Ventoux and Ready to Roll

Photo from this morning at the foot of Mont Ventoux, well, at least as close as we could get. It was windy, and I truly mean windy this morning. If it weren't clear and sunny, you probably would have thought a tornado was in the area. Our little car was blown all over the road, and for a minute I had visions of us rolling down the autoroute and a big gust of wind flipping it. No worries, we made it safely to our final pit-stop in France right outside of Lyon.

What a stage today! Instead of fighting the crowds in the heat to see only a glimpse of the riders, we decided to drive the hour to Lyon and camp at a cafe with television to see the entire Ventoux climb. Our plan was nearly scuttled when we hit some incredible traffic on the autoroute just north of Ventoux. Today's stage passed over the autoroute, so people were stopped or slowed for miles to catch a glimpse. Once drove over that road (we just missed the riders but saw the helicopters take off), we counted stopped cars for at least 40 km afterwards trying to go the other direction!

We made it to the the town where the race started yesterday and grabbed a table indoors by a television. I mean, wow, what a stage, I'm glad that we chose to skip it live, especially after seeing the coverage of the area where we would have positioned ourselves -- it was wall-to-wall people.