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28 Jan 07:  18:25

Estoy en Costa Rica! I arrived today, everything going smoothly and as planned (mostly). Needing to be at the airport at 6am meant morning came way too early today. Dan dropped me off, check in went smoothly (except both of my bags were way over weight, but that was no surprise). I had a bit of a scare at MSP as the flight was about 20 minutes late taking off. Not generally a problem, but I was only scheduled 35 minutes to make my connection in Houston. Fortunately the pilot and a nice tailwind were on my side, and despite taking off 20 minutes late, we landed 20 minutes early. That turned out to be fortunate as we got off the plane on the tarmac, then took a bus to the terminal, at which point I had to get on the tram to go two more terminals down to my gate. Even with the extra 20 minutes I had, they were halfway done boarding my flight by the time I got to the gate.

I landed in San Jose, Costa Rica at about 3:00pm. After waiting a half hour in the customs line, I cruised smoothly through Customs and Immigration and was rushed to a taxi and off to the apartment. I say rushed because I was a little tired, lacking caffeine, and in a country that I don’t speak the language all that well, I was a little flustered, and whenever someone pointed me in a direction, I just went that way. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, but it meant I skipped two very important tasks that were to be accomplished before leaving the airport. First, getting cash. Fortunately they accept American dollars, so I could pay for the cab, but I couldn’t pay our rent or deposit like I was supposed to. Second, I didn’t call the person who was supposed to meet me at the apartment. I arrived at the apartment complex and really had no direction. Fortunately the taxi driver was patient enough to hang around for a few minutes while I tracked down some people who could help me (people who speak excellent English, making the whole process a lot smoother).

Luis, our driver and primary contact in Costa Rica, and who arranged the apartment for us, took me to the grocery store and got me settled in a bit at the apartment and now I just have to wait until Monica shows up tonight so we can lay out a plan to get things rolling for the season! Tomorrow, in addition to getting working on overhauling and rebuilding bikes, I’m hoping to run around a bit and get the lay of the neighborhood and take some pictures and try to get a little more comfortable with Costa Rica. At least the weather is great. I haven’t spent a lot of time outside, but when I got on the plane in MSP, it was -4 degrees, and when I stepped off the plane at SJO it was 86. Can’t beat a 90 degree turn around in a matter of 9 hours.

Pura Vida!

So I guess this is where I update about my week three trip. I will tell you then end of the story first, and then rewind to the start and how it unfolded.

The story ends like this… I am REALLY glad it is over.

So following our last trip we loaded up our van and drove to Alpe d’Huez for our week three trip start. We stayed at the top of Alpe d’Huez the two nights before our trip and did our prep day in Bourg d’Oisans at the base of AdH. Everything went pretty smoothly for our prep day. We only had 11 guests on this trip, three of whom brought their own bikes, so my part of the day was pretty easy… until I got to my bike. I was going through the bike I had ridden for the entirety of my time in Italy (I rode one of our updates in NL and for most of my time in France, good thing it turns out). There were a lot of minor problems, needed new brake pads front and rear, needed a new front tire, needed a wheel true, stuff like that. Then I started cleaning the frame and had a look at the fork. Turns out my fork was on the verge of failure. The failure point was something  I had noticed in Italy, but not looked at that closely because we were way busy and it was “just my bike.” Potential fork failure is not something I really want to think about, especially since I rode it like that in the Dolomites! So I got to replace my fork as well, fun times.

Our pick up day started out okay, met our guests, had lunch, fit bikes, the usual. We even got our ride started on time! That doesn’t usually happen. I was riding sweep, but in the mountains, you pretty much have to ride your own pace, and before long I had caught the front group, even with a stop to hang out with Steph, who was driving the van that day. As I was riding through La Grave on the way up to Col du Lauteret and Hotel Bonnabel, I got a text from the guides who were on our Uber-trip, the trip that did six consecutive days of the tour, a day ahead of the actual tour. They were having lunch in a café along the side of the road, so I stopped to chill with them for a bit. I even took time to have lunch, as I hadn’t had anything at the picnic because I was setting up for the bike fit. We got to our hotel, got checked in and had an early dinner in preparation for an early start the next day.

