It was going to be a nice, easy ride out to see a relatively-flat stage of the Tour de France today; starting at our hotel in Lourdes and winding our way through pleasant country roads to either Saint James or Morlaas, about 15 miles from the end of the stage. Why not see the finish in Pau? Been there, done that. Way too crowded and not terribly friendly. There’s nothing quite like seeing the ‘tour when it comes through a small town.

Technology makes stuff like this easy! You just go to a site like MapMyRide.com, select the start and finish points, let it recommend something and then you easily tweak it to suit your needs. More rural, less hilly, more hilly, whatever. Then you download it to your Garmin or iPhone or whatever GPS device you use and voila (that’s a French word, y’know?) you’ve got your course mapped out for you, with it telling you where to turn etc. Unless, of course, you decide to try and improve what it offers you. That’s when you end up riding a mile through an endless cornfield on gravel that starts out not so bad but eventually looks like un-maintained wagon road. We backtracked out and found an alternative (not too tough; if you know the general direction, you just zig-zag around until you’re back on course again).

Team Sky leading out race-leader Bradley Wiggins

Surprisingly, despite a late start and our lengthy detour, we made it with plenty of time to spare. Seriously, that was a surprise! Even got to watch the pack navigate through a roundabout, one of those exceptionally-rare roundabouts where they actually let people into the center of it to watch! Still didn’t get any great shots, as we misjudged which side of the roundabout they’d be coming through (mainly right, although the breakaway went left). I think I wanted a crane about 300ft up to get an aerial view. Yes, that would have been perfect. I just didn’t have the right equipment.

6:23 am and we’re already on a train? But that’s what you need to do to catch the Tour de France when it’s some miles away. I’ve been part of tour groups heading off a hour earlier than this, for a four hour trip on a bus. Four hours that would become five and a half in traffic. Much nicer on a train.

From Foix we ride up the course to the steepest climb, wait for the ‘tour and then ride 35 miles down the other side to a different train station for our return. We’ll see how the timing works out!

With all the talk about United Airlines falling apart after the merger with Continental, there was no small measure of fear & trepidation that something would go wrong getting from Redwood City, California, to Lourdes, France. Plenty of opportunities; Flight from SFO-Chicago, Chicago to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Toulouse, bus from Toulouse airport to Toulouse Train station, train from Toulouse to Lourdes… what could possibly go wrong?

Hardly a TGV, yet our low-rent “Intercity” train from Toulouse to Lourdes still does a better speed than Caltrain’s so-called “Baby Bullet.”

Lots! But fortunately the only snag was that our Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Toulouse landed late due to having to fly a longer route than normal (weather issues) and then it took forever for our baggage to arrive from the plane. Thus we ended up taking a train two hours later than planned, but y’know, not that big a deal.

Malfunctioning seat control copied from a Trilobite, the movie Tron, or a tribal mask?

But that’s not to say there wasn’t some grief along the way. For starters, I ended up upgrading to business class (at my son’s expense; he was on an award ticket in First, using miles I’ve earned). OK fine, maybe I can get some sleep. Or maybe  not. You see, my lie-flat seat wouldn’t do anything but put up the footrest and alter the lumbar support. Everybody else was sleeping away, all stretched out and semi-comfy (including my son in First), and me? I’m all contorted trying to figure out a way to relax. Yeah right. That much was United’s fault, and yes they did try to fix it by “resetting” it but to no avail.

The rest was my fault. About the fish thing. A long-running joke, championed by the movie “Airplane”, says whatever you order, don’t order the fish. People always get sick eating the fish. Well, my choices where a beef thing with mushrooms, a pork thing with

I should have known better than to order an unknown fish dish.

mushrooms, or a shrimp & fish thing with a mexican-sounding name. I’m not a mushroom person, so I went for the fish, knowing full well that I should never order mixed fish dishes that I don’t know about because I react rather violently to many types of shell fish, in particular scallops & muscles. And when I got it, yes, there should have been red flags all over the place because the plate had a couple of muscles or clams or something in closed shells but it tasted good and it’s been years since I’ve had any issues (because I’ve avoided scallops, muscles & clams) so maybe I’m fine now.

Did I tell you that Kevin can sleep anywhere, anytime?

Two hours before landing it became clear I was not fine. It wasn’t long before I had to make a run to the toilet because a barf bag in business class is so gauche, and the last hour of the flight I was breaking out in a pretty bad sweat. I was just barely feeling alive wobbling off the plane in Frankfurt, and was wondering how in the world I was going to make it the rest of the way. But two more trips to the toilet and I was suddenly all better. Dramatically so. As in feeling pretty darned good the rest of the way.

And the rest is history. We’re in Lourdes, it’s raining outside but should be nice by morning, and I’m feeling surprisingly perky for hour 31 or so of this travel day. Tomorrow we get the bikes put together and go out for an easy spin, likely no more than 50 miles. Nothing having to do with the Tour de France; they’re miles away right now, and we’ll intercept them on Sunday.  –Mike–