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With a look at the best flow in the peloton...  ... it's the end Stage 18 of TdF2012. But let's fangirl for a bit more, here's Eddy - recognisable by his helmet (the one with the blue and red stripes).  Now that's really it. (a slideshow of some HQ photos from the stage can be seen here) |
Oh, I do look busy.
Sep. 30th, 2012 06:50 amSafety checks and interviews. |
Oh Bernie, that was one nasty fall.     Arashiro!!!!!  Physio tape is always pretty.   Hello to you too.  Some joke can be made here about Froome always being second to Wiggo. Even at sign-in.  And some more Froome.  And Richie Porte.   |
Strategy strategy.
Sep. 29th, 2012 02:46 pmI quite like that there is always a bit of chatting going on. You'd think that these guys would have nothing left to say to each other after living in each other's pockets for three weeks!    |
I've always liked Miss Scarlett best.
Sep. 29th, 2012 06:39 am| Let's have a look at the TdF jerseys then... Tejay Van Garderen in white.  Now that would be Sagan's butt in green.  Voeckler in maillot à pois. Not something I had ever imagined seeing Voeckler is always great in terms of being awesome at the Tour de France.  And a blurry Wiggo.  |
Some English dude from Sky in the world champ jersey. Heard his name is Mark.  The Norwegian jersey is pretty awesome too... although once again the law of "fangirling and cheering do not go well with photos" held true.  Those rainbow stripes almost went from Cav to Eddy, almost! One day, Eddy will definitely be world champ, the guy has it in him. He still looked very pretty on the podium on Sunday though. |
BMC didn't shine there...
Sep. 28th, 2012 06:12 amOh, you know, just some dude who won this huge stage race last year. Name sounds a bit like "cuddles". Not really.  Can I just say how awesome of a name "Gorka" is? Gorka Izagirre, you're got one awesome name. Basques really do have some awesome names.  Cédric Pineau and some breathing exercises.  Estonia represented with Rein Taaramae and his national champ stripes.  Could not recognise this Lampre, but he's definitely pondering the meaning of life.  Back to the podium a bit with Martin Velits.  Cyril Gautier did not seem all that amused by the crowd.  Not pictured: best facial expressions during an interview, ever.  Katusha going incognito.  |
Impressive dudes.
Sep. 27th, 2012 02:08 pm Some guys are definitely not as well known as the big names, like PhilGil or Cav or Wiggo or Boonen, but they are beyond impressive. Jean-Christophe Péraud is one of those guys and he happens to be from the Blagnac area. If you’re not familiar with his cycling history, it’s definitely one to check out because he’s done so many things! He was riding cross-country races up until 2008 and participated in the 2008 summer Olympics. In 2009 he was the first amateur ever to win the French National Time Trial Championship beating the likes of Chavanel. He started riding road races professionally in 2010 (at the same time he quit his job at Areva where he started working in 2005). And since then his results have been more than impressive, heck just check out his French Wiki page. I guess at some point I should also say that he’s amazingly nice too.  |
Winning sprints takes thigh power.
Sep. 27th, 2012 06:49 amCan a cyclist's thighs ever be too big? Clearly Greipel would say that it's just not possible. |
These are mostly of shady quality... alas.  Let's see... Marco Marcato.  Adam Hansen being paparazzied.  Julien Fouchard and some nasty bruises.  Samuel Dumoulin.  Jan Ghyselinck being all adorable.  Pierrick Fédrigo.  Federico Canuti and some flashy glasses.  Blel Kadri.  |
#shallowness never goes away.
Sep. 26th, 2012 06:39 amIs Marcel Sieberg very handsome in real life? Yes, yes, he is.  (I need a #shallowness tag) |
A female blonde Poulidor...
Sep. 25th, 2012 12:27 pmSo much going on, even before the sign-ins for the pro riders begin. There is the Yeti, there are the mini-riders, there are marching bands, there is Quikie (or whatever the bunny's name is)... major kuddoes to the guy who was in the yeti suit, he really busted his butt out there.   I still say that this will be my future car. The duck one. Not the police one.    Well, we meet again X-tra dude!  The Death Star was behind those guys. It's quite impressive indeed, except that it didn't actually blow up like the real Death Star. Blagnac not only have Airbus but also a marching band (that just wouldn't stop playing) and majorettes. And by "majorettes" they mean 60-something year old guys dressed as female cheerleaders. Apparently one looked just like a blonde female Raymond Poulidor. Alas I was too far away to see for myself.  The marching band and majorettes just would not go away and poor Rubén Pérez looked rather puzzled by everything as he tried to go to the sign-in sheet. He eventually decided to come back later.  |
Tous ces sketchs ratés...
