July 15

We decided to go to the finish today. Not all the way to the finish where you get squeezed and shoved and pushed, but maybe a couple of kilometers from the end. Villard-De-Lans looked like a small town so we figured it would be crowded, but also hoped people would skip today to go on to l'Alpe d'Huez for tomorrow. We got what we expected in Villard, a tiny one lane road (well almost one lane), jam packed with cars and motor homes, so we pulled off and parked about 10K from the town and got the tandem out. As we were riding in, we had our first flat on the bike this trip. I always keep a couple of tubes with us, so we stopped and I changed the tire and we were back rolling in just a few minutes. We turned into town and up a hill and heard someone yelling, "Hey the girl on the back isn't pedaling!". It was our friends from Aspen that we had met last night. We waved and continued towards the finish. It was easy riding because the barricades were up for the race and we were just riding the same course that Lance and everybody else would in a few hours, just a little bit slower, well a lot slower. We found a nice spot, in the shade, up hill about 1.5 K from the finish. We stopped and pulled out our LAF/ LiveStrong signs, American and Texas flags and claimed our spot for the day. Angie settled in and I walked to the finish, just to check it out. I walked over to the OLN booth and spoke to the Bobke and he filled me in on how the race was going. As I walked back to our spot, I was very satisfied that we had a great position on the course. We figure it could take us several hours to get out of this town this afternoon, but we think Lance could take the jersey today, so we wanted to be near the end to cheer him on!

It was very cool to see so many people in the caravan raise their LiveStrong wristbands to us and wave when they saw our LAF and LiveStrong signs. Besides the other riders wearing the bands, even the directors in the team cars wave to us when they see our signs.

As we had hoped, Lance was in a small group as he passed us, well ahead of the yellow jersey, so even though we didn't know who won the stage today, we knew Lance would end the day in yellow! We cheered for all of the riders as they passed. We even got to cheer for some again as they rode back down the climb to get to the team busses.

After the race, we rode back to the car, beating tons of traffic and made pretty good time to our next hotel. We did get our regular after the race rain shower, which had been consistent for the past several days, but it only brightened the day because a huge rainbow formed with the brightest color of the day, YELLOW!

I had found a place about 11K up the Col de la Madeleine in a little village, Saint Francois Longchamp. We’ll be staying here two nights, an unusual feat for our travels. It was just getting dark by the time we got to the hotel. It will be about a 70k drive to l'Alpe d’Huez for tomorrow’s time trial, but the following day we can walk out of the hotel and see the race, they come to us! I didn’t realize until we got to the hotel that it was next door to the place we stayed and loved two years ago. We got to hotel before 10 pm, a rare treat! We had finally gotten back to the French hotels we had gotten used to for the past 3 years. The floor sounded like it was going to fall in when we walked across, there was an unusual step down in the middle of the room, a cute lamps on the table with no plug nearby, and the standard washtub bathtub. The bed looked like a fold-up kind of cot, but it slept fine! Tomorrow's Time Trial up l'Alpe d'Huez was exciting when we first heard about it, but every day since then, we've been dreading it more and more. There are going to be way too many people on that mountain tomorrow. Angie and I both will be glad when it's over. Lights out for tonight.

July 19 / July 21