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Up early, not unusual, quick breakfast and headed to the route. From our hotel it appeared we could hit the route just prior to the Col du Soulour. I say appeared because we always leave with a plan, but the plan doesn't always work, which starts the backup plan, which doesn't always work, at which point we just do what ever we can, which always works because that's all we have left. We were able to drive along the route for a fairly long way until we hit the small town just before the Col du Soulor. We parked in a field filled with campers and motorhomes. I built the tandem while Angie petted dogs. They was a border collie which looked very similar to our Domino that we lost to cancer 4 years ago. Angie was about cried out by the time I had the bike built so we left, rode to the town square, got some food drinks for the day and began climbing the Col du Soulour. Almost immediately we rode upon some chalkbot messages and saw one for LiveStrong CEO and our great friend Doug Ulman, so we took a picture and sent it to him. We caught up with chalkbot as one of the helicopters was hovering overhead shooting it spraying messages. We slowly and I mean very slowly, made our way up the climb and stopped inside of 2K from the summit.

    Same drill as always, as soon as I hung the Hope Rides Again banner, people began taking pictures of it or would shout LiveStrong, Go Lance or a comment similar to the Aussie lady that passed by as she said, "That's Bloody Perfect!"

       As we waited on the race to arrive, we got word that Lance was in the break today. We also met Ishmael, from South Africa. Ishmael had lost his best friend to cancer, then just last year lost his wife. She had been pregnant when first diagnosed with ovarian cancer and the doctors did not give her a favorable outlook. Like stories we've heard before, she proved them wrong, had the baby and then fought for five years. Ishmael shared his story with us and then continued about how he was going to work on more programs and awareness in the future. Always nice to hear how people are able and willing to get involved after such devastating losses.

    We continued getting updates about the breakaway and that Lance was still there until we finally heard the helicopters approaching. There was about a 300 meter straight run up to us, which you could easily see our banners & flags. As the small break got close, we could see Lance on the front. He looked over at us and gave us a big nod then pulled out a bit from the group following. Seems like they had about 6-8 minutes on the peloton before the main group with the yellow jersey passed us. They were just riding steady in a bunch but clearly not chasing the break at that point. Very cool to see Lance out front pushing the break.

After the riders all passed by, we descended and I packed up the bike as Angie cried and petted the border collie again. The drive out was a bit slow because of typical Tour traffic, but our only goal was to get to Toulouse, where we were catching a train to Paris the next morning and again, already had a reservation And knew where our hotel was located. A good way to end a great day on a beautiful mountain!