Sep. 24th, 2012 01:20 pmBlagnac is not just the place where Airbus is, it's also quite a nice little town. The little city center is quite quite lovely, at least.     The little note in that display read something along the lines of, "don't even bother looking for me before 2pm, I will be enjoy the TdF stage and so should you."  Et pendant ce temps-là... que fait la police?  |
Part 1 of a few.
Sep. 23rd, 2012 05:18 pm| Well, look at that! We're almost at the end of September and that means it's been two months since the Tour de France, the Worlds are there... so here is TdF - Stage 18 - Part 1. Due to road closings, work obligations, etc. I was dropped off quite early right next to where the caravane was being prepared. It's quite an interesting sight actually, everyone working on cleaning all the cars inside and out and just trying to wake up. I can't even begin to imagine just what kind of hellish month it must be for the poor souls working in the caravane!   Of course there is the "village" where the team buses are and everything but the real Tour de France village is right here. That's what most people will remember, the riders will go by so quickly that most even be able to recognise a face. The different cars, now that's something that is easily remembered.  In the hour that I was in that one street, I witnessed people breaking down in tears, hugging the hell out of each other (it was the before last stage), desperately trying to find one object or another, screaming at their loved ones on the phone... People are really interesting creatures.    |
Stage 17 - part IV
Sep. 2nd, 2012 09:12 am| First of all, now you can see all the photos in large (and some in very large) format over here. It's a slideshow, so look for the arrows on the sides - I kind of really like the Jux way of easily making slideshows but that site is so not intuitive to use sometimes. Now back to our normal schedule. Oh, who am I kidding? The best part of a Tour de France road trip is the antici...pation and then it's the part back home when it's time to eat the cochonou.  Apéro, courtesy of the Tour de France.  Time to figure out who gets what, since I was the one who cycled the most I got dibs on the little policeman with the little bike. This year Skoda and Cofidis innovated and put LEDs in their keychains.  I think once you’ve been named “madeleines officielles du Tour de France” you’ve pretty much made it in the world of baked goods.  Bon bah on a assez de grenadine pour les sunrises de la soirées (et oui, il y avait un grand fan de cocktails parmis nous).   This wins as my favourite little bag from the Tour de France, the little jersey shaped pouch is just beyond adorable.  Amazingly enough I have never been to Luxembourg before, I suppose now I’ll have to take my bike there and try out their 600km of cycling paths that are shown on the handy little map. |
Ye olde Tour de France
Sep. 2nd, 2012 08:26 amPart 3 of Stage 17 - finally the cycling bit has come to town!  The yellow motorcycle made us think that the échappée wasn’t that far away but it wasn’t exactly the case. More waiting. I sound like I’m complaining but after years at the TdF, the waiting is as much part of the excitement as anything. During this stage we had some peeps behind us that brought out a bottle of rosé and were listening to the stage on the radio and making hilarious comments about everything. Entertainment at its best!   Sandy Casar at the front, couldn’t have asked for anything better!  This is still one of my favourites from that day.   They’re not paid to look pretty and it seems that everyone suffered on this col de Buret, I cannot imagine how it must have been for them on the HC cols.  If I recall correctly he joined the chase group before Col des Arès.  Eddddddyyyyyy! At the front, as usual!   Team cars and a few peeps either dropping off or trying to get back into the maillot jaune group.   Some peeps make epic sufferfaces while some just look as good as ever, namely that Omega Pharma.  Andriy Hryvko in pretty Ukrainian colours! Alas I didn’t have my Ukie flag that day.  The gruppetto proper.  Philippe Gilbert looked rather worn out, I guess you can’t have an amazing year every single time.   Possibly the most dramatic face caught this time around - desperately trying to hang onto the gruppetto.  I think that my cheers for Tyler were even louder and more enthusiastic than for Eddy, but he really looked like he needed every bit of help he could get.   The final two, Jérôme Pineau and Bert Grabsch.   As Murphy’s Law would have it, the fog/clouds started to lift right after the final cyclists went by! And of course it had been perfectly sunny in Toulouse the whole time. |
Part 2 of Stage 17 now. After walking up and down the col a few times to keep warm, we settled on a section about 300m from the top where there weren't many people and we had a decent view... and after some more waiting, the caravane finally came by! Wasn't the 25 year anniversary already last year? Or are they just trying to milk it out?   Cows!!!! These tiny things made us squeal like excited three year olds, I think our Dutch “neighbours” from across the road probably thought we were completely mad.  Cochonou is always a hit. Although some peeps a bit uphill brought their own saucisson, which apparently was much better.  This guy was hilarious, actually he was also rather hilarious two (?) (I'm starting to lose track of TdF stages attended) years ago! (and as a side note, our Dutch “neighbours” were lovely and gave us the detergent packs they got so now my sis has enough detergent for a couple of weeks! Thank you lovely Dutch peeps!)   The main duck-car came out absolutely out of focus this year, terrible, terrible times. So here is the small one.    Going up hill and not even pulling on those handlebars… not bad, not bad Monsieur Marque Du Maillot. Euh, I mean Monsieur Marc Dumaillot.  It took me about a whole afternoon to understand that “Aline Darivet” = “ligne d’arrivée”. Actually make that two years rather than an afternoon because I didn’t get the fact that their names in previous years.   Elmo and Tchorny go for a swim in the day’s loot. Yes, we got bored after a while, even after walking up and down the col a few times. At least we had umbrellas because at that point it was raining again.  Then we watched some lichen grow. It was fascinating. It’s hard being a TdF spectator, especially during windy and rainy stages. |
A month late or so.
