Thursday, July 22

A few comments about last night's dinner. As usual it was great: rose wine (which were really starting to enjoy) pea soup, white fish, local cheese, and a peach tart. As we ate we eaves-dropped on the Aussie cycling group that has been here for several nights. Thye were having a lot of fun. Each night they hold an auction for their group, bidding on which team will win the next day's stage. Winning bids rarely topped 10€, but with 21teams the winner probablygot a nice payoff. The guy running the auction also recited a couple of poems, one of which was "The Geebung Polo Club". It had a lot of Aussie idioms that we couldn't decipher, but it sounded a lot like "Casey at the Bat" in both it's meter and content. After dinner we were talking to some of the Aussie's in the lounge. They were very friendly, a national trait, and I shared "Casey..." with the guy who recited the poems. He acknowledged the similarities and we discovd on Google that "Casey..." was the older poem.

Thursday morning we were on the road by 9:30. It rained very hard all night and continued as we drove to our Tour viewing spot, just south of the village of Asson, which was the mid-point of today's stage. The area was beautiful rolling farm country,and we were surrounded b cornfields. Luckily, we were able to park right along the Tour's route., so we could stay right in the car, staying nice and dry. We arrived there around 11:30, the caravan arrived a little after 1pm, and the lead riders arrived at 2:45. We displayed our big US flag across the windshield, and held our smaller US & Texas flags. There were very few other spectators in this area due to both it's isolation and the weather, and very few Americans. The clouds, rain, and fog probably made helicopters unsafe to fly so we had litle notice when the lead riders came upon us. Fortunately our viewing spot was so good that we could see nearly 300 yards down the road, and I was able to make good use of the binoculars. The lead group contained about six riders, none we contenders, then Carlos Sastre by himself, and finally the Peloton which included Contador, Schleck, Lance, and all at the others. Since the area was flat, they moved much faster past us in comparison to their pace on the mountain climbs, but it was still a thrill to be so closer to them. I got a lot of good pix; I just let the shutter run on the continuous ode in order to maximize the number of shots I got. Fabian Cancellara, aka "Spartacus" was at the rear of the group,not a regular place for the man who wore the yellow jersey for several of the opening stages. All in all, all the riders were past us within 16 minutes and we were heading back to the hotel by 3:05 pm.

We were back in our hotel in time to watch the final 20 km of the stage. It was an exciting finish with Schleck winning, but I have to wonder if he was disappointed that he just couldn't shake Contador. The weather for the riders was treacherous, the fog on the slopes of the Tourmalet made it very difficult to see and apparently on the climb up the Col de Souloir there were sheep in the road that really caused some problems. There area three stages left, but I have to think that Contador is in the driver's seat. It really seemed like Schleck couldn't shake him, and when they get to the time trial on Saturday, Contador has historically done much better than Schleck. The finish in Paris could be an amazing one, anything can happen when there is only an 8 second lead.

Tomorrow we fly to Paris, arriving around 2 pm. We'll miss the beauty and serenity of the Pyrenees, but we're anxious to get to Paris too!