Tour de France

As we drove up to summer camp, we saw that the road running along camp property had just been repaved; a dead give away that the Tour de France was passing through! Friday was the big day. We made sack lunches for all the campers who walked down to the road early enough to see the caravan go by. (The caravan consists of tour sponsor vans from which all kinds of goodies are tossed to the fans.) When it was almost time for the actual race to come through, I put on my Nikes and ran down to the road. The first group of campers applauded when the saw me coming. I stopped and talked with them for a few minutes before heading to the top of the hill several miles away to join the older campers. It was odd to see this normally deserted stretch of road lined with thousands of people. In fact, the road was so crowded I missed my group and had to backtrack about a mile to find them. We heard and saw the helicopters first, then the breakaway group sped by. A few minutes later, the pack whizzed by. It was awesome to get a glimpse of the yellow jersey and the Swiss champion! As I headed back to camp, many of the onlookers cheered for me, whereas they had completely ignored me on the way up. It was truly a once in a lifetime experience!

Gotta run...