French for a While

Henry looks a bit nervous standing in front of Christian Vandevelde's bike (can you find Kerri in the background?)

Even I get in a photo: with CSC Manager and 1996 Tour winner Bjarne Riis.

Some days you just get a little lucky.

CJS

KERRI CAME UP with the idea at about 10:00 this morning: 'where does the Tour de France end up today?' she asked. When I said Toulouse she wanted to know how far away Toulouse was from our house. When I told her it was about a hour-and-a-half she just blurted it out: 'Let's go!' The weather forcast for the day wasn't great so it seemed like a pretty good idea. What else were we going to do?

An hour later we were in the car on our way to Toulouse (2 1/2 hours later we were eating lunch at the Toulouse IKEA, but that's for another post...visiting IKEA for the first time in nearly a year deserves more thought and analysis). We found our place about 700 meters from the finish and watched the end of the rain-soaked stage. We were right on the fence and had a great view of the pack as they sprinted to the finish. There is a 1 minute clip on versus.com and if you pause the video at about the 26 or 27 second mark, I think you can see the 'thundersticks' that Patrick and Julia were holding. Actually, I'm not at all sure it's them, but that is about where we were standing.

WE HAVE ARRIVED at the home where we will spend the next two months. The village of Puivert, in the Southwest part of France, is wonderful. It is a small village that sits in the shadow of a 13th century Chateau that was used as a meeting place for medieval troubadors and in 1170...

...oh, enough about the village. What I'm really excited about has to do with the television in the house. For the first time we have some English (as in England, not just the language) channels. That alone is not a big deal because we try to stay away from English-language channels when we can. But during July I now be able to watch the Tour de France (one of my favorite sporting events) with commentary by...Phil Ligget and Paul Sherwin.

Now I realize this only makes sense to about 10 of you out there who might read this. But for you 10, you know what I mean. Living in France is great if you love cycling: constant coverage, long replays, deep analysis. But the one thing France lacks is Phil and Paul. But this year I'll be able to switch back and forth between the French broadcast and the Phil/Paul broadcast. Wonderful.
CJS

HERE'S A PHOTO we took of the Pont d'Avignon earlier this spring: Here's a photo by Graham Watson of today's Dauphiné Libéré opening prologue.

Looks like we were standing in about the same spot.

CJS

IF YOU’VE READ much of this blog you’ll know that we (OK, mostly I) have been to quite a few sporting events in and around Nice. You can read about some of them here, here, here, or here.

At soccer and hockey games in Nice there is a lot of singing and chanting – very typical in Europe. Once such chant involves the entire stadium jumping up and down while performing the ‘song’. Patrick and I both tried in vain to figure out 1) what everyone is saying, and 2) why was everyone jumping up and down? After listen to the chant dozens of times, all we managed to ascertain is that the chant had nine syllables and the final word was niçois, as in, ‘from Nice.’ So when the fans began this ritualistic chant I would jump up and down with the crowd and yell, ‘blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Niçois!’ Patrick was incredibly embarrassed. To make him fell better I promised to go to the internet to find out what the fans were really saying. A few clicks around Google and I found what I was looking for. Here is the chant in French followed by a translation:

Qui ne sauté pas n’est pas Niçois.

Translation: whoever is not jumping is not from Nice.

Ah, that explains a lot. Check out this link to see the chant at a real match. The clip is from Lyon, not Nice. But that's probably OK because many in France think Lyon was the first club to use it.
CJS

WE'RE HEADED TO Lyon for the weekend (leaving right after school is out for the kids on Friday). I'm a bit embarassed to say why we're going -- but this website will give you a clue. We'll take some time to look around the city, visit some sites, and -- of course -- try some of Lyon's legendary cuisine.

Full report when we return.
CJS

THOSE OF YOU who know me know that Monday will be bitter-sweet for me. Sweet because it's Opening Day. Bitter because I won't be able to experience it first hand. You can show me calendars that say otherwise, but for me spring officially begins when Major League Baseball officially opens its season. Opening Day is a symbol of how American (or is it Latin American) baseball is.

