Watching the Tour de France 2015: Day 2

On this stage the racecourse started in Saint Jean de Maurienne, did the Col du Chasy then the Col de la Croix de Fer, then the Col du Mollard and finally finished at a ski resort up the hill from Saint Jean de Maurienne.  My plan for the day was to bike down into Saint Jean de Maurienne, try to say hi to some riders, then bike back up the opposite way of the race course as far as I could until the race came by.  Laurel would hang out on her own because she didn't want to descend with her bike that had crappy brakes.

I got up around 8am and had a relatively lazy morning after finally heading out on my bike just before 10am.  I started descending down towards Saint Jean de Maurienne, but made it no more than 4 kilometers until I was stopped by Police saying that the road was closed to everyone except pedestrians and official TDF vehicles.  A bunch of other cyclists were also stopped along with me, but after some translation barrier we all started biking again for another 20 meters where we were again stopped by another police officer saying that the road was closed.  This sucked quite a bit.  I decided to just head back to the campsite to find Laurel and we would watch the race together from the top of the Col.  I was stopped every 50 meters on my way back by more police officers.  I tried to explain to some of them that I was just going back to my campsite.  Some of them made me walk, some let me bike, some kind of ignored me.  It was hit and miss, but I got back to the campsite and was somewhat grumpy.



The times that the caravan and riders come by always seemed very accurate and published a long time in advance, but information about the exact time of closure was more of a ground truth.  I could not find online information anywhere about the road closures.  There were some signs on the Col du Glandon and then I found out in person encountering the police officers.  It seems like the general rule of thumb is that the roads are closed for driving at 10am everywhere on the course.  However, for any popular climbing part of the course, it seemed best to get all bicycling completely finished before 10am.  For the flat areas it seemed like it was more or less possible to bicycle on the road up until the caravan came through.  Although the next day at Alpe d'Huez was much more biking friendly.

So a bit bummed out, I checked the results from yesterday since I still hadn't found out.  Then we got ready for the day and hiked about 5km and 400 meters vertical from our campground to the Col de la Croix de Fer.  We walked up the road all the way and wherever there were police officers they were telling bike riders to dismount and walk, but wherever the were no police officers, bike riders were whizzing past.  Campervans were parked all alongside the road again in any place possible no matter how precarious the situation.







We happened to be lucky this year in that the Tour came by our area 3 days in a row.  It was already planned to do so for 2 days on the Col du Glandon.  However, some landslides forced the organizers to alter the course to come up the Col de la Croix de Fer and then back down within a few meters of the Col du Glandon for a third time.







When we got to the top it wasn't as crowded as I had thought, but there were still tons of people at the top.  Laurel and I bought some schwag.  I got a TDF sweatshirt and Laurel a T-Shirt for her Dad.  We then sat up on a hill beside the road and waited for the caravan to come through.  We could see the cars coming in the distance as they crested the Col du Glandon.  We rushed down to the road to see them come by and get some free schwag.  Everyone was going crazy for the free schwag no matter their age.  Laurel told me that there was French announcements telling people to watch after their kids that they wouldn't run into the road for that free keychain just to get hit by the next car in the caravan.

We ended up scoring one yellow hat, a pack of coffee powder, 2 bob hats that we didn't really want anyways, 3 polka dot cycling caps (we gave 2 away to some kids), a stir stick (I think?) and a bag that had ice cream drawn on the side.  There were typically 3 or 4 vehicles associated with each brand driving by.  All of them either had a young good looking person shouting things over a loudspeaker in French, or blaring techno dance music, sometimes both.  Most of them also had people who were throwing schwag out.  Some tried to aim out over the crowd, but others were just throwing them straight on the ground beside the cars which were all driving at about 20mph through the crowds.  A lot of times some schwag would land dangerously close to the cars driving by and we had to make sure we wouldn't get runover before trying to pick it up.  One time a middle aged man underestimated the speed/distance of an oncoming vehicle and ran right into the middle of the road in front of the caravan causing the driver to slam on his brakes and gave him the French "what the heck are you doing wave/look".  I think that was to get a BIC hat.



After the caravan had passed by, we decided to go walk down the descent a bit so that we could watch the riders zoom by.  We found a fairly dangerous blind corner that got tighter as it wound around.  We could also see 5 more switchbacks down the hill from this place.  There were a few official cars that came zooming by and some of them were squealing their wheels.  The corner was also pretty fun because two guys were dressed up as French speed cameras who were waiving at all police vehicles to slow down.











Once all the helicopters started whirring above we knew the riders were close.  The first to zoom by was Pierre Roland who was then followed shortly by Vincenzo Nibali.  Nibali negotiated the corner probably the best out of everyone.  I don't think he even braked as he took a sharp inside line and flared out to the very edge of the road as he started to pedal again.  He was followed very closely by the group with Froome.  It was a pretty good race it seemed.  Riders were coming through in small groups all the way until the very last big group of riders.









