My Tour of the 2004 Tour de France
This is the short version of what I did each day. Click here to get to the long version, if you dare.
June 30th, Wednesday - Co-worker Lara graciously drives me to JFK International near NYC for my Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt, Germany to connect to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris and then goes on to surprise her mother by showing up on her mother's birthday.
July 1st, Thursday - arrive in Paris - take Roissy Bus to Opera district locate Hotel Royal - Bergere, assemble bike and ride around Paris to Eiffel Tower, etc - figure out that I should have brought a USB cable to download photos from camera to computers in cybercafes.
July 2nd, Friday - go to train station to validate Eurail Flexipass - learn after 40 minutes in wrongn line that big stations like Gare Lyon have special windows for Eurail ticket holders - walk a long long ways to find an FNAC store that has stuff like USB cables - ride bike around in afternoon - go to Champs-Elysees and circle Arc de Triumph on my bike - soon known to me by the French phrase "le petite velo".
July 3rd, Saturday - catch nice high speed train to Liege, Belgium at 6 something in morning. Have breakfast served similar to service on the old and nice airlines. Assemble bike and trailer at train station at Liege - all the lockers big enough to hold the trailer are full. Bike prologue route pulling trailer and wearing long pants and Hawaiian shirt - Talk to Bob Roll at OLN broadcast trailer and they offer to keep trailer in their fenced off area until prologue is over. Leave Liege late with very poor directions to a campsite - end up in Ninane after climbing 2 km of 11% grade and manage to locate B&B that allows me to camp in yard and have breakfast for only 10 euros. Ninane is on a ridge above Chaudfontaine - source of about 1/2 the bottled drinking water in Belgium and northern France.
July 4th, Sunday - a cold and rainy bike ride along along the Meuse River from Ninane to Namur where I locate a very nice river side youth hostel and a room with 5 other men for only about 14 euros per night including breakfast.
July 5th, Monday - the only Monday of the Tour de France this year that is not a rest day. I stake out a place on the barriers 150 meters from the finish and watch the race with three cyclists who have come over from England to see some of the tour. We had to grab our piece of the barriers near noon and hold it until 5:30 pm to see the finish that close to the line. A crash almost right in front of us with 175 m to go took out Casper and Arvesen and blocked a few riders, possibly including Petacchi.
July 6th, Tuesday - take trains to Arras, changing in Lille, see signs for Roubaix along the way - site for finish of Team Time Trial (TTT) - assemble bike and locate a municipal campsite - traveling with a California professor on a unicycle and a backpacker. This campsite was only 4.70 euros per night - cheapest sleeping of my whole trip and I practically had to ambush the caretakers to give them my money.
July 7th, Wednesday - wake up to warm breezes but dry lawns - means rain to me - but I want to bike the TTT course - so I head out early and wind my way to Cambrai along very quiet roads and lots of beautifully maintained WWI cemeteries. Get to starting point in Cambrai just as a charity ride to benefit the "Enfants du Monde" - the infants of the world begins - though they have a good start because I have to walk through the crowd behind the barriers for at least a kilometer I catch them and ride among them - one of the elder cyclists actually grabbed my shoulder and had me pull him up a few hills - but the event is being filmed by France 2 television and the crowd is responding as much or more to my "petite velo" than to the charity dudes and dudettes so I am told to stop and give the group some room or the director will sic the gendarmes on me. I get soaked for the last 10 km of the TTT route in a cold rain and wind - so I go back to the campsite - take a nice hot shower and put on dry clothes - have a sandwich and a few beers in a pub and go out in the rain to watch the last six teams come in. They are impressive sweeping around rain slicked corners intent on getting a good time for their team.
July 8th, Thursday - I can't be this close to Roubaix without seeing some of the pave that the makes the Paris-Roubaix race known as "En Fer du Nord" - The Hell of the North - so I bike up close to Lille, find a camp site - set up my stuff and begin biking to Roubaix to see some pave and to see the velodrome where the race ends. Pave is a rural sort of cobblestone - made with much larger and much more irregular stones. It makes for very tough cycling and many of the cyclists in the tour have never ridden pave before this day. Lance and his boys have inspected the course and ridden the pave sections in advance so they know what to expect. Of course rain catches me on the way there - but I have the good luck to meet two teenage boys from the Roubaix Cycling Club and they lead me down what seems like a 100 turns to the velodrome and we get on the track and do half a lap - them warning me not to try riding the banked curves in the rain. I bike back to the camp site and listen to the rain hitting the tent all night and until nearly 11 am the next morning. The campsite was about 6.50 euros per night.
