Back in NYC -- More to Come Soon

We're back in NYC now, landed last night at midnight, and I'm leaving for work in just a few minutes. It's always a little disappointing when the official Tour de France ends in Paris after three weeks, but don't despair, we'll be posting a few more things over the next day or so. We have some videos from the road (of the race and our antics), the URLs for most of the Chambres d'Hotes where we stayed, and a map of our personal Tour de France -- I think we drove close to 2,000 km over the past 10 days in our little car.

I still need to go through the caravan booty that we picked up from the road in addition to the two waterbottles we scored, but forgot to tell you that I sliced my finger this year using the wine bottle opener knife to "recycle" one of the TdF direction arrows. All is good now -- it happened very early on and has healed.

I've included a photo from our hike near Mont Blanc... not that it has anything to do with this post, but I really like the image. After traveling for nearly two weeks with our Canon G9, the Altoid box camera (Pentax Optio S4) and a small Netbook, it was fantastic to see some of the photos we took on a large screen this morning.

Calling London

We had a 12-hours layover yesterday in London traveling from Lyon to New York. Thankfully, our friends Mikaela and Zsolt moved there recently so we were able to meet up with them and their kids for a few hours. Above Angel and I with something royal in the background and Angel and Mikaela opting for a more contemporary method of communication.

Cornish Pasty Shop for Mom Lowery

Also on our layover, we found the Cornish Pasty shop near Covent Garden -- the pasty is popular in the UP of Michigan. Last time we were in London, we saw a place similar to this around the corner but didn't get a photo.

L'Alpe d'Huez Revisited

We drove up L'Alpe d'Huez yesterday morning before heading down to Provence and Ventoux. It was our plan to drive both mountain passes but the crowds on Ventoux scuttled that plan.

What a fantastic thing to do in a car! The road was littered with cyclists on their way up in various states of exhaustion. We've seen a number of mountain passes that they include in the TdF, and this one was pretty fantastic. Officially there are 21 switchbacks, but we counted several more towards the top.

Above you can see me standing relatively refreshed in my 2008 TdF Alpe d'Huez t-shirt by the Arrivee sign, as well as an exhausted rider rolling across the official finish line used in the Tour. One of us biked up, the other, nearly blew out the car's clutch.

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.

Alpen Navigator

That's right, this lady with the trusty Michelin 2008 map of France is the person who navigates this tour de France. Right here, she's standing on top of L'Alpe d'Huez.

The Giant of Provence & The Line of People Trying to Drive Up It