Early is an understatement for our start on day two. We woke up at 4:15 to get bikes prepped, breakfast was available at 5:00 and we started riding by 5:30. It was brutally early, but we had to be at the base of AdH by 8:00 because they were closing the road at that point (or so we were told) and we had a 40 km descent to the 21 turns of Alpe d’Huez. The only advantage to being on the road at 5:30 am is that there are no cars on the road. I started out first, and with the road being kind of like a closed course I hardly touched my brakes for the first 15 km. It was pretty awesome. Almost enough to make up for the fact that I was riding well before the sun crested the mountains. I took my sweet time riding up AdH this time. I rode a bit with some other guides, a bit with the guests I saw, stopped at our Trek Travel feed zone halfway up, stopped at the Tmobile corner to talk to the guys we gave a ride up a couple days earlier, stopped at a café at the entrance to the city of AdH to have coffee with a couple of my guests from the week before that were on the mountain. It was a pretty fun morning. Unfortunately, given our start time, even with somewhat slow climbers, we got to the top by 10:00am for a 5:15ish finish. It turned into a long day at the top of the mountain, but most of the guests made the best of it walking around, checking out the TdF hoopla, most for the first time, and buying their AdH schwag. After the stage finished most of the group rode the back road off the mountain, looking to avoid the mass of people going down the main road, while I rode down to get the van and scoot ahead to pick up the guests coming off the back side. When I started, the road was open only to cyclists, all cars were being held at the top. As impressive as watching the pros go up, watching something like 7,000 people ride down at once is really something special. We ended up getting back to the hotel at about 8:30, about an hour and a half earlier than the guests expected to get back and about four hours earlier than I expected to get back with the van. It was a very pleasant surprise, especially given the plan for the next morning.

Wow, so that was only day two… Day three was yet another early morning, as we had to get up, out of our hotel, and down a good chunk of the racecourse before they closed the road to cyclists. The road had been closed to vehicles at some point the day before, meaning that our mechanics with the day bags for the viewing had left the night before to go around through Grenoble, and Nancy, with everyone’s luggage, by the time she left in the morning had to go all the way out and around and through Italy to make it to our next hotel. Those of us lucky enough to be on bikes got up to be on the road between 6:30 and 7:00 to ride up and over Col d’ Galibier and Col du Telegraphe, two of the most famous climbs in France, and famous for being amongst the most difficult… if you ride them the other way. Because we were already starting from our hotel at the top of Col du Lauteret, we only had a 9km climb to Galibier before an 18km descent and then a 4km “climb” to the top of Telegraphe before a 12km descent. It was a pretty easy day for us, which was nice. We watched the tour pass through St Jean du Maurienne, where it passed twice, once on the way past and up to Col de la Croix de Fer and then back down through town before the final climb up La Touissuire. We were able to watch the tour pass the second time and get back to the restaurant where we did our viewing just in time to watch Floyd crack and lose nearly ten minutes… yikes! After the tour finished for the day we loaded into a bus and headed to Megeve, our home for the next three nights, and a fantastic BBQ dinner of steaks and vegetables and all kinds of good American grillin’ food. It was an early night for all as everyone was pretty well spent by this point in the trip.

The next day we got up not quite as bright and early and rode to Col du Saisies. We had a relatively easy morning ride up to the top. It’s only a 12km climb with some flat spots and even a couple descents mixed in, so it was a nice easy morning. We arrived at the top early enough for people to walk around town, do some souvenir shopping, enjoy the caravan as it passed and have lunch at the restaurant we had reserved for our viewing. The restaurant was great because it had a deck that angled out toward the road, so anyone who chose to stay up there had a great view looking out onto the road as the tour passed. By the same token, there weren’t a lot of people at the top of this, the first climb of the day, and our roadside reserved tent offered a pretty great place to view from and cheer on Landis as he was already putting the hurt on his competitors. We followed the race back down the hill and spun back up to our hotel where we packed the hotel bar to watch the rest of Landis’ epic day. That evening people were on their own for lunch, so I (predictably) went for a beer and a pizza and tracked down some wireless internet to catch up on some work stuff.

Day five… non viewing day! Translation… easy day for JV. I drove this day, first day in about 10 that I wasn’t on a bike at any point, my legs appreciated it a ton. The guests rode up the second of the climbs from the previous day’s stage, to Col du Aravis. There we had a typical Alpine lunch of Tartiflette and a salad and some apple tart. Some guests rode on down the other side and back up, some went straight back to the hotel, some skipped our ride and went out on their program, and one skipped riding altogether. I was back to the hotel early enough I was going to go ride Cote 2000, but it was wicked hot and my legs were tired so I skipped it and went off in search of wireless once again. Before that evening’s dinner at the hotel’s fantastic restaurant, we had a wine tasting of a handful of regional Savoie wines. After dinner Berkas (one of our mechanics) and I sat in the hotel bar for a couple hours drinking Affligem and talking to and drinking with the hotel staff. It was a pretty fun evening, but not so fun that it affected me for the next day, because sleep was not going to be a luxury to be had the next day.

