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.
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