the ride to morzine/avoriaz & watching the tour

Slept much better last night. Woke up at 2am, wrote the last blog and fell back asleep until morning. Today the ride included 2 climbs and 60 miles. The second one ended at a ski resort called Avoriaz and went thru a town called Morzine. As I said earlier I was nervous about the climb as was Richard since while we have climbs this steep in Las Vegas we don't have ones that are also this long, just over 12 miles. So as we began the climb we decided to take it easy and just try to finish it. It was the type of climb that is very steep at the beginning gets a little easier and then gets steeper near the top. I am not sure how it happened, but I found a comfortable rhythm which was not fast but allowed me to reach the top without stopping. I was really excited. Richard also made it up in similar fashion. The ride up was like nothing I had ever done for two reasons. First was the characterisitics of the mountain. Second was it was lined with people getting ready for the tour de france to pass by. It was pretty crazy. Most of them had been there for days camping and partying. There were some cooking, getting drunk, painting the names of their favorite riders on the road, and even yelling encouraging comments to us in many languages. At least I think that's what they were yelling. The Norwegians got a chuckle out of me telling them to make sure to spell my name right as I rode by their road graffiti. After the summit of Avoriaz, it was time to watch the tour. Thomson tours had sent up 2 people two days earlier to camp at the top and save us a spot, on which they had now set up five tents containing food, drink, and TVs for us to watch the tour as we were waiting for it to pass by. It took four hours of waiting before the riders passed. In the meantime, we experienced the part of the tour you don't see on TV. The people watching is like nowhere else. Then there is The Caravan which consists of different advertisers driving by in parade float-like vehicles throwing various Chotchke items including shirts, hats, dish detergent, bottle water, newspaper, cookies, blow-up hands, noise makers, and even sausages. The people go after this stuff like it is gold. A lady yanked my pack of small sausages right out of my hand. Surprisingly I wasn't very upset. Then came the tour. Wow, the energy during that moment was incredible. From people screaming to the helicoptor right over our heads to the riders being inches away from the spectators. At times the riders were simply too close to photograph. I took about one hundred pics in the span of the 20 minutes it took entire field of riders to pass. On a big mountain the group gets quite spread out so it takes a while from the leaders to the last guy. But everyone has to pass including a whole slew of support vehicles before we can make our way back down the mountain. You can imagine several hundred thousand people, some walking and some riding, coming down a mountain is a bit chaotic. I am just glad I didn't fall or run into somebody. At one point I had to pull over and stop since my hands were so tired from squeezing the brakes. Also because the riders know how long it takes to get down the mountain several of them actually come down on their bikes with their racing numbers still on. It was pretty cool to ride next to riders I had seen on TV, even though they were going so fast i barely had time to recognize them. So because we had spent three hours getting up the mountain and nearly five hours waiting for and watching the tour I decided to only ride part of the 30 miles back. I wouldn't have reached the hotel until after 9pm riding the whole way so, I wimped out, I mean made the wise choice to drive back so I could be ready for the even harder day tomorrow. So my unreasonable goal of riding the whole week without getting in the van was broken, but I'm ok with it. Just going to do what I can, so I will still enjoy my trip.