TdF Follow-Up: Bike Candy

At the starting village in Bordeaux on July 24, I was able to get up close to a lot of the team bikes, and took these photos of some of the interesting details.   You can click on any of these photos to see them even bigger and closer.  Don't drool too much. . . 

My favorite detail was the shark teeth painted on the front end of the HTC bikes:

Team Garmin - those handlebars look as if they would provide some lift!

Euskatel's Orca road bikes - just like mine!

Team Euskatel's Orbea TT Bikes:

One of the Cervelo Test Team's TT Bikes:

No shift levers here - they're using the electronic shifting system:

The HTC TT bikes were all out up close:

HTC is using electric shifters - note the shift buttons on handlebars and on the aerobars, in place of shift levers

The cockpit of Cav's TT bike is unlike anything I've ever seen - no stem or stempost whatsoever:

The rear brake is moved down from its usual spot and is tucked in right behind the crank:

George Hincapie's road bike:

Front end of Francais des Jeux.  Note the "hatch" on the downtube, access to internal cables?

Gold chain on the Team Footon road bikes - this would look good on mine too!

Interesting seat stay molding on the Team Sky bikes.  Nice colors too.

Team Liquigas all lined up and ready to roll.

Geraint Thomas' road bike.  He's also using the electronic shifters; you can see the small battery back below the bottle cages.  Also, note the elliptical chainring.

Don't know which Milram rider this bike is for, but it's a very aggressive setup - notice how high the seat is set compared to the handlbars:

Team Footon's road bikes were gorgeous - as if made from solid gold:

Sunday in Paris II

It's almost 2:00 a.m. on the last day of the Tour de France – an incredibly exciting and fun day, starting with a bullet train ride from Bordeaux to Paris, and an afternoon spent just about 50 meters from the finish line. Rather than try to describe the day, I'll let some photos from today do the talking. Thanks to everyone who followed this trip – I hope that this blog conveyed just a fraction of how exciting and fun it was.

Sunday in Paris

We've arrived at our viewing spot on the Champs Élysées, about 50 meters past the finish line, and we have already been enjoying champagne and foie gras (which we've consumed by the pound all week). Lunch still to come What an incredible spot!! The peleton arrives in about 2-1/2 hours.

Bordeaux Time Trial

Today was our chance, finally, to visit the "starting village" for a stage of the Tour de France. This was the final individual time trial starting from Bordeaux, a large city about 30 minutes west of our hotel in Saint-Emilion. It's kind of hard to describe, but the village consists of a sort of movable town square with sponsors' tents arranged around the perimeter, and various booths serving different kinds of food, all free, in the middle (winning dish was the grilled ham and roquefort sandwich).

Immediately adjacent was a huge parking area where all of the team buses were parked, with the bikes set up outside and riders warming up for their rides. And all of this is only accessible to the press and a limited number of VIPs, including us!

As soon as we arrived, Tony and Del, friends from Australia, were keen to try to find Robbie McEwen, so we headed to the Katusha bus. This was early, so things were still quiet. We walked up and found McEwen sitting on the back of one of the team hatchbacks pulling on his shoes. He was super-nice, chatted with us and let us get several nice photos, including this one of him, Del and me. As soon as we took this, he jumped on his bike and started warming up.

Although we didn't get any other photos quite like this, we did see a lot of the riders as they came out and warmed up. Dave Zabriskie gave us a nice smile and a thumbs-up, while others were lost in their iPods.

Another great thing about having access to this area is the opportunity to ogle and drool over all of the bikes. And the time trial bikes are tricked out to the extreme and really fascinating to get right up close to. Many of them were using the new electronic shifters, but a surprising number were using regular manual equipment. Even though the team bikes are all matching, each rider does get to choose his own pedal and cleat system, which is an interesting detail that you'd never know without seeing the bikes up close.

When his start time comes, each rider simply hops on his bike and rides out alone through the parking lot and over to the starting area, where riders go through a chute ending in a place where the bikes are inspected and weighed. Then, it's a last chance for coffee (really!) or water, then up the ramp.

We saw several off, then boarded the buses again for the drive, about 45 minutes, to the town of Margaux, which was 30 km into the route and 22 km from the finish. Our tents were set up directly across the street from the Chateau Palmer, and I'm sure that French TV did one of its famous chateau flyovers, so I hope that Versus picked it up. The chateau is pretty easy to pick out, with four round towers at each corner. And our yellow tents right across the street!

Every couple of minutes, a police whistle from around the curve would signal, and then a motorcycle or two would appear, followed by the rider and his following team car. We knew from our rosters which rider was coming next, so we could be ready to get a photo, although even that was hard to time just right due to their fantastic speed going by.

Eventually, we saw all of the riders, including Schleck and Contador at the end, those last two surrounded by many, many vehicles and helicopters following overhead.

We went back to the bus and watched the last few riders finish on the TVs there, and then drove back to the hotel. We have dinner here tonight and leave for Paris early tomorrow morning on the bullet train, arriving in time to be at the finish line on the Champs Elysées, which is always exciting.

A Day in Bordeaux

Every year, usually on the second or third day before the Tour de France arrives in Paris, we take a day off from following the Tour and spend some time experiencing the French countryside. Today, our second day in Bordeaux, we took a ride of just a bit over 70 km from Saint-Emilion to a restaurant in the town of Monbazillac, which is east of here. Here's the map and data for today's ride. The first photo, by the way, is our hotel here in Saint-Emilion.

The terrain is gently rolling, and we encountered only a few long, relatively steep hills. For the most part, however, the hills were gentle and the descents were long enough to be fun but not terribly steep. We rode through endless vineyards and fields of sunflowers; through shady woods and several little towns. For the last 20 km or so we settled into a nice steady paceline, averaging around 25 mph or so for mile after glorious mile – a regular "bullet train" streaking across the countryside. It was one of those exhilarating, exciting rides that we dream about: working together as a team, and rejoicing in the speed, the beautiful scenery and the inexplicable sound and feel of the road under our wheels.

We stopped only once for water refills, but also made two unscheduled stops: to fix a flat tire and then a blowout that surprised all of us, sounding as if a big firecracker had exploded in our midst.

Finally, a series of pretty steep climbs took us up to the restaurant, which had a spectacular view and was perched atop what appeared to be the highest ground for miles in every direction.

The lunch was lavish and every course was a work of culinary art, delighting both the eye and the palate. Of course there was plenty of wine too, and we were all happy to relive the morning's tough ride. A short bus ride, less than an hour, back to the hotel, and we faced the unhappy task of packing up our bicycles, which will be transported to Paris tomorrow while we are at the Time Trials in Bordeaux.

We all went into Saint-Emilion, which is about 3.5 km from the hotel, and 12 of us had wine at one cafe before going down to another outdoor restaurant for a long, delicious supper. I think between breakfast, lunch and dinner today, we spent about 7 hours today eating and drinking.

Tomorrow we will make a short drive to Bordeaux, where we'll visit the starting village, then watch some of the time trial starts. We'll get to see and drool over all the TT bikes up close, and with any luck we'll get to meet and talk to some of the riders. Eventually, we'll go to a different spot along the course for lunch and to watch the riders come by one by one.