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Friday, July 25 - Stage 18 - Boudeaux to St. Maixent-l'ecole
We slept pretty good except for something she had eaten made Angie feel sick for a while. We had to wait our turn for the shower, then we went outside by the water for breakfast. Croissants, homemade jam and tea sitting by the canal was a nice way to start the morning. The next door neighbor dogs also came to visit and poked their head around the wall separating the two properties. We said our goodbyes to the wonderful hostess and drove downtown to the office of tourism. They made a call for us to extend our reservation in Paris for one night earlier; we had planned on going to the start of the time trial and then heading to Paris, but the problem was that it would make it very difficult to know what was happening in the race, and with Lance only 1:07 ahead we decided we would be much better off watching it on TV in Paris. So we ditched our hotel at the start and will head into Paris as soon as the riders pass us today.

We drove to what we thought was the feed zone…lots of people had already lined up and down the road, so we picked a spot that may be a little past it, but it had a slight uphill to slow the guys down a bit (we hope). Our spot is on the side of the road with a vineyard with a field of sunflowers on the other. Angie obviously thought it was a great place for a nap, because that’s what she did.

The caravan passed, but we were not very interested after several days of it. We already had everything we wanted from them…Mavic hat, Haribo candy, Terminator 3 pens, and assorted other trinkets. The fans were scrambling and diving for the stuff though, it’s kind of like Mardi Gras. People throwing things you don’t need and you fight other people for it!

The first breakaway group passed us without much interest; it was only riders that are far down in the GC. Finally the main Peloton came led by the blue train of US Postal! We saw Floyd Landis on the front with the other guys surrounding Lance. Angie jumped well out into the road with her pompoms and postal shirt on. I was wearing my American flag pants, and waved our LAF sign high above the crowd. As the guys went past, someone (we think it was Floyd) threw his feed bag directly to Angie—a perfect shot! No doubt that the guys saw us and intentionally tossed Angie her prize for the day. As the team cars went past we cheered and the people in the Postal car waved to us too. Angie then noticed that there was still food in the bag so we sat down and she ate the little apple pie and I ate the almond one. Pretty yummy! Angie was so excited to not only get a feed bag, which was why she suggested we come here, but she got one that was tossed to her by the Posties!

We packed up and headed to Paris. With over 500K to go I got in driving mode and Angie curled up with her Postal feed bag and pillow and took her standard nap in the car. We reached Paris about 7:30pm, and were able to find our hotel with no problem. It had rained on us most of the way and was still raining while we unloaded. We took the car to the return place but they were already closed. We parked it in the garage and were glad to be rid of it. We had the tandem to get around if necessary and we planned to just take a cab to the airport on Monday.

We stopped to eat dinner within view of the huge Arc de Triomphe. Before coming to Paris the first time we had seen pictures of the Arc, but it is really amazing how big and detailed it really is in person. It misted on us throughout dinner, but we didn’t mind because we were in Paris eating steak and fries! After dinner we wandered back to our hotel and crashed. The all-important time trial is tomorrow…Lance seems to have recovered from the dehydration, and the past couple of days have been cooler, but with the rain anything could happen. It’s scary to think that tomorrow will decide the winner of the Tour!

July 24 (Stage 17) / July 26 (Stage 19)