Bonjour! Online again

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Hi everybody,

First of all, apologies for not providing any more entries until now. I am having a totally awesome times of course, but my schedule is a bit tight for sitting at a computer.....between riding (obviously!!), arriving at hotels in the evenings, unpacking, packing, meals etc etc, it doesn´t leave much time for this stuff. Not to mention these freakin´ French keyboards....that have the keys in a different order & two finger typing is sooooo frustrating!!

Anyway, no more whinging cos I have nothing else to complain about.

Now for the proper stuff.....

I have been on the road for a while now....can´t remember how many days & dont even know what day it is, so I have some catch up blogging to do (PS: excuse the grammar....not using apostrophes anymore....the odd key strokes are now seriously pissing me off).

The first few days of riding have been fantastic & just blown me away, for two reasons in particular. First, the countryside & scenery are amazing. Its just like the TdF coverage on TV....rolling through heaps of tiny villages, open farming country, thru forests & passing along rivers & waterways. Quite a buzz to be cruising along at speed with other riders & taking in the scenery at the same time. Its not unusual for us to stop for a coffee break in a village that is 500+ years old.

The second eye opener has been to see just how huge the whole TdF show is in France. Every village, town & city it passes thru just comes to a complete stand still. Thousands of people will line the streets for hours on end, only to have the riders fly past in minutes. Just like the scenery, the whole atmosphere of the event is something the TV coverage cant capture properly. The daily starts & finishes for each stage are a huge festival atmosphere.....& in a different town every day.

The weather has been perfect for riding for the first few days....warm, sunny, up to 30 degrees.

Our itinerary of riding the stages is mixed.....a combination of either riding from the hotels, bus transfers to / from, seeing the starts or finishes (or both), intersecting with the race course or riding the race course.

The tour group has a coach with a purpose-built trailer for transporting the bikes....only had to assemble my bike once...on arrival in Paris.

By this stage we have headed East to the Vosges mountains, where the weather turned ugly. After a storm overnight, the first day of climbing & decending was in the rain. I am usually quite happy to ride in the rain, but lets just say that the mountain decents at speed, in the rain, on foreign roads was ¨interesting¨.

The tour guides are all pretty cruisey guys. Especially Frederico Morini (or Freddy as we have tagged him). He rode for the Gerolsteiner team until he had a bad accident. After surgery & recovery, he couldnt get his spot back on the team & was forced to retire.....now he is a cvcling tour guide. Apart form being a great entertainer, its brilliant to have him on board to tell us about what goes on behind the scenes of a pro cycling team....especially the tactics when we get to see some TV coverage at night or on the bus....blah,blah, boooring for the non-cyclist, but I love it.

Running out of time now....gotta go!!

Hopefully I can catch up the last few days very soon. Until then, stay tuned.

M

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