No, I don’t mean the TdF cyclists will be running instead of riding. I’ve spent a lot of time scouring the map for the exact right place to watch the time trial, and there just isn’t one that meets all the criteria we need, in particular, the ability to get local food and water/drink throughout the day. There are some nice looking spots up in the hills, but we’d be totally isolated, on a terribly hot day (forecast at 96F, and that F stands for f’in humidity, not just temperature). We haul a lot of stuff but we’d need lawn chairs, a chest of ice, a bicycle trailer and more power than we’ve got to haul it around. Plus, on foot, you can walk any part of the course you want; rarely do they tell you you’ve got to stay where you are. On bikes, you frequently find yourself in a no-moving-your-bike zone.

So we’ll be ditching the bikes and taking three trains to a town named Chedde, which is about a mile from the start of the race. The last rider should be coming through at 5:02pm; the train leaves at 5:35pm and is just a block from the course. Should something happen where we can’t get to that train in time, another one leaves just an hour later.

This also means a later start to the day; we can leave at 9:44am and arrive at 11:33, just in time to see the first part of the Caravan roll through, if we choose to score a couple things we haven’t yet (specifically, a bottle of Orangina and Tortel Twish, a non-alcoholic beer that showed up last year and is pretty tasty).

So on foot, on a course like this, we actually have better mobility on foot than by bike, and less time spent getting things together. No issues with trying to squeeze bikes onto a full train either.