic weather.

At least the weather reminded me of home.

It was our first real case of bad weather on the trip, and the first point where I was glad I brought my rain jacket all this way.

We setup shop at the finish line, and started plotting our day.

Anytime you can take a picture with the devil, do it!

Our first real success was catching Will Frishkorn (my favorite Chipotle rider) at the finish line and snapping a picture or two. He event talked to us as we ran next to his bike (swoon). So I was super excited at this point, but only because we didn't realise was else was in store for us.

Frishkorn at the finish.

We re-grouped after seeing 'Korn, snagged some lunch (where my terrible French was ridiculed by some locals with no teeth), and then picked up the beer back at the car. We ran into some fellow Chipotle supporters from Oxford and invited them to drink with us (even though they've never tasted the deliciousness of a burrito the size of your face). At this point we started making our way back to the finish line and headed over to Team Chipotle's camper to see who we could find.

They'll be even bigger fans once they get a taste of Chipotle.

Our British companions were Team Garmin-Chipotle fans because the team managed to scoop up British National Champion David Millar at the beginning of the season. They were also really bummed out when we told them they missed Millar's ride down the course, he had passed by 20 minutes before they got to the race.

So, it was a fantastic surprise when we got to the team's camper and spotted a few of the guys relaxing after their races out back. Now, it's one thing to actually have the opportunity to meet some of the best cyclists in the world face to face. Then it's a completely different (and much more exciting) thing to drink a beer with them outside of their camper after they just finished posting some insanely fast times on the race course.

Danny Pate (left) and Trent Lowe recovering from their race.

Almost immediately upon walking around to the back side of the camper, Millar took a look at the case of beer in our hands and asked us if he could have a beer. It was our full intention to see if we could offer these great athletes a celebratory beer in order to gain their favor. But Millar took the words right out of my mouth when that (slightly warm) case of Kronenberg came into view.

We both gushed and immediately opened a bottle for him and Danny Pate (Trent Lowe wasn't down for any post-race refreshment). One bottled turned into two and we managed to chat with these guys for about 20 minutes. Just throwin' a few back with the boys after a hard ride. No big deal.

Just hangin' out with the boys.

Well, we ran out of beer, decided not to be "those guys" who just hang out with nothing left to say, so we thanked them profusely and moved back to the course to watch Christian Vande Velde come across the line.

The finish line of a time trial is basically a free-for-all. There are riders who, 15 meters ago, were pushing their bodies to the limit trying to edge out every last second they could. Now they're thrown into a crowd of people trying to shake their hand, pat them on the back, or (in the case of the 6 or 7 kids in front of us) snag a free water bottle. Absolute mayhem.

Vande Velde trying to make it past the finish line crowd.

We saw Vande Velde finish, the race was wrapping up for the most part (he was the 5th to last person to cross), but we had one more trick up our sleeve. We needed to get into the press area and meet the broadcasting legends of Phil Ligget, Paul Sherwen, and of course Bob Roll ("Tour DAY France").

A front-door approach wasn't going to work for this operation, obviously. We grabbed the remains of our bottle of wine and polished it off as we walked around the enclosed press section.

A plan was formed as we got to the back gate. We'd approach the guards, say that we talked to a producer on Versus ("Jim" was the oh-so-clever name we decided to drop), and that he wanted to get some film of Americans travelling with the Tour. It was genius. Of course they would let us right in. How could it fail?

Well, it failed. The security guard's broken English and my broken French were not working well and we went to the backup plan -- wait on the outside of the gate near the Versus TV truck.

It turned out that wasn't such a bad plan. We got to wave and chat with Bob Roll from the top of the truck where he was filming. Then, as Paul and Phil finished up their broadcast, we managed to wave just enough to look excited and not so much that we looked crazy. They both came over and talked for a minute and then posed for pictures with Jacob.

Jacob and Phil Liggett.

Jacob and Paul Sherwen

Hooray! Tour de France, mission accomplished! We may have only seen bikes on two days, but we certainly accomplished quite a bit on those two days. Drinking with the crazies on Alpe D'Huez, meeting our favorite team and enjoying a beer with them, meeting the guys we've watched for years on TV give us the play-by-play of the greatest event in all of cycling. Yeah, we did alright.

Pictures from the Time Trial.

The next day we packed up, drove back to Milan and then flew home to London. Jacob had one more day in the city and then headed back across the pond.

Now that we've had a taste, I just need to figure out how to convince Laura that the Vuelta d'Espana and the Giro d'Italia should be our next holiday destinations.

Wish me luck!