It’s Thursday night, been here for 6 full days, gotten in 5 really good rides, and, as we wind our way down to the end (heading to Paris for the finale Sunday morning), we added someone new to our romp through France, Lee C, a fellow Bike Friday rider and customer of ours. He didn’t have much time so he’s doing the whirlwind tour, leaving Wednesday from the US, arriving here this afternoon, and heading back home Monday. I don’t know if my brain could handle that much time zone scrambling in so short a, well, time.

We had originally planned to do the now-usual combo of taking a train from our base in Lourdes to some place closer to the race, then riding to a good spot, then reverse. That might have worked except Lee’s train arrived too late to pull that off, but we did come up with an on-the-fly Plan B that allowed us to take a train to Pau and head towards the finish area. I’m not normally a fan of stage finishes, due to crowds, but Lee had never seen a stage at all previously.

It was fun, it was hot, and on the way back we got to pass by and actually see some of the podium presentations, which was way cooler than I thought it might be. It’s funny how unreal some things seem on TV then you see it in real life and it just totally changes how you feel about it.

Tomorrow is our last big climb, up the Aubisque. Lee’s going to get a very fast and very rude welcome to the Pyrenees! Still, it’s not a very challenging routing, never more than 26 miles from Lourdes, and it’s pretty much all downhill on the return.

Sorry not many photos. Easier to do quick updates on my Facebook page, so you can catch up with things closer to real-time there.

–Mike–