Tuesday we enjoyed a nice breakfast with all the wonderful pastry you could want, and then we drove to Castelnaudry to start our ride. This was very close to where we took our first canal boat trip with Jerry and JJ. In fact we crossed over the Canal du Midi a couple of times. 

Our guides Phil and Vitor do a yeomanly job with the bikes… Every day they load and unload them all, sometimes more than once, and clean and adjust everything at night. 

We rode from there to the Relais Etape near Revel.  Long slow climbs, but nothing super steep. Since we had some time we went on up the road and stopped for a coffee in a perfect sleepy little village. 
Back at the Relais Etape, we ticked into a nice lunch and prepared for the race to come by. They had a little contest set up where you rode a stationary bike as fast as possible for a couple of minutes, and I won the green sprinters jersey. 

As a special treat for one of the couple, or maybe both, somebody actually got married right there with us, and here’s the cute flower girl. 

Then the caravan came by, and by the way a bike race… but more on that later. 

Several of our number left today, Paul and Leann headed back to Italy before heading back to Oz, Stuart to England en route LA, Nick and Peter direct to Australia. Now we’re down to 3 riders and a non- riding spouse. 

 I took a morning walk to the train station where the free wi-fi was better than hotel, confirmed my low opinion of the hotel. 

We drove to the Lyon area and had a nice ride out to the sprint point. 

The road was full of people going the same place, recognizable by the stolen TdF road signs, of which we also have a few. 

Although said sprint occurred in the middle of absolutely nowhere (cornfield on one side, wheat on the other), hundreds of people showed up. I positioned myself down low next to a jersey barrier and got a great slo-mo video of the peloton coming by, so close I was literally scared I would get run over. I’ll post the video separately. But they are amazingly talented, and didn’t hit me or anybody else. 

We rode some more , probably too long, and got tired but found the hotel eventually. It’s much nicer, some good beaux-arts details. Here’s the window in the stairwell. 

We ate at the cavernous, 180-year old Brasserie Georges, something of a local landmark: I had mackerel, then rabbit, and my favorite silly French dessert, île flottante. They brew their own beer, a nice honey lager, and if it’s your birthday they dim the lights and play Happy Birthday on an old calliope. 

 Vlad was in his element with steak tartare, extra Tabasco, prepared table side. Vlad, now with 40% more Vlad. 

In the Tour today, Cav won his 4th stage, but it sure looked to me like he cuts off Kittel, should he get penalized? Apparently not. I wished I could hear the analysis from Phil and Paul, whose voices I miss a lot. 

Wake up to news reports from Nice, but mostly choose to ignore. The morality of continuing to go on with your fun day when there’s terrorism all over is an interesting topic to think about, but I don’t know if I think that thought leads anywhere. 

Breakfast at blah hotel in Avignon, but self-serve coffee yay. It has been hard to live on one tiny shot of espresso per morning. They would make more at the Chateau when we asked, but there was only one person in the dining room and it took a long time. 

Today was one of our big days: Mt. Ventoux, one of the legends. We drove to the village of Monmoiron near the foot of Mt. Ventoux. After a few km to warm up, we joined the hundreds (thousands?) of other bike pilgrims on the route to the moonscape. The hill was steep, for sure, I thought as I neared the top, but not impossible, and I was surprised that the bare rock part was so much smaller in person (since I hadn’t seen it yet). 

And then I saw a marker on the road informing me I was less than half done. 

Oh. Shit. Shit. Shit. 

But, I was able to keep pedaling, and I got a super help from Vitor, one of our guides. He perfectly matched my pace, so all I had to do was look at his wheel.

When we finally did get out of the forest and onto the rock, it really is awe-inspiring. And windy, really windy. 

When it was blowing in my face, even with Vitor helping to deflect the wind I could only manage about 5mph. But, when the road switched back the other way, it was pushing us up twice that fast. 

There was a whole lot of traffic: the day after the passage of the Tour, the day after Bastille Day, … We had a couple of close calls in our group, but everyone made it just fine. At the top, it was miserably cold and windy. I bought some souvenir socks. We took a group shot at the Tom Simpson Monument. 

When the van finally got to the top, we put on all our extra layers and began the descent. The first few km were kinda scary with the wind, and I got kind of stuck with n traffic, but once we got into the trees it was a magnificent descent. 

We took a different road down, miles and miles of sweeping turns, emerging from the forest into lavender fields. Wonderfully, almost embarrassingly beautiful, brings tears to your eyes, felt like skiing on a perfect powder day. 

Nice lunch in Sault (Vlad finds a table full of pretty Russian girls and chats them up like a pro. But of course), then more lavender before climbing back up and then descending the gorge of the Nesque River, also spectacular. Saw wild boar, but not close enough to get a picture. 

Stuart’s backflip into the gorge needed a better camera angle but was still a good concept. 

