Tour de France

Miles from Home - 5343.0
Firsts / Highlights - Tour de France Stage 1 & 2, saw Paul Sherwin and Phil Ligget, got pictures of most of the race contenders
Miles Hiked - 0 miles (actually, I walked a number of miles on the time trial course, but did not capture any GPS tracks)
Vertical Feet - 0 ft.
Route - No route today
People - Jeremy & Jenn from Wisconsin


Monaco auf einer größeren Karte anzeigen

This post is from July 3-5, 2009.



10 Hours, 5 Trains, 4 Countries, 3 Languages, 2 Currencies, 1 Day

I don’t even know what language I do not understand any more.

Getting to Monaco didn’t happen easily. I passed through 3 different languages starting with German in Switzerland in the morning, Italian in the afternoon and ending with French in Monaco in the evening. In addition to the usual issues, this created a few minutes of intense travel confusion. Upon arrival at what I thought was my final train stop, I got off and found nothing that looked like the area where my hotel was supposed to be located. Nobody was around the station, so I eventually decided that I needed to backtrack 1 stop. A little lost time, but no big deal. When I looked at the train schedule to figure out when I could get the next train back, the previous train station wasn’t there. I examined the schedule for the rest of the day and the whole next day – there were no trains going back to the previous stop. How could that be?

The answer was a special case because the town I was trying to find sat at the border between Italy and France. Trains traveling west refer to it by its Italian name, and trains traveling east use the French name. In some cases, names are fairly similar, but in other cases like this, they are very different. By process of elimination I figured out where I needed to go and made it to my hotel. I wonder if this is how the city of Atlantis was lost to the ages.



On the “Where is Randy Going Next Sweepstakes”, it is now time to declare Kent Kirkpatrick the winner. He suggested that I augment my Giro chasing experience with the start of the Tour de France. At the time of the contest, his suggestion would have been an easy 2-hour trip, but my decision to jump up to Switzerland to catch a window of good weather made it far less efficient. Regardless of the extra travel, it was a great idea. How often do you get to see the start of the two biggest bike races in the world in the same year?

My plan when I left for Switzerland was to leave my bike and box in Finale Ligure (only 2 hours from Monaco). I would spend my week in Zermatt and Interlaken, then pick up my bike as I passed back through Finale on the way to Monaco. Having my bike in Monaco would be fun because I could ride the time trial course immediately before the start of the big race. It sounded feasible, but as I worked through the details, the final 15 minutes of the 10-hour journey proved unworkable.

Problem: The train for the final 15-minute ride into France did not accept bikes.
Possible solution #1: Ride the final miles – Not possible with all of my luggage.
Possible solution #2: Take a taxi instead of a train for the last short segment – not possible or difficult because taxis cannot transport you across the border between Italy and France. Even with that solved, I would need to disassemble my bike to fit it into a taxi, which was a big project for a small ride.
Possible solution #3: Rent a car – I’m not going to break down and rent my first car to drive 15 minutes.

As unlikely as it seems, I could not solve the logistics for the final six miles, so my bike remained in Finale and I went to Monaco.



How does the Giro compare to Le Tour? I’m sure there are more differences than meet the eye, but my observation is that they are similar, but everything at the Tour is just a bit bigger. The finish line bleachers are bigger, the sea of television trucks is bigger, the newpaper coverage is bigger and the overall hype is bigger.

I don’t know if they realized these numbers, but Monaco was expecting 250,000 spectators for “The Grand Depart” (opening ceremonies, Stage 1 and departure for Stage 2). With fans spread out over a course, it is difficult to estimate numbers, but whether or not the estimate is accurate, it is a big event.



My first full day in Monaco was the individual time trial for Stage 1. I arrived about 4 hours before the start of the race to get a feel for the city, wandered through the team bus/truck area and walked part of the time trial course. The bus/truck area was very similar to the final stage of the Giro in Rome with one big difference. All of the bike manufacturers were showing off the latest equipment that they would debut for the Tour. They were really only interested in showing off to the press, but spectators could see the bikes being prepped, so it was all out in the open. I didn’t see anything radically different, but there were some components that won’t be available to mortals for a while. Some of the headsets, in particular, looked more aerodynamic and integrated into the frames.