July 9th, Friday - Looking on
the map I see that I am close to Normandy and I wanted to see
the beaches and cemeteries so I bike to Lille and got on a nice
train planning to go to Normandy. Enter the train system of France.
To go to Normandy from Lille - which is quite nearly in Belgium,
the train system which is largely a hub and spoke deal wants you
to go to Paris to catch a train to Normandy. That would be fine
but once you get to Paris you don't just hop off one train and
get on another - you have to do a Metro or RER dance and go over
around and through the train station through subway turnstiles
with subway tickets and go to another station and go over around
and through turnstiles and up escalators and/or stairs to the
level of the train platforms.
In their wisdom the train reservation people usually give you
about an hour to go through all these gyrations - which is most
likely adequate if you know what you are doing - but for the novice
burdened with bike in bag and bike trailer it can be difficult
- ask for two hours for your first experiment in inter-station
train travel if it is at all possible.
Fortunately I was assigned a guardian angel, in the form of a
young woman who had just completed a grad school interview in
Lille and was heading home but who had to make the same rail,
subway, rail connections as I did and furthermore I had the perfect
excuse to speak with her since she was in my seat on the train
that I caught out of Lille. Turns out she had the right seat but
the wrong car - but once I started talking with her I didn't really
stop and she helped me go through the process of buying the subway
ticket and getting through the gates and navigating the platforms
- not really that different from New York or London, much cleaner
than NY actually - but still with a few hurdles, etc. After freely
giving me all that help she would not give me her name or let
me take a photograph of her - but she was resplendent in her interview
clothes with perfect understated eye makeup. I will just have
to be content holding the vision of her and the memory of her
kindness in my minds eye.
People on the trains in France are quite often very quiet.
It is almost like a library atmosphere where speaking out loud
is met with a stern look. In some first class train cars there
is a "salon" area - walled off from the rest of the
car where you can speak up without disturbing fellow travelers.
Got to Bayeux near the Normandy beaches getting near dark and
found my way to the Family Home Hostel and got a room shared with
4 others in an attic location. The layout of this place was wild
- in the evening after the youth hostel office was closed you
had to go through a bathroom to find the winding circular stone
staircase to our floor. The stone staircase was so old that the
treads were worn down and replace with wooden treads.
July 10th, Saturday - Some cyclists
I had met in Namur, friends from their college days, one now from
Oregon, one still in the home area near Kansas City were staying
at the hostel. They were biking out to the Normandy beaches and
were willing to have another person along. We had a great ride
out and got to Omaha Beach at dead low tide. We took off our shoes
and socks and locked our bikes and hiked out across the beach
to the water - which was much warmer than I thought that it would
be. The expanse of beach that the US troops had to cross during
the Normandy invasion on June 6, 1944 was huge. It is amazing
that anyone made it across the beach.
Next we went to very impressive American Cemetery, which wasn't
dedicated until 1956. we picnicked in the parking lot speaking
with lots of other American cyclists - many on a tour organized
by their club. From there we biked to Arromanches, site of the
"instant harbor" created by putting down "mulberries"
- craft filled with stone or concrete to make a seawall and saw
a 360 degree movie about the invasion. We biked back to Namur
from there.
July 11th, Sunday - Bayeux is home to the Bayeux Tapestry - a work of art nearly 1,000 years old that tells the tale of the invasion of England by William the Conqueror. The tale is laid out in scenes along a piece of linen nearly 70 meters long and half a meter wide. Wool is used in embroidery fashion to show ships, horses, men and women with words in Latin along the bottom - very impressive and in great shape for 1,000 years old. I saw that after doing some laundry and then visited the Bayeux Cathedral in the afternoon.
July 12th, Monday - met the KC friends on the train for trip to Limoges - which is both a tour start town and very close to St Leonard de Noblat - another tour start town. The KC guys had made friends with a journalist for Danish public television and he had located a youth hostel where you got a private room and breakfast for only 14 euros per night - so we went out there and got rooms and dropped our stuff. Then we went back into town and spent some time in a cybercafe checking email and sending out photos. Finally we had dinner at a nearby Chinese restaurant.