Day six was another pretty easy day for me. We loaded up all the guests in a bus and the guests’ luggage in the van and they drove to Geneve to catch the TGV (high speed train) into Paris as I drove the van and trailer loaded with all the bikes and luggage into Paris. It was a super slow drive as the van and trailer were pretty dang heavy with all the guests’ stuff (I’m so glad we only had 11 guests, unlike the 24 the other trips had), but I still only arrived an hour after everyone else. Navigating Paris turned out to be remarkably easy, even with a trailer and no navigator. It was great. We had a private viewing room with a large screen tv to watch Floyd seal the deal. The guests were on their own for dinner again this evening, so Steph and I went out to ride the next morning’s ride (we hadn’t seen in for a year, and I honestly don’t know if we ever rode it last year because we did a different final day ride with our group last year). After the ride, you guessed it: pizza and beer.

Day seven… is this thing ever going to end??? We went out and did the group ride bright and early in an attempt to beat city traffic to the streets. We had a pretty easy ride. I don’t particularly like it, but it’s mostly cool because it ends with riding the Champs Elysees when it’s all closed off to traffic and set up for the race to come through later in the day. It’s pretty special to fly up and down the cobbles with the road all closed and people starting to line the streets. I ran again into Roni and Josh, the two guests from week two that I had seen at Alpe d’Huez. It was cool to see those guys again. The final day of the Tour de France with Trek Travel means a great viewing at the Automobile Club of France with lots of food, lots of drink, and a great spot to watch from the balcony looking over the Place de la Concorde. After watching Floyd take the yellow we went out for a nice final night dinner and some final goodbyes to people who were leaving earlier than I wanted to be awake the next morning.

Day eight… the beginning of the end. After breakfast and final, final goodbyes and a whole bunch of coffee we loaded up our van and drove to the NL to unload and call it a trip. The only hitch on the way back was a blown out wheel on the trailer at 130km/h. Watching our little safety triangle get blown over, sucked into the road, hit by a truck and smashed into a billion pieces added a little excitement to the changing process. And that pretty much sums up the final week of the tour for me... 

here's my update that I typed at the end of last trip. when I have two seconds I will write about the one I'm working on right now...


Fin!

Wow, the trip is over. That happened before I could have possibly know what was happening.  So let’s see what happened in the time that has passed since my last update.

As I said, the third day of our trip was one of those days I live for in this job. The rest of the trip kind of unfolded to work out the same way. It was a great trip.

On day four we left our hotel early to clouds and rain. I was riding with the guests, but since I knew we only had 15 kilometers to Cambo les Bains for our stage start viewing, I hung around the hotel a bit to help Steph wrap things up before hammering ahead to catch the guests. I wasn’t more than four kilometers from the hotel when I encountered two of my guests, along the side of the road, cut, scraped and bruised from both having crashed. I was helping them get cleaned up and checking out their bikes when I got a phone call from Nancy, who was riding lead,

“Where are you?”

“I’m with Abe and Denise…”

“can you hurry up and get here because Allison just crashed and I already crashed and I need your help”

“No, Abe and Denise crashed, too. That’s why I’m with them.”

“Shit, do you know where Steph is?”

So we’re four kilometers from our hotel and we’ve already had four crashes, one of whom was a guide. Yikes. Not a good start to the day! We got everyone cleaned up and two of them got in the van to call it a day for riding and we continued on to Cambo. We got into town where we were visiting a local bike shop and museum. Henri, the man who owned the shop, has a huge collection of vintage bikes that we were able to admire between watching the Tour caravan pass in front of his shop. We started walking around town once the caravan passed, finding coffee and food and just kind of taking in the Tour buzz, when I got a text message from Nancy. She had just heard from one guy who used to work for Trek Travel, who now has a job working with the Discovery Team. He managed to score Village Passes for our guests! It started out being five, then ten, and by the time all was said and done all the guests we could find got into the Village, and since we couldn’t find a few of them, all of the guides got to go in, too! It was really cool. Two of our guests and Nancy and Steph got interviewed by VeloNews and the interview is online. Check it out

