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I found a hill

After piking on cycling to work today (laziness), I decided to go explore a little around my area after work despite getting home a little late. Found some recommendations on bikely, and headed off towards a hilly route near my area.

Approx 3km from my place.
1km in length.
Gain of about 70m according to bikely, hence roughly 7%.

I think this could be the start of a new love-hate relationship….

Tour de France 2008 – Stage 21 Paris Finish

Well, let’s just say that this was a once in a lifetime experience of a different kind – one that I won’t do again in this lifetime! Don’t get me wrong, I still am a big cycling fan but I really do prefer watching it on TV where you get to see the lovely mountain top views with castles etc, but more importantly, you get to follow the action when it’s on TV.

Anyway, this trip was a bit of a last minute thing organised by Gin, and I figured why not. Especially if Cadel Evans was in with a chance of becoming the first Australian to win the Tour de France. Gin and I booked Eurostar tickets during the week and we left on early Saturday morning. First time I’ve really traveled via the Eurostar and let me just say that I love it! Instead of catching a bus/train for 40-60 mins to get to the closest airport it was a 15 min taxi ride (we were going to catch the tube but there were delays) to St Pancras International which is the station where the Eurostar departs, right at the northern end of the city. And then when we arrived at Gare du Nord in Paris, it was just a 10 min walk to our hotel.

The Saturday we arrived we pretty much spent walking around Paris as it was a nice day. Gin and I have both been before so we took it at a very leisurely pace. Actually, the first plan was to try and get a train out to Saint Armand Montrond to see the time trial but I’d already checked for tickets during the week and there didn’t seem to be anything available. Still, when I did get into Paris I did try briefly asking information whether there were any trains out to St Armand Montrond. No one seemed to even know where this town was so I pretty soon gave up.

Aside from stuffing ourselves with French crepes, escargots and beef tartares all weekend, we did catch some cycling on Sunday. Woke up late and ate lunch along the Champs-Elysees which was already starting to fill out at this time. We found a spot about 100m from the sprint point (which I initially thought was the finish) and pretty much camped (stood) there for the next 4 hrs. I wandered off at some point to see if I could find a better location on the other side of the street but no luck (I think you’d have to get there before 12pm). Anyway, whilst I was waiting (standing), Gin wandered off to do some shopping and general entertaining to keep herself from getting bored. She came back with food and water on occasions, and she also found the corporate areas and where the finish line actually was (at Place de la Concorde, down the other end of the Champs-Elysees). Somewhere along the way, we managed to pick up those big green (foam) hands as well that you always see on TV. I guess they learned their mistakes from making them out of cardboard.

Anyway, at about 5:30pm, the peloton arrives. It was useful as we had this Parisian uni student next to us and so we kept on asking him questions about what the commentators were saying over the loudspeakers. Apparently though for the previous 3 hours or so whilst I thought they may have been talking about the race or maybe just general French news, they were actually advertising! (With intermittent bits about the race). It all kind of made perfect sense though as about 1hr ago the ‘publicity caravan‘ arrived and all it was was car after car after car of advertising from the sponsors. They didn’t even throw out any freebies!

There’s a video on my Facebook of the peloton arriving and I think Gin’s comment at 0:21 is a classic and pretty much sums it all up. I’m glad I’ve done it but I don’t think I’ll be going back to watch any part of the TdF live any time soon.