July 13th, Tuesday - We did some errands in the morning. The dryer in Bayeux had shrunken my bike shoe liners about 5 sizes so they were useless and also cooked one of my three pairs of cycling socks. The KC guys had a recommendation on a bike shop so we headed out there and they had what I needed - plus they had a wooden bicycle on display - very neat. One of nosepieces had let go on my glasses. I found an optician with a shop and they technician replaced both my nosepieces free of charge. Finally I stocked up on some groceries for a roadside snack as we planned to watch the peloton go by somewhere outside St. Leonard de Noblat.
July 14th - Wednesday - My plan was to leave early and bike as much of the tour route to St. Flour as possible. I left close to 7 AM and went to the start and rode merrily along the course until 8:39 or so when the gendarmes whistled me down and told me that the course was closed to all traffic but people holding credentials. I had been having a great ride, too. I asked him to show me where we were on the map, since once on the course you have a hard time losing it, but he said he had no idea, since he was just dropped off there from a bus and didn't know the area. The locals surrounding him weren't any help either. It was too early to wait for the peloton so I rode off down tiny farm roads into the "wilderness". The roads were paved but hilly. I wandered, circled and backtracked and finally headed to Uzerche where I got a beautiful campsite along the Vizere River.
July 15th - Thursday - Time to jump ahead and let the tour catch up with me. From Uzerche I caught trains which took me to Foix - which is not too far from Plateau de Beille. I found a hotel listed in Rick Steve's France 2004 book where I got a third floor room with bath for 20 euros a night. I booked 4 nights and settled in.
July 16th - Friday - I looked around Foix a bit in the morning and then biked out toward Plateau de Beille. I was on the wrong side of the river and did some unnecessary and very hot climbing and then took the next available bridge to the other side. I roasted in the lower windless reaches of the climb up to the Plateau and then got rained on as I reached the top. The rain felt good actually. There is a cross country ski lodge at the top and I took shelter under a porch and ate some lunch. The rain cleared up but I got soaked again as a storm followed me from the base of the mountain all the way back to Foix.
July 17th - Saturday - I got out of the room by 6:15 or so and started biking from Foix to Plateau de Beille. On Friday I had picked the spot where I wanted to see the race from. It was 2 kilometers from the finish just before the barriers began at the 2 km kite - the last of the steep stuff and you could look down and see about 3 or four switch backs too. Since so many people were on the mountain I knew that I would have to get there pretty early to get some road frontage. I stopped and drank a bunch of water at a spring marked King Henry IV where I had gotten water the day before, but I could have used a bunch more water that long hot afternoon. I got back close to 7 PM after being caught in some rain again on the way home.
July 18th - Sunday - a tourist day for me as I went out to find the "Grottos of Nivaux" know for some prehistoric cave drawings and paintings. Along the way I went to a park and exhibit about cave paintings that was very good. When I finally got up to the Grottos entrance I learned you would have to book about a month in advance to actually get down into the caves and see the stuff. But that was OK - the exhibit I had seen earlier was an exact replica and very well done. Biked home and you guessed it - got caught in the rain.
July 19th - Monday - Time for another side trip. This time to Avignon in the Provence region to bike the "Giant of Provence", Mont Ventoux, a huge extinct volcano that just looms over the countryside. In the Foix train station I asked about ways to get to Avignon. They gave me the choice of going back through Toulouse - which was a bit of a pit or going another route that took 12 minutes longer but would take me along the coast of the Mediterranean - which I had never seen. I chose the slow route and got another plus when I was able to ride in an open air traincar from Carol de la Tour to Perpignan - through the Pyrenees. It was beautiful, like being in a chauffeur driven convertible through wonderful mountains. I found a youth hostel in Avignon for 14 euros a night.
July 20th - Tuesday - A very
hot and humid day. Went to the train station and put my trailer
in a locker for 8 euros thinking I would be back from Mont Ventoux
in time to catch a train to Grenoble. That took some time and
then I had to bump around a while to find my way out of Avignon
- but did bump into a Harley Davidson dealership where I could
get some Harley t-shirts with Avignon, France on the bottom. Got
out of town and biked all the way to Bedouin before I found a
post office. Cost me 29 euros to ship those t shirts home!! Two
nights lodging!! Oh well.
