Le Tour de France (ou TRES BIZARRE)

It is 5:40 pm. The barricades in front of my hotel have been up since about 9 am.  I have seen floats advertising supermarkets, floats advertising cookies, floats advertising car companies, floats advertising banks, floats advertising flour,floats advertising wieners, floats advertising bottled water (today one pretty much had to refuse free bottled water from that company that shall remain nameless if one didn't want to carry 10 bottles home), floats advertising home heating systems, etc etc.  Some of them are elaborate affairs with molded or painted bicycles and people throwing cookies into the crowds (if they're advertising cookies) or hosing the crowd down (the bottled water company), some of them are just the regular company car with stickersand a roof rack on which two bicycle wheels are mounted.

But I'm sure all of them have to pay to be part of it.  What I haven't seen so far on the road between the barricades are bicycles.

5:45 pm: I can hear a helicopter getting nearer. That should be a good sign ;-)
5:50 pm:  about 20 more MOTORcycles have passed; the helicopter noise is getting louder. Excitement is mounting!
5:55 pm:  3 packs, each containing about 30 cyclists, have passed in the last 4 minutes. At amazing speeds!  The weird thing is that support cars with 5-10 bikes on top are driving in between the packs.

These two are ahead of the pack going for the etappe victory

Couldn't aim right in all that panic ;-)

6:00 pm:  The road is quiet. A few individual and small groups of cyclists still come through, and what is left of the now dispersing crowds applauds.  People have been standing here for half a day or more for 10 minutes of action! I have checked repeatedly whether my watch has stopped functioning, but NO, it was really all over in 10 minutes ;-)


6:05 pm: It is all over! The only bikes on the road now are of 'civilians' wearing funny costumes and riding mountain bikes!
What amazes me is that these people on the bikes (the participants) have cycled 200 km today. Without a bike battery and a 2nd battery ;-) These were the same people that a week or so ago were still down in Corsica !
If you were wondering: Yes, I had my laptop open on the outside wall of my hotel with a direct view of the road while I was typing. And fortunately the hotel internet reached this far.