Monaco is a great place for the ultra wealthy. I am pretty sure that city (country) could absorb as much money as you cared to leave with them. I ended up leaving a bit more than I expected. One hour before the start of the race, my camera died again. Because of the issue with the image sensor, I was pretty sure that it was really dead this time. I found a camera shop with the Canon G10 in stock. It wasn’t as expensive as Switzerland, but still more than the U.S.. I didn’t see going without a camera for the rest of the trip as a viable option, so I am now the owner of a Canon G10. It is nearly identical to the dead G9 with a couple of extra megapixels and a higher resolution screen. Other than that, the biggest difference is that this one works.

With the new camera in hand about 15 minutes before the start of the race, I started walking the course to stake out my viewing location. Racers were still out doing recon on the course, but the energy was starting to build for the first competing rider. I decided that I would wonder this time rather than finding a single spot for the entire race. Since this was a time trial with racers going one at a time, I had more than 3 hours to work with. I walked the course (15k total) and watched each rider pass with his police escort in front and team cars behind. Whenever I got to a place that appeared to be a good location for photos, I stopped to shoot a few riders.

Unfortunately, I did not have a list of the start order for the racers. Typically, the order is determined by general classification standing with the top rider going last, but since this was the first stage, it was somewhat random. It appeared that the organizers put the leading contenders at the end of the start order, but that was not completely true. A Texan that you may have heard of was in the first quarter of riders to start after taking a few of years off from the race. Fortunately, I had stopped to take pictures when he went by. He was kind of busy and didn’t have time to wave, but I did manage to get another picture (see first picture in this post).



I got Lance, Levi, George, Frank & Andy, Mark, Fabian, Carlos, Cadel and quite a few others. Unfortunately, I only got a blur with the fading light when Alberto went past. He really was climbing well as he passed me, but apparently did not descend as well as Fabian who won the stage. I also saw Paul Sherwin and Phil Ligget (commentators) wearing shirts, ties and shorts after the finish, but couldn’t grab a decent pic.

Even though point and shoot cameras are better than they used to be, they still have annoying shutter lag. You press the shutter, and the camera captures the image about ½ second later. At one point, I was trying to catch some closeups at high speed around one of the curves. They would have been great pictures with my big camera, but it was hopeless with the point and shoot. In one case, I looked at the picture after the racer went past and there was absolutely nothing in the frame. Not the back of the rider, not even the blur of a back wheel. It was a complete wiff. That is the difference ½ second makes at the speed these guys ride.



The first stage ended with Fabian Cancellara in the Yellow Jersey. He was a member of the Swiss National team at the Bejing Olympics that were lead by Richard Steiner from Hotel Dory (I wrote about him in my “Easy Day in the Alps” post).



The second stage was on Sunday. It was a road race starting in Monaco, so I had an opportunity to watch them get started before I headed to Lausanne Switzerland. In a road stage, you never get to see the race for more than a few seconds. The racers are going for 4 to 6 hours typically, but spectators just get a quick glimpse. I took the train to one station short of Monaco and found a good elevated location on a switchback to watch them pass by. I staked out my spot for 1 ½ hours, then it happened. Police escort, helicopter, lead-out vehicle, peloton, team cars, more police and it’s done. With those 90 seconds taken care of, I was ready to fight the crowds to get a train back to my hotel and pick up my luggage.



The amazing sprinter, Mark Cavendish, from Team Columbia won stage 2. He is already a well-known name in cycling, but I suspect non-cyclists will hear of him before too long. He is racking up stage wins like few others have, and he is only in his early twenties.

Speaking of sprinters, here is a leg of a sprinter (Tom Boonen). Obviously a sprinter needs to have power to sprint to the finish line after a 130-mile race, but you can also see how many times he has crashed. All of these guys have battle scars, but sprinters in particular get involved in all kinds of nasty jostling as the pack sprints for the line.

Update - Sorry Tom - shortly after publishing this post, Tom Boonen crashed hard on Stage 6. Fortunately, he was able to continue, but the battering of a sprinter goes on.

I have decided that it is a very good thing I am doing this trip alone. Although there are plenty of people who spectate, it takes a certain type of person to spend most of a day to watch 90 seconds of action. Traveling alone, I don’t need to worry about anyone else being bored out of their minds.

The heat and humidity are really starting to build in the Mediterranean. My clothes were soaked just from walking the course. The trains all the way from Switzerland to Monaco (10 hours) did not have air conditioning. How hot was it? The chocolate I brought from Switzerland was fully liquefied in the train without being exposed to sunlight.

With the heat climbing and the European vacation crowds growing, I think the window of opportunity for visiting warm destinations is closing. I will head back up to Switzerland and decide how much longer to continue the European leg of this adventure.