July 15

We got up early, as usual, and headed for Besancon for the Time Trial. It was about an hours drive and appeared to be a small town with the start and the finish, so we expected a crowd. We made good time and got a great parking spot close to the route and also close to the road out of town. We always try to keep that in mind for our afternoon escape.

Before we left the car, I broke down our tandem and packed it up. We knew we wouldn't be riding in Paris, so the bike had done it's job. It saved us hours of being stuck in traffic or long hikes to get where we wanted to be, and besides that we love to ride. Angie took a nap while I worked.

Soon we were on our way to the start. We were there early, so we walked around to our usual backdoor entrance to the team busses, since we were once again had no credentials, and walked right up to the Postal bus. We saw our friend Sammarye, so we chatted with her until the team arrived. Angie noticed Sammarye's toenail paint job, very unique to say the least.

A steady rain had begun and it showed no signs of letting up. The team finally started arriving and began to warm-up. We've been at Time Trial warm-ups before and they are often stressful and tense, but not today. Everyone was all smiles. The rain quit and the day had an extra good feeling about it. George H was introducing mom-to-be Melanie to everyone. She came over and spoke to us and we chatted about the baby and when it is due. They seem really happy with each other. Sheryl C was there and looked much more relaxed than at l'Alpe d'Huez. As if things weren't light hearted enough, Robin Williams rolled in and upped the happy level a notch!

After several of the guys warmed up and rolled off we could tell it was getting close to Lance time. The area around the bus got crowded. Media folks were jamming their cameras in, pushing, shoving, then they added some barricades...Things were getting out of hand so we just left. As we walked away from the bus, Johan was just bringing the team car around. As he headed toward the bus, he stopped for his annual picture with Angie.

We walked away from the Postal bus and past other teams. Axel Mercx was warming up all alone, as were many other really good world class cyclists. In a way, it's sad that everyone wanted a picture of Lance today, the man with SIX (well soon to be).

The gerndarmes looked a little puzzled at us as we climbed out of the security area that everyone else was trying to get into. We just smiled and moved on.

We walked down the course to watch some riders and find a place to put out our ever present LAF & LiveStrong signs. Suddenly we ran into a group from LAF headquarters in Austin. We chatted for a while with Doug Ullman, LAF Director of Survivorship. Doug is the fastest man I've ever seen type with his thumbs on his ever present Blackberry. We walked on down the course and Angie noticed a guy wearing a Pittsburgh Steelers football helmet. About the time she was going to point out another crazy American to me, she realized the guy with him was our buddy John that we had met at the Tour in 2001. John and his wife, Paige had just finished medical school and had come to the Tour to celebrate. We had such a good time with them that we've kept in touch for the last 4 years. John let us know that he and Paige's brother, Shane, would be at the Tour this year, so we had been looking for them. Shane was a hoot and the only person at the Tour wearing a Steelers football helmet. As a last resort we would have met in Paris tomorrow. John and Paige were with us in 2001 when Lance hopped off his bike and fell back into the crowd against us. We ended up in a bunch of pictures, which we still see occasionally. We walked on down the route to a spot we could get our signs up and waited on Lance. We were at the first section of the course, which is a long uphill grade, but the roads had all dried out from the rain and Lance was hammering when he went by.

We headed for the car and started our longest drive of the trip to Paris, about 400K away. At 140KPH you do make pretty good time, though. We made it to Paris, found our hotel and unloaded. I drove the rental car back to the return deck we had found several years ago. It's much easier for us to take a cab to the airport, provided they don't drop us at the wrong terminal like they did one time. This turned out to be one of those things that's not as easy as it should be. I drove through the parking deck twice, but couldn't get across to the section to park in because of construction. I stopped and tried to speak with someone who spoke no English, combined with my bad French and came up with driving around the other side of the deck where the hotel was. I did this and all I saw was and exit, so I entered. Turned out to be another dead end. I drove back out and found the doorman at the hotel. Our communication was a little better and I discovered the entrance to the deck was two blocks away through a tunnel. Not sure how they came up with that one, but I found my way and parked the car. I walked by the return office, which was now closed because it took me so long to park the car. Fortunately they had a key drop in the door, so I did. A fifteen minute job turned out to take a couple of hours. It's one of the things that really is my own fault for not studying my French better. We'll be better next year.

I walked past the spot where we were meeting people tomorrow and discovered that the Office of Tourism, where we were meeting everybody, had been closed for six months. The sign and building were the same, so I figured people would still find us. We had emailed about 30 people to meet us there as well as the word spreading the last few weeks. When people email the LAF looking to hook up with someone in Paris, they sent them our way. We even had people tell us to meet them there, because there was a big group of Americans meeting there. "Right we said, That's us!"

I got back to the hotel, figuring Angie would be asleep, but instead she was hungry. We walked back to the Champs, about two blocks away and found some food. We walked back past our spot for tomorrow on our way back to the hotel. Like almost every night of our trip to France, we went to bed well after midnight.