Ventoux was amazing. Got back too late to train and went to station
and retrieved my stuff and got my bunk back at the hostel.
July 21st - Wednesday - On the train early - got off in Grenoble at 10:14 AM. Big hitch - no lockers to stash my trailer in. So I bike toward Alpe d'Huez dragging my junk and finally find a motel and they agree to let me leave my stuff even though they are booked full. I catch on to some Indiana guys and they have a cue sheet that offers a "back" way up the Alpe since the main route will be closed by the time we get there. I get to the route, having to leave the bike and walk the last 4 km in time to see the last 40 riders. Great day, long bike back. Just as darkness falls I pull into a campsite in Grenoble.
July 22nd - Thursday - I have
4 days left on my Eurail Flexipass so I decide to take a spin
around
Amsterdam. I am about ¼ Dutch anyway. In Grenoble I book
trains to Amsterdam, from Amsterdam to Paris, from Paris to Besancon
for the Saturday time trial, but the woman says she can't get
me from Besancon back to Paris. She also gets me a hotel in Amsterdam
and one in Paris for less than I have to pay at the one that I
have already booked. This process takes about 40 minutes and so
I miss the early train out of Grenoble - but I need to dry my
dew and rain soaked tent so I go outside and find an long railing
and put my tent, sleeping back, hand washed clothes, etc on the
railing for them to dry in the almost 2 hours that I have to wait.
Good thing because I won't use the tent again. In Amsterdam there
are new cabbies from Morrocco and they don't know the city well
and don't know the language well. After 4 or 5 stops for directions
a cabbie gets me from the station to my hotel. It is in a very
quiet residential section and pretty nice. I even have a phone
and TV in the room.
July 23rd - Friday - Tourist again - a boat tour and a bus tour of Amsterdam. In the late afternoon I watch the end of the race on a large screen in a bar. The commentators are speaking English - neat. Lance has got things sewn up quite well and for most of the cyclists the day is like a club ride. I head back to the hotel and call a cab in time to make the train to Paris. The cab takes forever and I miss the train. I get a hotel right next to the train station and cancel my room in Paris for the night - easy to do because both hotels are in the same chain and the desk clerk makes the call.
July 24th - Saturday - out of Amsterdam on an early train to Paris then I have to do the train shuffle via subway to another station - I was hoping to get to my Paris hotel to leave my trailer and even the bike but there isn't time. I get to Besancon in time to see the last 30 cyclists on the time trial. The course is very close to the station. I catch a train out of Besancon but can't get any further than Dijon on the way back to Paris. I find a hotel - same chain, cancel Paris again and spend the night in Dijon.
July 25th - Sunday - out of Dijon on way to Paris - have to take subways to get to hotel. Get my and room drop stuff. Subway to Place de la Concorde and then the barricades blocking the side roads force you to hike half of the Champs Elysees before you can get to the course. Watch a few laps quite a distance from the course and then hike to within view of the big screen at the finish line for the finale and the presentations of the jerseys and awards. Tough to think that the 2004 Tour is over and Lance et al. have controlled it so well that there was never any real doubt about his shooting for number six coming out the way that he preferred.
July 26th - Monday - subways to Charles de Gaulle Airport - the plane to Frankfurt and then from Frankfurt back to JFK International near New York City - get a room at some old beat up Ramada Inn for the night for $129 - might be the most expensive room of the trip. The flight from Frankfurt was remarkable in that I sat next to a village leader from Liberia who had had to flee Liberia to Ghana when Liberia was getting crazy a few years ago. He was on the plane with his second eldest daughter and about 15 others from his village. They were immigrating to the USA to start a new life. Some immigration authority had placed them in Providence, Rhode Island of all places.
July 27th - Tuesday - Ramada Shuttle to JFK A Train to Long Island Railroad to Penn Station and then grab a big salad and get out on the street. Eat the salad watching all the folks go to work. Walk 8 blocks uptown to Port Authority Bus Terminal - catch the 10 AM bus to Oneonta for $40.15 - for $8.85 more I could have flown to Tampa. Start seeing some pretty heavy rains as we pass Pine Hill. Arrive in Oneonta at 2:45 PM where Carol and Bo meet me at the bus station. The Oneonta area had the second wettest July since 1854 - 9 inches of rain.