15 juin - Rode for 1.5 hours

Awoke and had breakfast at le café de 2 mondes. Read the race coverage, and then prepared for our assault on the Alpe d’Huez. The weather was cooler, and the climb went well. I shaved my 2002 time from 57 minutes to 53’ 20’’ this year. After the first two ‘lancets’, I felt pretty good and truly enjoyed the climb. But the TdM was plunged into a pool of confusion at the summit of the Alpe. I reached the top and went back down a few switchbacks. Ric then summitted and went to explore the village. Chris and I reached the top, and assumed that Ric had continued to climb. So we went looking. Unfortunately, Ric (aware of the need for us to be out of the campsite before noon) had already descended back to camp. We wasted about a half an hour before we realized that Ric must have descended. Whoops. We then began the descent. I was nervous that it would be too steep to have fun on the descent. Luckily, I was wrong and we had a blast. We made it back just in time to catch the stage through Borg d’Oisans. What a way to watch a stage. We parked our butts at a brasserie on the intermediate sprint line, ordered ‘quatre pressions’, and enjoyed the race. Les echappees came through without contesting the points. Then the peloton cam through with Quickstep (not sure why) and Postal on the front – and chasing hard. Damn those guys were flying. We had never seen the European peloton that early in the race before there was an established break. It’s completely wrong how fast those guys can ride. It makes the Tuesday ride look a Monday ride. We returned to our campsite (in stealth mode, because we had already check-out), showered and headed to a brasserie to watch the stage finale on France 3. The Col du Coq looked absolutely rustic. Then began the somewhat sad task of closing down the 2003 TdM. We packed all of our gear in a parking lot next to skate park. To keep in interesting, there was a light drizzle and a gaggle of skate-punks to entertain us. We then drove to Lyon, and intended to check into the Hotel Krysium. It seemed like a good idea –only about 60 bucks for the four of us to sleep a few hours before catching out Monday morning flight. Unlike many Americans, I love the French. For a people that seemingly live to ignore most of their government’s rules and laws, yet their lowest level clerks relish in these very same rules. The hotel clerk would not allow four people in the room – only three, these are the rules. We offered to pay a surcharge – nothing doing. We looked into the Sofitel at the airport – but it was way to pricey. So, we decided to camp au savage at the Lyon airport. We figured we had about 15 beers and several bottles of wine – we could make do. It was rather hot in the airport so we tailgated in the parking lot of the rental car lot and drank the remainder of our beer while Ric repacked his bags (the OCD intervention begins when we return to the States). Then we moved the party inside the airport. We set up shop at a coffee stand and uncorked several bottles of wine as we played spades. ‘Round about 4am, two gendarmes came by. They asked us if we had a flight that morning and then left us alone. I guess we were off the beaten path and not being too obnoxious so they didn’t get upset about the open containers. J’adore les francais. But an hour or so later, two more female gendarmes interrupted our games of spades. Their initial concern was that we were trespassing on the property of the closed coffee stand – we were sitting at one of their tables. As we got up, they noticed all of our empty wine bottles (probably should have dumped those). They told us that we should quit drinking wine, and consume mass quantities of water – because we had better be sober when we try to board the plane. So we finished our bottle of wine, and began to gather our luggage from the rental car. Then chilled for an hour before we began the unpleasant task of checking in. The flight to Amsterdam was a blur.