Tour Finish in Foix

WE WENT TO another TDF stage finish today, this time in Foix, a medieval city about 45 minutes away. We arrived quite early and found a spot just after the final turn, about 250 meters from the finish. Then we sat a waited. But the waiting wasn't exactly dull since the whole area was in a festive spirit and people we constantly passing out free stuff like hats, pens, drinks, and key chains...

...then the real fun started: the Tour de France Caravan rolled through. Many people don't realize that during every stage of the Tour, a grand caravan (like a rolling parade) covers the entire route about 2 hours before the cyclists. The caravan consists of cars and floats (for lack of a better word) from some of the major Tour sponsors. Along the way that throw free stuff out to the crowds. To give you an idea how much they throw out, we collected 28 hats today -- and gave almost as many away to some of the people who arrived later in the day. They just kept giving us hats: hats from LCL Bank (the yellow jersey sponsor), Champion (the polka dot jersey sponsor), Skoda (the white jersey competition), Bougyes Telecom, and PMU (the green jersey sponsor). [Note: if you are related to us and have kids, guess what they're getting for their next birthday?]

The stage itself was quite fun to watch because the peleton was broken up in to several parts so we got to watch cyclists go by three or four times. After the stage was over I dragged Kerri and the kids around to visit some of the team buses; we even got a quick picture of Patrick and Julia just in front of Alejandro Valverde -- a great Spanish rider for Caisse d'Epargne.

Tomorrow the Tour rolls right through our village so we won't have to go far to see the fun. And (sarcasm alert!) if we're lucky we'll get another 28 or so hats.

CJS