Day 2 TdF - 2009

Day 2 is a transfer day from the hotel near the airport outside of Paris to the Burgundy area of France. Here, we'll pick up the Tour and begin the riding of the routes the pros will race. On the transfer day, we're on the bus for a nearly 4.5 hour trip, which should only be a 3 hour trip. Paris traffic and a few accidents helped make this a longer ride.

The bike arrived in good shape yesterday and assembled with no problems. We relaxed a little and did a short 40k ride at a fairly slow pace. Most of the statistics I provide on riding will be in metric units. The rides are all based on that and the information on the rides are based on metric units. Upon returning, even though the ride was not hard, Doug and I were still pretty hungry. We finished the ride around 4 PM local time, watched the end of the race which Cav (Mark Cavendish) won with ease, then headed to the bar. Dinner was scheduled for 8 PM and we were hungry. Probably more bored than hungry, so we ate. We each had a beer, pint sized, and split a plate of fries. As any nutritionist would tell you, beer and fries are the best post ride recovery meal you can eat, particularly if it was an easy ride. The price however, was a real pinch. So two beers and a plate of fries = 23 Euros. At a rate of 1.52 dollars per euro, this was a $35 snack. We'll need to do better. And ya'll better be pleased we live where we live. Not sure the hotels in NY would ream you as bad as this beating on the wallet. If you recall from last year's blog, the prices in and around Paris are ridiculous. I'll update as we go, but I am damn glad I live where I do. Wouldn't change it for any place the world; I bet the French feel the same.

This year's ride is the Ritchey BreakAway. I had to leave Ms Veritas at home, last year's ride. Ms Veritas was the Ti bike Bob made. It has an aluminum seat post. Through the Spring races in the wet and with time, the aluminum and titanium decided to fuse together into a new metal. It also meant I could not remove the seat post from the frame. This makes it impossible to ship. So, the shop provisioned me with a Ritchey BreakAway. The BreakAway is a 'folding' bike. It breaks near the seat tube collar and bottom bracket. You pull the seat tube out and remove the clamp on the bottom bracket union and the frame pulls apart into two triangles, the front and rear. The shifter cables and rear brake cable are separated by cable splitters which screw together, and hence pretty easy to separate front from rear cable connectivity. You remove your handle bars where the stem connects to the front fork and all the pieces, along with your wheels pack tidily into a suitcase sized container. The weight is surprisingly light and the size is just right to avoid an excess baggage fee, which to ship a bike to Europe would have been $250, each way. So, thanks again to the best bike shop in the world, Wheelie Fun, for their assist again this year. So on this trip, I'll refer to the ride as Ms BA (you can associate BA with BreakAway or BadAss, your call). Ms BA, is a bad ass ride. Very smooth and stiff enough for a responsive, yet comfortable ride. Doug has the same bike. During assembly time, the others, including the pros supporting the trip, had significant bike envy. Either that, or they were all impressed with the bike knowledge, mechanical skill and intimidating biker legs Doug and I exhibit. Unfortunately for us, I think the envy was for the bikes.

Today's ride was a cruisy 75k ride. The first 20k was incredibly slow and not a whole lot of fun; a lot of touching of the brakes and skittish riders in this group. So, Ms BA and I decided we needed to up the tempo a bit. I rode to the front, started chatting with Dave, the ride director, who was the same ride director from last year. As we rode, I kept inching the pace a bit. Soon enough, we're rolling at 20 mph or so. The ride director commented a few times, "Ease it up a bit, mate." If you recall, the tour company (bikestyletours.com) is an Australian owned company. With about 20k to go, I got back on the front, this time with my mate Doug. Soon enough we were cruising along at 23-24 mph, on small uphill grades. Doug's power meter was registering about 300 watts, so we were working a bit. Doug commented, "Well, these guys are either gonna love us, or hate us." With about 5k to go, Doug peeled off the front to third wheel or so. I stayed on the front kept the pace at 23 mph or so and rolled into town. Most of the riders commented on the nice pace, but glad they were not doing the work on the front. We had a bit of a head wind and cross wind most of the way. All-in-all, a decent day and good timing.

We arrived in the town to meet our bus which was along the race route. Small town, not a lot of folks, so viewing the race was pretty open. The point at which we viewed the race was 55k from the finishing town. The riders were not pressing too hard, so we had a good view of George Hincappie, Lance, Alberto Contador, Levi Leipheimer, and the rest of the pros. Pretty good viewing. Hard to get good photos. I took some, but still a bit blurry. That's all for now. Time for some food. By the way, did I mention I love the Tour ((THIS MUCH)). Grateful to have this chance, again.