After the ride, we regrouped and walked back in to Avignon for a so-so dinner. 

We said a sad goodbye to the chateau today and transferred to the next hotel in Avignon today. Thoroughly awful, especially after our delightful digs the previous few days. 

Our activity for the day was to have VIP access to the Departure Village in Montpellier. Being a departure city is kind of a big deal for direct and indirect economic reasons, and the departure village is a way for M. le Maire, Mlle. Princesse de Whatever, and other local dignitaries to go onstage with Bernard Hinault and the rest of the crew, and invite a few hundred friends for the celebration. 

As tourists, a lot of that stuff sort of passes me by. Still, Vlad and I did enjoy local cheeses, wine and oysters at one tent, whilst chatting with a couple of young ladies who consult with local winemakers to help them with le marketing etc. 

Besides the local boosters and tourists like us, the departure village also serves the traveling community of the Tour itself. All the media people have to eat breakfast, meet sponsors, and so on. The teams have to set up the bikes, the riders have to sign and warm up and sign autographs. The UCI has to do doping controls. There’s a barber shop in a tent, sponsored by Bic, and the racers can get a shave or a haircut. However, it also lets you just wander around with the teams as they get ready for the day. I’ll post some up close photos separately. 

So there I am, just wandering around in this big crowd, practically mingling. I almost collided with Julian Alaphilippe, one of the relatively famous guys, who was just riding around. I stood cocktail party-close to people I’ve watched on TV: Greipel, Bookwalter, Chavanel (who looks like a movie star). 

And in the race? They headed up a shortened Mt. Ventoux climb due to high winds.  Three of the leaders collided with one of the motorcycles near the top, causing all sorts of upset. Chris Froome tried to use one of the neutral support bikes because his own second bike was stuck on the crush of fans further down. It looked like he was a clown act. Sad.

Ultimately we were too tired to wrestle with the winds and less than ideal roads, so this became our rest day. 

Today we rode from the chateau in Puissalicon to the finish area in Montpellier, following the actual course a few hours ahead of the race. The ride was more downhill than up, and we mostly had the winds at our back, so we flew down the little country roads. 

We stopped for coffee after while in the town of Villeveyrac, which sits maybe a mile off the course. While we were parking, a tiny little old lady hobbled out of her house and explained sadly that her feet (and here she gestured dismissively at the miserable appendages) were too swollen to get down to watch the caravan go by. Did we have anything to give her? But of course! We gave her a water bottle. She was wonderfully grateful, unless we had anything more? Non, et bien, she turned and went back in. 

On this one day, we had the largest group of any day on the trip. A man and his son joined us just for the day, a birthday present for the teenager, about the same age I was when I first saw guys riding bikes fast. They had a lot of logistical issues, reinforcing for me the benefits of of paying for the whole guided tour package. But despite all that, I hope the Tour shine in young Victor’s eyes lasts like it has in mine. 

Riding on, the group got separated, and somehow we lost Vlad. We waited, backtracked a bit, called the van, nothing. Finally we continued with our ride, which included a ceremonial ride across the finish line and pictures on the podium. 

Stuart showed us why he’s Stuart and the rest of us aren’t by bumming a cigarette from an extremely sexy policewoman (but of course…) to use in one of the iconic images of this trip, if not of the entire Tour.

At the finish area, we got through several checkpoints with our guides and our passes and threaded our way through the media encampment to our private viewing area, a seemingly interminable and highly secure process. And there was Vlad, tucking into the snacks, right where he was supposed to be. How in the hell did you get in here??? Of course, he said, which is his reply to basically everything. Somewhere in there Manny and I were able to get ourselves into the Australian TV commentary shot and proudly display the Mummu Cycling jersey. It was very cool when Phil the head guide got texts from Melbourne a few minutes later saying we’d been seen on TV. 
And yeah, there’s a bike race going on. On a day like this, the script is written in advance… Everybody who cares about winning stays together, and the pure sprinters come out in the final minute to win by inches. But not today. Chris Foome attacked on the flat straightaway, catching his rivals completely off guard, to gain an important few seconds. In the highly refined language of professional cycling, it was a move that said, basically, my cock is a whole lot bigger than yours. 

WHEW! What a great day. But wait, there’s more. I’m right in the middle of our group, ability-wise, and made the decision to join the A group for the return ride. Even though that would put me at almost 90 miles for the day, atop a longest training ride of about 60, there had been a long break sitting in the sun drinking beer and eating chicken wings and canapés. What could go wrong?? Here I am midway through that return trip, feeling a whole whole lot happier than I look. 

As it turned out, nothing went wrong. I needed the group’s indulgence to ease up a couple times due to wind and hills, but overall it was a great epic hurt, rolling through the countryside as the sun slowly lowered. 

And then burgers at 10 PM, and off to bed. Another day in paradise.