After all that we quickly hicked down some trails back to the campground's restaurant where we were able to watch the final 20km of the race on a tv at the restaurant.  After having a beer and some food I just felt to lazy and early annoyances in the day made me have no motivation to ride my bike.

Watching the Tour de France 2015: Day 1

Looking at the course and taking into account Laurel's willingness to bike certain distances.  I decided that we should try to go climb the Lacets du Montvernier, a very picturesque and very vertical set of switchbacks about 15km before the end of the course.  We would park our van in a town just north of there and then bike to the switchbacks and then up them.

We had noticed signs saying that all driving was closed to vehicles on the Col du Glandon pass starting at 10am.  So we headed out from our campsite by the Col de la Croix de Fer around 8am.  It took us a while to drive down the hill because just about every place that someone could park a campervan or pitch a tent, someone had.  Or there were more campervans driving to the remaining spots.  Initially I had thought that parking would be full everywhere in town, but the lot by the grocery store wasn't very full at all, so we parked there.











We got breakfast, got some ice for our remaining food, got our bikes ready and headed out.  We biked along the course without a problem until we got to the Lacets du Montvernier which had been closed down to everyone by the police.  You couldn't hike up there at all, let alone bike up it.  I was frustrated and a bit disappointed, but decided like a lot of other bikers that instead we would bike another route to get somewhat close to the top in hopes of finding a better spot.  That took another 45 minutes or so of riding.  We got to the part just after the switchbacks and again it was closed from the top.  Police were even making spectators leave every spot except for just beside this church up top.  So we settled in along the road just above.  This was at around 12:30pm that we got there.








We then waited a lot.  We had lunch.  We went to the bushes to find a bathroom which happened to have a great view of the switchbacks.  We made friends with a French guy from Marseille who was giving us updates on who was in a breakaway, etc.  He also told us that the caravan was not going to pass by because the turns on the switchbacks were too tight for them.  I also talked to another group of enthusiastic Polish fans who were nearby.  They were a bunch of fun and gave me a Polish beer to drink.








Somewhere around 2:30pm a whole bunch of riders started riding past us.  A lot of them had jerseys saying "2015 Pro Am Tour de France".  It seemed like a lot of them got to ride up the switchbacks with an escort or something.  That made me feel pretty jealous and then mad for not being in that elite class.  Whatever.  Every once in a while some official looking cars with very important people came whizzing by from up the switchbacks.

Finally, at around 5pm, 4 helicopters started whirring and circling above us.  We waved at them in hopes of getting on TV.  The choppers were circling for a while and then finally we saw some official red cars like you see on TV come by.  Then we saw the first rider: Romain Bardet who was in a solo breakaway.  He was followed by his AG2R team car.  After that there were a bunch of other small groups.



















A final group came by maybe as much as 45 minutes after the first rider.  I caught a glimpse of Peter Sagan who was having a conversation with the other riders in that group.  They were followed by a bunch of medic cars and a flatbed towtruck.







After that, I thought it might be cool to try to go down into town to try to find some riders after they had finished.  We got on our bikes and started out towards town.  All of us bikers were stopped in a small village by police until they let us all go down.  Laurel had mentioned that there was some trouble with the brakes on her bike.  They definitely weren't swiss stop brakes as you had to apply an excessive amount of force to get the wheel to stop from turning.  I can't imagine what it would've been like going down a hill.  I whizzed down to the next village without a problem and waited for Laurel.  She came much later walking her bike down in tears about it all.  We still agreed to go try and see the riders as it didn't involve any more descending.



We got into town and it was a massive traffic jam to get into town surprisingly enough.  We made it to the finish area and very briefly caught a glimpse of Chris Froome in his Yellow Jersey getting into a team car to head off to a hotel.  All of the team buses had left already and an army of workers was disassembling the poduim, finish, barricades, basically everything that looked like it was there just for the race.  We walked around a bit more, but then quickly got back on our bikes and biked the 15km or so back to our van.  We drove our van back up the Col du Glandon and Col de la Croix de Fer and had to frequently slow down or stop entirely for climbing cyclists, massive RVs negotiating switchbacks, etc.  We eventually got back to our campground at 9pm.

Watching the Tour de France 2015: Preparation

This is the start of a 4-part blog post about watching the Tour de France. These posts share the experiences I had while watching le Tour for 3 days in the Alps during 2015. This first post sums up the preparations and getting to France, and the course, etc.

