We made the 14 miles trip in about 45 minutes on a local road
going up and down, around and through the mountains and seaside villages. At times the road was quite packed with traffic and the air was full of exhaust fumes. One of the French paradoxes - the bus schedule informs you how many carbohydrates your trip is going to burn, they recycle religiously and drive these little itsy-bitsy cars and noisy mopeds, but the pollution even on a seaside local road is more pronounced than during the peak hour on the Times Square. Still - everything around is so picture perfect and the drivers are gracious and patient and you ready to forgive them this little collective B.O.Otherwise, the ride was not very demanding - the slopes are not as steep and turns not as treacherous than, say, California route 101 and despite the bikes being so heavy they needed to be pedaled going downhill, we managed to keep a decent pace (well, not acco
rding to Leon, but I'm happy with self).In Monaco, the bike porn was everywhere. Leon, salivating, was going from one team bus to another, eating bikes with his eyes, taking pictures and filling me on all the technical details of the latest and greatest... Electronic gear shifting anyone? Coming to your stores soon...
We sat through the
2.5 hour opening ceremony - free seats, friendly ushers (they watched our bikes for us), and some crazy Australian girls seating next to us screaming loudly every time an Australian name was announced. I hoped they would start tearing their cloth off, but somehow it didn't happen. The Prince of Monaco read some speech, then each of the twenty teams was called to stage and each person individually presented. Breaks for commercial were filled by some bad and loud singer. But of course, everyone was waiting for Lance. His team (Kazakhstan Astana - why Kazakhstan? because they actually can) was presented second to last. Once Lance got off stage the party went down the hill and we rode back home.(On the picture, to the left of Lance is new tour favorite Alberto Contador)
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Looks like stage 2 on Sunday will go through Nice along Voie Pierre Mathis. Are you on that road or near by? Google earth puts it right through the English Promenade which I gather is the beach front. Anyways if you're right there it's kind of cool.
ReplyDeleteReminds me of being in Chernovtsy in 1980 when the Olympic Torch was run right be me on Kobialintskaya. Little did I know then...
Stage 2 goes right under our balcony. Of course they will zoom past at 40 mph so all we will hear is a "whoosh". Olympic torch at least is carried by a slow runner, or, in case of the torch relay for Atlanta Olympics 1996, passed by Oxford's Norwalk office, it was carried by a special Olympian, so we all had plenty of time to check it out while slowly consuming the corporate-sponsored ice-cream...
ReplyDeleteFor the record - Leon was right - Alberto won the tour, Lance finished third.
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