Tour de France, Stage 7

This morning was a lot more beautiful than yesterday. The air was clear, with a low cloud ceiling, providing for a good morning to see a bike race. There wasnt any rush to get there early today, based on the experience of seeing the Tour of California leave from San Jose, we could get there only an hour or two early and still not miss anything. If we wanted the prized starting-line photo, we would have to stand in one spot, but I wanted to try to see the riders before the race.

We went on the hunt for where the teams would set up their big vans and lay out the bikes for the papparazzi, and found the big empty parking area. That was about 9:30, with the caravan scheduled to leave at 10:00 and the riders scheduled to leave at 11:00, I suggested we look for the coolest cappucino-serving café and hoped to collect a signature or two. So left we went out of the parking area.

We looped back onto the course and saw the caravan leaving, and by the time we got to the parking area, the first of the teams was arriving. Yes Alia, they came from the right side. You win.

The big attraction was when the main show rolled in, the Astana bus. I didn't feel like pushing the crowds and standing seven deep, but did get this:



After that, circled around to see all of the mechanics prepping the bikes for the race. It was too crowded at the start line to really see all of the riders signing in, and with our patience spend from yesterday, we headed about 500m down the road from the starting line to see it all roll out of town.

View of the corral and back side of the start:


Front of the peloton, you can see Cavendish and a bit of Cancellara:


Fabian Cancellara, in yellow:

Stage 6, Tour de France

Wow, today was pretty long. We got up at about 8am worried that we were going to get to the stage too late to get a good spot to watch the finish; the peloton was expected at 3pm.

Got to the Olympic Stadium around 10am to see the finish line still being set up, the official tape was not on the ground yet. A crew was busily trying to paint over a pedestrian crossing so it wouldnt confuse riders, but they were fighting a losing battle. The pounding rain was no match for the blowtorch-brooms that they had on hand, they couldnt keep the road dry enough to put black paint down.

We stood in this rain until the caravan arrived sometime around 4:30. Yes, six and a half hours of solid rain in Barcelona in July. Has this ever happened before? Who knows. The rain died down when the riders had about 30k to go, as far as I could tell based on Alia's translations of the French announcements.

David Millar was going to be the star of the day.

5k to go, 36 seconds lead over the sprinters.
4k to go, 30 seconds.
3k to go, 25 seconds.
2k to go, 20 seconds.

And we see a mass of riders flying by, I see a Cervelo test team rider and Caisse d'Epagne rider at the front, turns out Mr. Hushovd won it.

Tomorrow we go see the start of the race, and I try to get a signature or two.

Madge

Introducing Madge, our trusty steed across West Africa to the desert and back.

She is a reincarnated cement mixer, V6 Mercedes power. Capacity for twenty passengers and two drivers, 400L of purified water, 6 gerricans, lots of propane, a kitchen, and toolbench. Eight seats on the roof for slow scenic drives. One big back locker to hold everyones gear. A dozen+ tents, and an extendable tarp for cooking in the rain. A big tow cable tied on the front, handy for pulling out stuck tro-tros.

Possibly the best feature--school bus style windows, making the back seats the coolest places in Mali. What a breeze.

Didnt have a single mechanical that slowed the trip down, though apparently the speedometer/trip distance meter broke once.

If you are considering traveling in Africa, I highly recommend looking into an overlanding.

barcelona

In Barcelona! One day until the Tour arrives! Super excited. The finale of the stage heads up Montjuic, for any of those that are familiar with the area. Yesterdays bus ride from Madrid to Barcelona was a long one, taking about 8 hours start to finish.

This hostel we are staying out, Alberguinn Youth Hostel, has two computers with free internet. Quite handy.

Today I think we are going to try to buy bus tickets to Pamplona, and maybe walk around La Rambla. Tomorrow and the next day are Tour de France days, probably all day tomorrow in order to get a good view to see the finish, and the beginning of the next day. After that, a morning on the beach before an overnight bus ride to Pamplona.

Later today I am going to try to upload some photos. Hopefully it works!

found bags

Our bags made it back to us today, only 40 hours overdue.

I'm exited to see the tour. It should be a sweet couple of days in Barcelona, apparently the finish is up Montjuic, an interesting hill in the city.

Now its time to scramble for two beds in a hostel in Madrid, then tomorrow we are going to Manzanares el Real, where a park named La Pedriza supposedly has some hiking trails. Spending the night there, then transferring to Barcelona via Madrid on the following day.

Sprits are a bit higher now that we have our stuff, especially because The Westin is allowing us to leave a bag here at the hotel for a few weeks.

Hasta lo.

Back in Spain, mostly.

Looks like we´ve made it to Madrid again. It´s pretty warm, but not so bad compared to Africa, the humidity is down.

The flight schedule was pretty terrible getting here. 2:55am flight with a short stop in Lome, arrived in Casablanca somewhere around 10am. Flew out just past 12, got to Madrid around 3pm (flight was late leaving).

Got to the Westin somewhere around 6pm, with a quite nice room. Wandered around for an hour looking for a cheap place to eat, and it seems that the cheapest food by far is Persian/Kebap places. A dinner combo for €6. Individual sandwiches are about €4. I really want to try paella somewhere tonight, but I´m a little intimidated by the price, and totally can´t understand the menus. Spanish 1 vocab pretty much taught me that pescado is fish, and thats about it.

The only other frustrating thing is that our bags decided to lose themselves somewhere before getting to Madrid. I really thought that was going to happen, and at least we don´t need to worry about left luggage yet. It seems that Iberia has experience with this, it´s claimed to be the European airline post likely to lose someone´s bags. This combined with a bizarre technical stop in Lome, Togo at 4am where half the people got off the plane, makes me think that we might never see our bags again.

Uh oh.

Anyone want to try to figure out how much money I can claim per bag? http://www.iberia.com/equipajes/

My spanish isn´t too good, and I checked three total bags.

Happy hunting!

shipping....

So. Flight out is in twelve short hours.

Today we did the run around Accra trying to ship an extra box of stuff home. Learned we couldn't ship international packages from the nearest post office, got redirected to the bigger (but not main) post office in another part of town. Everyone out there, don't go to the Cantonments Post Office if you want to ship an overseas package. Shipping a 6kg box of stuff home was going to cost GH 90, around $60. Not the cheapest. Unfortunately, UPS quotes me at about 240 Euro to ship something from Madrid to San Francisco.

Left luggage looks like about 3-4 Euro a day, and it'll probably be around 20 days that we need to do it, also not too cheap.

Maybe the hotel we're staying at will be really nice and let us keep our stuff there for that time.

How else to kill time?

Madrid via Casablanca, here we come.