Aug. 27th, 2012 04:09 pm| The big news in cycling these days is The most important bit to understand is that the Tour de France is not really about seeing the cyclists go by, they're going fast like hell and you'll be lucky and super duper happy if you catch a glimpse of your favourite rider. It's really about the atmosphere and the people on the side of the road, because it's, as someone called it, the biggest festival in France. The Stage 17 story began in Toulouse where it was nice and sunny and rather hot. We figured that there was no point in trying to go get to Peyragudes because there would be too many people to properly enjoy anything. The funny thing about this stage was that it basically circled around one area, as my sis put it, it took her a while to understand just how they were going to need 4 and a half hours to get from Luchon to Peyragudes because there are barely 40km between them. When we set out, we were aiming for Cazaunous and we'd walk towards Col d'Ares from there. In the end, the road to Cazaunous was more complicated than expected and we ended up in Sengouagnet and that was pretty awesome. But first, back to the sunny and warm Toulouse... which transformed into very cloudy Pyrénées. It's always nice seeing this in front of you when you're wearing shorts, have packed sunscreen and just a tiny sweater.  Weather aside (by some miracle there were umbrellas in the car), we were super duper lucky with our random choice of road because we saw a few cars parked on the side and some gendarmes and we parked the car right there on the side of the road. It was a brilliant move because the Tour de France was going to go literally about 30m from the car and we could head straight back without being stuck! How amazing of a call was that? We got out of the car to talk to the gendarmes, etc. and this is what we had going on outside.  It eventually started raining quite a bit and we decided to head back to the car to wait it out. It was 10:30ish and the caravane wasn't supposed to be there for another hour or more. But clearly we were not motivated enough because there already people sitting in their lawn-chairs and holding umbrellas. I mean, getting that good spot and keeping it is serious business. Heck, the car in front of us was full of grandmas and they were fully ready with yellow everything and they waited in the rain like badass grandmas do.  If you squint a bit, you can make out the people waiting by the road (look between the black and silver cars):  As I said, our parking spot was awesome. Soon, there were cars on both side of the road.  Eventually we started getting bored, even with this amazing book I had - it read like was written by a freshman in high school for an assignment on fantasy fiction. So by "amazing" I mean, "amazingly bad". I kept on reading the most horrendous passages to my sis. The worst bit is that I picked it up at the library because there were all these praises on the cover, I have no idea if the people who wrote the praises had even looked at the contents before giving their opinions... And then there were adventures of Elmo and Tchorny to chronicle.  State of the road about 45 minutes or so before the caravane was due.  In order to stay warm and get away from too populated areas, we headed up to Col de Buret.      As we were walking up we figured out that the numbers were indicating the location of the col. Perhaps there was some amateur race there previously and they marked it for them. I doubt it was for the TdF, this col wasn't even marked as 4th category.   We made it to the top and it looked like peeps were starting to amass there, so we went back down a bit.  *insert a bit of waiting before the caravane arrived* And part 2 of 309483290483 will come soon! |
Slowly building back up.
Jul. 12th, 2012 07:52 am Seen here and there... it's hot, there are bunnies and turtles and it's always good to cheer for a friendly Norwegian face during the Tour de France! Oh and I think they are having 14th of July fireworks at Borély. I hope it's that because I have no other explanation for the mess they've made of the park, had to modify my running route and all that. Terrible people, not taking into account my wishes and needs, I guess I'm still not ruler of the universe *sigh*  |