I'm not trying to go David Halberstam or Thomas Boswell on you, but I'll be thinking a lot about baseball on Monday. A lot of the time I'll be thinking about how long it's been since the Baltimore Orioles even resembled a competitive team, but thinking about the plight of 'my' Orioles is somehow better than not thinking about them at all. Their Opening Day roster is a bit unfamiliar to me (Luis Hernandaz? Adam Jones? Luke Scott? Randor Beird?) but it doesn't matter, I'll follow along from afar and root for the best.

Meanwhile, in Washington the hometown Nationals are opening their season tonight in a brand new stadium. It looks amazing on video, with sweeping views of the US Capital, the Washington Monument, and the Anacostia River. Can't wait to see it. If someone from home goes to a game -- please send photos!

I don't ever regret moving with my family to France, but there are times when I wish I could jet home real quick for a couple of days. Tomorrow will be one of those days.

Late Update: Ryan Zimmerman hit a home-run in the bottom of the 9th inning to win the Nat's opening game in their new stadium.

[obscure reference guide: David Halberstam, Thomas Boswell] (these won't be obscure to some of you: Kevin, Dan, Jeremy, Dad, any others?)
CJS

SO I WAS able to convince my family (and some visiting freinds) to go to San Remo for the day -- partly to watch the finish of the Milan-San Remo bike race. After a nice picnic lunch on the beach, we let the kids play in the water for a few hours, then positioned ourselves about 250 meters from the finish line and watched as Fabian Cancellara won the big race.

Watching cycling is about 90 percent anticipation and 10 percent participation -- as this short video clip from our day yesterday will show:

Late Update: There is a good story about the race from the perspective of one of the riders if you click here.

CJS

OK, I REALLY don't mean for this to be all about bike races, it's just that we've had guests for the past week and there hasn't been much time to keep up. It also just so happens that we're going to go to another major race tomorrow -- partly because our friends want to shoot over to Italy, and party because I'd like to see the finish of the Milan-Sanremo race. (Actually, what I did was convince Kerri and our friends that Sanremo is a nice little Italian city and we should go visit. Then, when we get there I'll just pretend that it's an extra, previously unknown bonus that one of the biggest races of the year happens to be ending there the same day. Shhhhhhh!)

Milan-San Remo is the longest one day race of the years --298 km this year -- and is the first of 5 monster single-day races known as La Classicissima. We'll head out early, spend the afternoon in Sanremo (just over an hour from us) then watch the sprinters battle it out for the title.

Oh...and enjoy the town, food, markets, shopping, blah blah blah.
CJS

Slipstream-Chipotle rider Christian VandeVelde. You can almost smell the burritos!

Slipstream's color scheme as it apears on their bikes.

The Lampre Boys

Bobby Julich being interviewed by VS.

Next week I'm hoping to convice my family to go to the finish of Milan-San Remo! We'll see.

CJS

THE SIXTH STAGE of the Paris-Nice arrived in Cannes on Saturday afternoon. We decided to catch a glimps of the race and found a great spot about 12 km from the finish in the village of Pegomas, just at the bottom of the trecherous descent down the Col du Tanneron. On the way to Pegomas I was trying to explain to our kids that we were only going to see about 15 seconds of racing, but if were were lucky we'd be able to see some well known riders and the Slipstream-Chipotle team. (Note: we were all eager to see the Slipstream-Chiptole team because, as long as we are living in France, that's the closest we're going to get to one of those beautiful, delicious, guacamole-filled Chipotle burritos.)

Patrick and Julia were wanting to know which famous riders we were going to see. They don't know too many cyclists by name, but I mentioned that we might see Bobby Julich, making sure to add that it would probably be hard to pick him out in the mddle of the pack. I chose to mention Julich because I've really liked him ever since he finished 3rd in the 1998 Tour de France (pre-Lance, by the way). Because Julich was one of the few Americans to experience real success in the Tour in the years between Lemond and Armstrong, I think all American cycling fans really like him.