Day 1

Arrived in Paris on time, bags made it, bike traveled fine. Clearing customs was easier than clearing TSA on a domestic flight in the US. The tour group organizers were exactly on time for the pick up at the airport to the hotel. The hotel was not so prepared. First task, assemble the bike. Then took a 25 mile spin along a tributary of the Sien towards Paris.

First day was pretty uneventful. Everything is off the charts expensive. The hotel has WiFi, but it is for a fee. So the better option was through Orange, a telecom provider. The fee is 15 Euro for 10 hours of internet access. A pint of beer at the hotel was 8 Euro (figure it takes $1.65 to buy 1 Euro). So, no beer for me; I'm way to cheap and it was not The King (Bud).

The median age of the group is likely young 40s. The tour group is out of Australia, so 90% of the group is from Aussie-land. I met some pretty cool folks on the first ride. Kind of interesting meeting 40 strangers and then being assigned a roommate for the next 20 days. Yep, we're sharing rooms throughout the trip. Though not much in common, we get along reasonably enough. Being Aussie's the entire group is really behind Cadel Evans for the Yellow Jersey. I fit in well with the group since he is my fav for the Tour. He finished 2nd last year to Contador by a minute and a half. I think he has a stronger team this year, so hopefully he'll pull it out. I'd really like to see one of the US Teams (Garmin or Columbia) win the Yellow Jersey, but I do not think their general classification rider is strong enough to pull it off. I am pretty encouraged that the US Teams have a decent chance at winning the best Team competition.