 here

After we watched the stage roll out we mounted our bikes to follow their route out of town, through the rolling countryside, roads still lined with fans, and up and over Col d’Osquish. It was a great ride, several small climbs and a few of us got up front and really hammered again. I started out the ride about halfway through the group and worked my way to the front. I had to work pretty hard to catch the front guy, but it was a pretty great feeling to accomplish it. We finished our ride and got in a bus for Lourdes! I still hate Lourdes, but it does have one saving grace… Café Leffe. The guests had Guest Choice dinner the first two nights we were here, so naturally the guides went to Café Leffe for our choice. After dinner we went back to the hotel to do some work and I walked up to the other group’s hotel to take advantage of their free WiFi. After an extremely late night I went to bed to make a run at five hours of sleep before our huge (and early) day the next day.

Yesterday the guides had the extreme pleasure of getting up at 5:30 to get the bikes prepped and everything ready for a 7:30 am roll out from the hotel. Welcome to the Tour de France; that would never happen on a real trip. Nancy and I split driving day 5, and I drove in the morning to lunch. The guests started out with an easy roll out of town on a bike path for 18.5 kilometers before climbing the legendary Tourmalet! I supported the route as far as I could up the mountain before getting forced off the road by the Gendarmerie. I was lucky to make it to within two kilometers of our viewing restaurant, so I waited for the last guest to pass the van for their last chance for water and food, packed up my bag and started walking up the mountain with my bike, as I was riding after lunch. We had a great lunch buffet set up at the restaurant and several guests took the opportunity to gather up all the cheap, chintzy crap the caravan throws out and walk down to a local bike shop that was selling a lot of team kits, including the coveted Euskatel kit. Euskatel is the Spanish team that is identified closely with the Basque for its many Basque riders – including Iban Mayo, the chronic TdF underachiever who dropped out on this day – and its rabid Basque fans. The Euskatel kits can be hard to come by, so many guests grabbed the opportunity to pick up whatever they could. The Tour passed our restaurant and again we hopped on our bikes to follow them along their route, this time up and over Tourmalet. It was a phenomenal ride up and over and down, even with all the TdF traffic that prevented us from going as fast as we would have liked down the descent. We returned to the hotel with the guests having ridden about 110 kilometers just in time to watch as Menchov crossed the line with Leipheimer and Landis in his wake. Even though I still don’t really like Landis, it’s cool to see an American in yellow again and you have to respect what those front guys did that day; it was truly impressive. It was another Guest Choice dinner night, and we made arrangements for the five guests who didn’t get to get into the Village to have a dinner with Kevin Livingston, former USPS rider and teammate of Lance, who is joining TT for the TdF again this year. They were all thrilled with the evening and came back raving the next day. It was a cool thing for them to get to do since they didn’t get into the Village. Another Guest Choice dinner night meant another night at Café Leffe for the guides, and another night at the Grand Hotel de la Grotte for JV for some more quality internet time. Kevin was back at the hotel by this point, so the group of us spent some time telling stories and hanging out and Kevin suggested a round of my favorite drink, Jack and Coke. It was a fun night, although I didn’t get to bed quite as early as I was hoping to.

This morning we got to sleep in! With no live TdF viewing and no transfers and no real time constraints whatsoever, we could take our sweet time about leaving the hotel. Our schedule read 7:00am breakfast, 8:45 meet at the bikes and 9:00 ride. Several guests asked if that was a typo, because after several consecutive 8:00am or earlier depart the hotel, they were pretty surprised to get to sleep in, too. We assured them that 9:00 am was in fact correct and we got on the road right about then, on our way to ride Col du Soulor and Col d’Aubisque. I had to drive the van today, but I guess I can’t really complain. It’s the first day all trip that I didn’t get to ride, and nobody rides every day of a trip. It was actually a pretty good day for me to drive, because it’s a route we rode in last year’s TdF trip, and I drove that day too, so I knew all the good spots to stop to support, and I knew the whole route without looking at directions, so I could give up my directions to someone who lost theirs. We got back to the hotel just in time to watch then end of the stage today, which Popovich made extremely exciting. It was a blast to sit in the hotel bar and cheer and get crazy every time he attacked and especially when he crossed the line for the win. This evening we went out to dinner as a group and finished the evening watching the Bastille Day fireworks from the rooftop terrace of the hotel while drinking champagne and playing with sparklers. It was a pretty great end to a pretty great trip.

