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July 23

    We slept in a bit then walked down to Bugsy's for a late lunch and to watch the stage today. Not so interesting to watch, flat, windy stage, no great scenery, sprint finish and Cavendish wins. Back to the hotel for a quick nap before heading to our Fat Tire Bike Tour around Paris. We probably got up a bit late, but figured we'd just catch a cab to the Eiffel Tower to meet the group. Sounded easy. Forgot we were in Paris. The cab refused to take us & said to take the metro. Wouldn't have been such a problem except we hadn't even scoped out the metro, so were afraid we'd be late by the time we figured it out. Stated walking and plotted the route on my blackberry. Not sure what happened next, but we definitely did not take the quickest route. The general attitude of our group (me & Angie) was now rather bad and extra bad within the group. We finally made it to the Eiffel Tower and I spotted our group walking towards the Fat Tire office. It turned out that we had enough LiveStrong folks to make up an entire ride group, so that was nice. We had Livestrong staff, Radio Shack, Capital Sports and some very dedicated Livestrong supporters making up our ride group.

    We all picked up our bikes, just as it started to rain a bit. That 0% chance of rain didn't quite pan out for us, but it was light and fortunately didn't last long. We rode through a few busy streets, amazed they don't kill more people around here, before getting on some back streets and past more beautiful old church's and historical sites. We stopped for a break in front of the Notre Dame Cathedral and had some incredible ice-cream and fantastic scenery.

The flavors are a lot stronger than anything we get at home. Back on the bikes as we rode along the river before parking and getting on a boat for a short ride and a little wine. Clearly a popular thing to do is bring some wine and food and sit along the river and watch the boats pass by because the river was lined with people where ever there was room to sit. Back off the boat and on the bikes for a short ride back to the Fat Tire office and we were done.

    We walked a few blocks with the Fowkes family and found a place to get some dinner. It was now about 11:30pm and we had eaten one meal today. Found a place and got a pannini sandwich and sat and talked with Dan, Margo, Jimmy & Molly. We were really happy that we were able to spend some time with them this year. This was their first Tour de France trip and we treid to help them with some planning and tips from what we've learned over the past years of chasing the Tour around. Great day but everybody was tired. We headed back to our hotel to get a long nap before going back to Bugsy's to meet our group to watch the time trial tomorrow, uh later today really.