Le Tour de France

Today David and I had big plans to run/bike to Versailles (guess which was one was running). However, after trying me out on the smaller of Dave's two bikes, we decided that it was still too big. So Dave went off on his trip alone and I stayed home with Harry Potter for a while.

After an hour or so, I decided that Harry would not consume my weekend so I took him for a metro ride into Paris to try to catch the Tour de France.

I got off at the Place de la Concorde station and walked up the steps onto the packed sidewalk. Everyone had told me that if I wanted to see the Tour I had to get there early in the morning and stake out my spot. Well, I wasn't interested enough to wait all day, so I showed up a few minutes before the riders' expected arrival thought I'd try my luck finding a gap to peer though.

After much jostling and elbowing, I found a cranny that was only 4 people deep and stood on my tip toes to see the bit of road that curved past the Tuilerie Gardens and around the Concorde fountains.

The crowd around me was speaking in a jumble of languages, carrying flags of different countries, many wearing bright yellow official Tour shirts. We waited together in breathless anticipation, watching the big screen that was put up across the street to show the riders' progress.

Finally, a few cars carrying bikes zoomed by, followed by a handful of motorcyles, and then a wave of applause rippled toward us as the peleton whizzed past. A few seconds later a stray rider rode past, talking into a car, then about 10 more support vehicles, and then they were gone. I wondered how long some of those people in the crowd had been waiting for those 15 seconds of excitement.

Well, it turned out to be 15 seconds of excitment another seven times because the last stage of the Tour is a ride up and down the Champs-Elysees eight times. Each loop took about ten minutes, and I hung around to see four before I decided I was satisfied and didn't really want to get stuck in the crowd after the eighth loop.

I jammed my way back along the sidewalk, clutching my bag and being pushed on all directions until I finally popped onto an open street and breathed a sense of relief with the other escapees. I excitedly called Dave, who had just made it home after his 20+ mile run (he's crazy) and knew immediately that I'd gone to the race.

He was dead tired, so he encouraged me to spend some time "burning off some of that energy" in Paris since I was already down there. So I walked a few blocks to the Place de la Madeleine and found a bike rental station. I was inspired to bike.

I really didn't know where I was or where I was going, but I cruised wherever I found clearly marked bike lanes and the traffic wasn't too heavy. I wound up at the Eiffel Tower, ditched the bike a few blocks away, and meandered to the RER station nearby.

Harry kept me company on the short ride back, and I walked home from the station to find Dave sprawled out on the couch. "I can't move my legs", he groaned. I wondered if any of those Tour riders were feeling the same.

I guess I played it down a bit, but it really was cool to see a sliver of the Tour de France. All those weeks of riding--the climbs, the crashes, the sprints-- all ending on the streets of Paris in dramatic fashion.

While I was riding my own wobbly bike along the Seine, I stopped at a stop light and happened to glance across the river just as the peleton cruised by in the opposite direction. After all the jostling and craning and general discomfort to see the riders rush by at the Place de la Concorde, it was the most beautiful scene of the day.