Our Motive

Laurel and I decided to do a huge Europe trip for 5 weeks. This was sort of our honeymoon and time inbetween jobs and time inbetween moving to Santa Cruz as well. Laurel and I (mainly Laurel) decided that we needed to move to Santa Cruz. But before that we had decided to go to Europe for at least 2 weeks in the summer. Once we decided to move, I decided it'd be a good idea to take lots of time off in between jobs, etc. Our lease expired at the end of June, so we bought tickets to go to Europe on July 3rd and fly back August 7th. We put all our belongings in storage back in Portland until we'd make the move to Santa Cruz.

Credit Card Churning

In January I discovered the concept of Credit Card Churning. The idea is that most credit cards offer a huge signup bonus (usually after spending a few thousand dollars), but after that, the rewards suck in comparison. Therefore, the best way to maximize the accumulation of points is to get new credit cards and then downgrade or cancel them just before the second year annual fee kicks in. Then maybe a year later you apply for the same credit card again to get the bonus all over again. So, unfortunately that whole thing is a 3 year cycle, so I was unable to truly take advantage of that to the extent of getting free airline tickets to and from Europe.

Nonetheless, I did apply for and get a Barclaycard Arrival plus and the Amex Starwood Prefferred Guest cards. The Barclaycard has been very helpful for buying rail tickets and Airbnb's. I get to redeem travel expenses at a rate of 100 points per dollar. With the signup bonus of 40,000 points and earning 2 points per dollar spent, I've been reimbursed for over $800 in travel expenses. The Amex SPG card was also helpful for booking a hotel, although we decided to do more airbnb's than hotels which had it's pluses and minuses being on a honeymoon and all. We got a hotel in Barcelona with the points from the signup bonuses. After that I'm planning on transferring points to airline miles for the upcoming airline trips to/from PDX to visit family. To sum it up, if you plan on travelling, getting credit cards oriented towards travel will save you a lot of money.

Flights

I sort of wished I would've searched a little harder for cheap airlines to/from Europe. My Frat Bro wrote up a good article about Norweigan Airlines and their cheap flights to Europe. This might have saved us a little bit of money, but we would've had to fly PDX > SFO > ARN > PRG which would've been a bit of a hassle. Instead I found out about Condor airlines which had a direct flight from PDX to Frankfurt. It was only on certain days of the week, so I had to choose the tickets carefully. I thought I would try to be smart and pay for the trip with my Amex card, but at the time it didn't waive foreign transaction fees, so I paid 1% more or so. Oh well. We ended up getting tickets for PDX > FRA > PRG and then OPO > FRA > PDX.

The non-TDF part of the trip

Our trip's plan was to go fly to Prague where my parents would pick us up and drive to Křivoklát where we'd stay for a week. After that our parents would drive us back to the Prague airport where we'd fly to Zürich then take trains from the Airport > Bern > Interlaken > Lauterbrunnen > Wengen. We did an Airbnb in Wengen for 3 nights then had our biggest train day. We went Wengen > Lauterbrunnen > Interlaken > Spiez > Visp > Martigny > Vallorcine > Chamonix > Les Pèlerins. We stayed at a hostel/airbnb in Chamonix 3 nights. Then train from Les Pèlerins > Saint Gervais > Annecy where we airbnb'ed it for 2 nights. Then a train to Lyon for 1 night where the next morning we started our TDF adventure.

After the TDF we'd do Lyon > Barcelona on the train. In a hotel in Barcelona for 3 nights. Then train to Madrid staying with Laurel's friends for 4 nights. Then fly to Porto and stay for 4 nights. Then finally fly back home.

Campervan

I started planning intently for everything in March. The first thing I sought to do was try to reserve a campervan. It was kind of hard trusting a lot of places because I could find very little if any online reviews of the van renting outfits. I did find a few that had vans with showers and toilets, but they all appeared to be reserved already for the time of the Tour. Eventually I found an outfit called WeVan. We reserved a van with a bed for 2 people without bathrooms and figured we'd just wing it from there and park somewhere along the Col du Glandon. Laurel did express concerns about not having a bathroom/shower, etc. Once the Tour was diverted to do the Col de la Croix de Fer a 2nd time, I looked along the course for something, anything that might allow us to reserve a spot for campervans that had bathrooms. Fortunately we found a campground where we reserved a parking spot for our van. Good to go! The place at WeVan rented us a bike rack for the van.

Bike Rentals

I definitely wanted to have a bike for the Tour, but we decided that it would be best to not fly over a huge bike box because of all our other travels. I found a place called RentMyBike which offered a variety of bike rentals in the place where we planned to stay. I got a carbon bike, but we decided to get Laurel a not so awesome bike which ended up being a big mistake. We had good communication with the rental agency and met them on the side of the road in a small town just before Bourg d'Oisans.