July 17

The town was adorable with beautiful mountains on either side and a cold stream rushing thru town. We explored for a while, shopped at the pharmacy for toothpaste, deodorant and soap. We also found a Le Petite Casino (grocery store) and got water and snacks. We were going to pick up some pizza from a place we saw earlier but it had closed so we went to the restaurant next to our hotel. We sat outside under a big canopy and thankfully had a waiter that spoke English. The food was good, but they served my trout whole (with the head on). I must have had too many new and different flavors because I ended up getting sick, but immediately felt better. It was easy going to sleep that night because we were both exhausted. Jerry didn’t even wake up when someone tried to enter our room with their key. They finally realized they were in the room next door and left.

19 July

(Jerry)We got up rested. Angie told me I had slept right thru the neighbors trying to come in our room instead of theirs next door. We headed down to get some breakfast. I was still bummed that my suitcase was gone. I wasn’t totally convinced that mine wasn’t one of the ones they blew up yesterday. I guess I was lucky (?) that it was still in London. As we went downstairs the desk clerk stopped us…She had my suitcase! The airport had just delivered it. YEAH! I think I was happiest that I had our Lance Armstrong Foundation sign back, along with the US Postal T-shirts that we had made. We had some rolls for breakfast that had chocolate and sugar in them. And we bought some sandwiches to take with us for lunch. We expected the road to be closed up the final climb of the day, but were surprised to find it still open. The gendarmerie close the roads early along the Tour route to clear out traffic. Luckily, since we had scouted the top of the mountain yesterday, we already knew we didn’t want to be at the top, so we parked near the bottom and walked up until we got tired and found a good spot. We ended up about halfway up the climb in a nice shady area. It was a pretty steep grade in that section, so the riders would be slowing as they passed us. The bonus for this spot was an ice cold mountain stream that ran down behind us and made it feel like it was air-conditioned, which is something France has not yet discovered. We were soon joined by a really loud group of Spanish fanatics. We thought they might be too overboard for us until we noticed they were wearing lots of US Postal hats and shirts. One guy came over to talk to us when they noticed our LAF sign. Fortunately, his English was much better than our Spanish and they turned out to be the Chechu Rubiera Fan Club. The girl that had first noticed our LAF sign was Chechu’s sister. We were all soon friends, cheering together. We took some pictures and exchanged email addresses to send our pictures to each other. Time passed and soon came the riders! Laurent Jalabert and an Once rider passed first, but they were well behind Lance in the overall time. Then came the lead group with Lance in yellow and other Postal riders. Everything gets real hectic, screaming, mass hysteria – for about 20 seconds, then they’re gone. Angie was doing her Postal cheerleader gig this year. She brought our daughter Jami’s pom poms and decided she would be the unofficial-official-USPS cheerleader. The Spanish and French must not see many cheerleaders, because they loved her! Chechu’s sister even borrowed the pom poms for a picture. Several minutes later the rest of the Peloton came by. They packed the narrow road and passed inches away from us. As we headed down the mountain we got word that Lance had won the stage! It had been a great day. I got my luggage back, we had a good spot on the mountain with some fun Spanish USPS fans and Lance won the stage! Couldn’t get any better – we thought. Then we noticed that the riders were riding back down the mountain past us. There was only one road up, so the quickest way for them to get back down was ride their bikes. We saw Ekimov, Chechu and George Hincapie, so we figured the bus was waiting for them at the bottom. Sure enough as we turned the corner there was the Postal Team bus. But right as we got close enough to take some pictures, it pulled off ahead of us. In the short drive back to our hotel, about 10 kilometers, Angie was sound asleep. I past a couple of different team busses parked just blocks from our hotel and thought, what if the Postal team is staying in the same town as we are? I quickly dismissed the thought since I had just found the room the day before we left the states, after looking for months. Angie woke up as we parked at our hotel and as we were walking in we saw a Postal team car turn the corner. We couldn’t help but walk around the corner and to our surprise, there was the US Postal Team bus and mechanic truck. The mechanics were set up to start cleaning the bikes. Right in front of us sat Lance’s bike that had just won the stage.