What a day. It started early with a 6am wake up and considering that I've been here for 2 days...6am Euro time is like 9pm California time. I have to apologize for the lack of updates, but the days have been long and I haven't been able to find time to find a good connection.....
Ok...so the short version is that after breakfast I descended down the back side of La Alp Duez (disclaimer...it's 12am and I'm not paying total attention to grammar and spelling so forgive me) with the Trek Travel group and we road a 140km loop over the Col de Ornon and a few other 15km climbs in the Area. We met the logistics crew at a small restaurant on the side of the road for lunch and a viewing of the Tour De France stage on TV. Kevin Livingston and I decided to ride back up Alp Duez back to our hotel while the other guests took helicopters back to the top since the road was closed to cars.
The slopes of Alp Duez (13.8km with 21 switchbacks) was completely covered with people, camping vans, tents and over 1 million fanatical cycling fans. It was truly amazing to see so many people totally camping out 1 day before the race even arrived in anticipation of watching the race. When Kevin and I left the race still had 90km to go. As we road up the climb, I would stop every 15mins to see what was happening in the race. People all along the climb had TV's hooked up to portable satellite dishes so it was easy to stop to check out the action. Check out some of the photos attached to see what I'm talking about. I made it to the top in time to see Lance win the stage and take the yellow jersey. The entire mountain exploded and cheers could be heard echoing through the valley of the Alps.
A little race analysis: I was asked by a lot of people why CSC was pulling in the final of the race when it appeared as if it was up to USPS to take responsibility......well while not being to direct...remember the stage when Lance appeared to let Basso win?? Well, just like in the corporate world...cycling has a business side to it too that involves negotiating and favors. That's about all I can say.
The next morning, our Trek group had nothing planned more than watching the riders race up the 15.5KM climb up La Alp Duez. The first rider didn't take off until 2pm in 1 minute intervals, but that didn't stop everyone from getting the party started really early. There were 50 or so crazy Dutch people walking outside my hotel window at 8am singing and cheering....a nice alarm clock:) After spending the day watching riders suffer up the climb and enjoying the day seeing old friends and teammates, Trek Travel had arranged to fly us off the mountain to Grenoble to meet up with the bus so that we could head to our next stop in Annace. A beautiful lake with a huge Château that we're staying in. It's necessary to chopper out since it will take 3 days for the million plus fans to get down off the mountain.
Ok..off to sleep. I'll for sure write more tomorrow about the race and try to send more photos.
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