July 17

We were late getting up and missed breakfast. We would just find something to eat in town. I was loading up the car and noticed a Bianci Time Trial bike leaning up next to the front door. As we were checking out, Jan Ullrich walked down the stairs and out to get on his bike. He was obviously preriding the course that morning. Jan always looks big on tv and Phil and Paul often refer to him as the big German on the Outdoor Life Network broadcast, but in person, he’s a rail, just wider than Lance. Anyway, our first brush with the big boys of the Tour. There were a couple of Bianci team cars out front and some Fassa Bortolo, but no US Postal. We stopped at a bakery for breakfast, then continued down the road to the start. About the time we noticed the barricades starting, we realized we were walking behind an OLN television crew. We continued walking close to them as we passed the Gendarmes, as if we knew where we were going and were supposed to be there. As the Gendarmes started getting more frequent, we ran into Frankie Andreau, former US Postie and currently with OLN. We chatted and took some pictures. I told Frankie we were from Birmingham, AL and he remembered speaking to my racing group earlier this year. Frankie was looking for the Postal Team bus so we went with him. Angie told him, “we’re on the I’m with Frankie media pass”.

Frankie said, "Great come on!" We walked pass the Gendarmes, under the barricades and right up to the Postal bus and picked our spot for the day. I introduced myself to Dan Osipow of Tailwind Sports and said hello to Jeff Garvey. We watched Ekimov and Pavel warming up, then Jerry took pictures of me with Johan Bruyneel, Victor Pena, George Hincapie and Floyd Landis!

We were having a great time until the Tour Security came by and wanted to see our credentials. We got the boot! We walked toward the exit then peeled off and sat down. The security guard followed us and escorted us out. Oh well, it was lunch time anyway. We were really bummed, but hungry. We got a cold pizza and a Coca Light, otherwise known as a Diet Coke. We had wondered how we were going to get any food, but the security fixed that problem. After we ate, we walked around to the other side of the barricaded area and waited until the Gendarmes weren’t looking, then jumped the barricades. We eased back over to the Postal bus and ran into our friend Sammarye, who is writing a daily report for Lance’s website. We met her two years ago at the Tour. She has a Lance Fan website and is a Peloton Project member also. We were able to reclaim our spots at the roped off Postal area bus where the team was warming up. This time I got a picture with Chechu Rubiera, very nice and cute! Roberto Heras and Lance were warming up also, but were not signing anything or posing for pictures. We cheered them on as they left, then headed to our car for the move to Ax-Les-Thermes.

The drive was two full pages on our map, but it only took a little over two hours. It was great because we had fairly large roads the whole way.

Angie was reading the map and I was following the road signs. We were both following the road to Foix, which was on the way to Ax-Les-Thermes. Angie got frustrated at me because she couldn’t find the road we were on. She thought I had made a wrong turn. We finally noticed the GPS in our car wasn’t registering the road number either. It showed us driving on the map where there was no road! We figured out we had turned on a new road that took us straight to our destination. We drove up to the end of tomorrow’s stage at Ax –3-Domaines. We are planning on riding our tandem tomorrow to Ax-3-Domaines. It is really steep in places, but we picked out a couple of possible spots for us to setup. We came back to our hotel (one we stayed at last year) and had a quick panache (beer and lemonade)before checking in. The room had a toilet and a shower, well sort of a shower/tub thing. It was really more like a giant washtub. It was still better than the room we had last year at this hotel, where the shower was down the hall. The bathroom door wouldn’t stay shut, so Jerry got out his Gerber multitool and cut a hole in the doorframe so it would work. We went down to our favorite pizza place from last year but it was closed, so we ate at a restaurant in the cute little town square. I got a cheeseburger (cold) and Jerry got pizza (bad) so we walked by another place on the way back to the hotel and got a hotdog in a loaf of French bread (they poke a hole in the end and slide the dog in) and frites (fries). We sat on a bench and ate our second meal (much better), then took a walk around the town. It has a lovely steam flowing down the mountain, right through the center of the village – very picturesque! We went back to the room and watched some of “Greg Le Millionaire” – A total take off of Joe Millionaire. We’re out for the night to rest up, because we’re riding the tandem up the final climb of tomorrow’s stage.