The guests get in a bus tomorrow morning at 9:30 to shuttle to the Toulouse airport and we finish up, load up, and drive to the Alps to get it together for our next trip!

Two more days have passed in my TdF 06 whirlwind. The days really start to fly once the trips roll, which is great. Yesterday was wicked wicked hot in the Pyrenees. We rode two Cols (although small ones, climbs of about 600 meters). It was a brutally hot day, but most of the second climb was shaded, and it wasn't that steep of a grade, so it was actually a really nice climb. I'm super impressed with our group. Even the slowest guests are pretty strong. All of our group got to the top of the first climb yesterday within five minutes of each other! It's really nice and makes our job a lot easier.

Today was an unbelievable day. We had an 85 km ride into Dax, where we were to watch the stage finish. The ride was great. It was a bit drizzly to rainy to start out, but most of the day was just a bit overcast and perfect temperature. Still warm and humid, but nothing like what we had yesterday. There were no major climbs today, just a series of short ones with a lot of good descending and good flat sections. I rode up front with our stronger guests and we absolutely flew! Days like today are the days I live for in this job. The group at the front varied from four to seven people. We dropped into a paceline, worked together, and flat out had a blast. I was so happy at the end of the ride, I was just giddy. We had a great lunch in a restaurant that sat at a turn of the racecourse in town just shy of 2 km from the finish. After lunch we all took some time to walk around and see the crowds and find a good spot along the racecourse to cheer and take pictures. 

For most of our guests today was the first time they had ever seen the TdF live, and their reaction to it is so rewarding for me. I've kind of seen it all before, between last year's TdF and the Giro this spring, and I still get that rush when the race passes, but there's nothing like the first time, and to see their reaction is absolutely incredible. 

I'll end this with a quote from one of my guests after seeing a TdF stage live for the first time,    "It took my breath away... I'll never forget that moment."

Hello hello hello.

I'm writing from one of my favorite places, and easily my favorite place in France, the Alps! Forgive me if parts of this entry are a little disorganized, as I am actually sitting in a little bar in Megeve, France, where I've finally managed to find a useful wireless signal, but I've also managed to find a bar crazy for the World Cup game against Brasil that is currently on the big screen tv. It's a pretty exciting environment to be in, but not exactly a great working environment, if you know what I'm saying.

Et voila,  we arrived in the alps from the pyrenees three days ago. The first day we took a much deserved (and needed) easy day. As it had rained nearly the entire time we were in the Pyrenees, we didn't feel like riding, and we didn't feel like doing much of anything other than focusing on the task at hand and really getting through our work. We arrived at our hotel in the Alps, at the top of Col du Lauteret, two and a half days ahead of schedule. Our first day there I didn't do much. I spent some time reading, spent some time writing, and rode the 9km from our hotel to the top of Galibier, not easy, to be sure, but a nice warm up to the Alps. Yesterday we had our meeting with our hotel in the Alps, easy enough since we were staying there, they hook us up with a really good deal on the rooms so we were able to stay in a 4 star hotel, not so bad. After that we drove down to Bourg d'Oisans, at the base of Alpe d'Huez. For those who are not familiar, this is the site of the 2004 Individual Time Trial, 15.5 km from the base to the top, 21 switchbacks, 1135m (2500ft) vertical gain. Real son of a gun of a climb. It was a climb I've been looking forward to (and fearing) for about as long as riding it has been a possibility. Basically, it was hard. I rode it in 1h12m39s. Only about 34 minutes slower than Lance. Not so bad for a first timer... haha. 

We finished up our work in that area and drove today to Megeve, near Albertville, where we have two more routes to drive (or ride) and one more hotel to visit. We're nearly done with the familiarization phase of the TdF prep, nearly 5 days ahead of schedule. That is awesome because, as much as it means we've been working hard, it also means we get a little break before things really kick off next week. A break that is welcome and needed.


and just because I feel like I need to comment on it...
Officially, I have no comment on the ASO decision to bar 5+ riders from the TdF, including Ullrich and Basso. Unofficially I think it really sucks for both of those guys and I think the tour will really not be the same without Basso, Ullrich, and Vino in the peloton. Whoever wears the yellow jersey on the Champs Elysses will wind up with a big asterisk next to their name as far as I am concerned. Finally, consider this, nobody who finished in the top 5 in last year's TdF is in the peloton this year. 

(but it does make it a lot easier for me to cheer for the Disco boys, go Hincapie and Popo!!!)