TdF Stage 15

Today (Sun, 7/15) we caught-up with Le Tour for the start of Stage 15 in the small village of Tallard, France.  Another spectacle with tens of thousands of spectators from all over the world arriving early in this small village to see their favorite riders / teams and to witness the stage start.  It was like a carnaval or county fair with all sorts of things to see and do (e.g. myriad of tour & team cars/buses/caravans, riders, live music & entertainment, games of all kinds, vendors selling all sorts of cycling & TdF stuff, etc.) leading to the start of the stage around mid-day.  One highlight -- a center stage in the middle of town where each rider is viewed & cheered by the masses while signing-in to ride the stage.  Another highlight, getting close and personal with the tour riders.  Here are a few pics of the popular riders.

TdF GC (yellow jersey) leader V. Nibali:

Aussie hopeful R. Port:

The "Gorilla" sprinter A. Greipel:

A nice Colnago C60 under this guy...

And one of my personal favorites...P. Sagan of Cannondale:

One observation - small towns & villages all over France benefit financially from the Le Tour.  We observed, for example, several small grocery stores, restaurants, bars, etc. with hundreds of customers waiting to be served after the stage start.  These shops probably do more business in one TdF-day than typically what they would do in a month.

After the stage start, a number of Bikestyle riders (incl. yours truly) went for a short 40km bike ride following the TdF riders (we didn't catch them) to loosen the legs in prep for tomorrow's (Mon 7/21) climb up Mt. Ventoux.  The good news is that we did not encounter any rain, even though the TdF riders encountered major rain storms as they made their way from Tallard to Nimes.  We also encountered a nasty 7km hill climb just outside of Tallard that just about wore me out...the pic below was taken by L as I made my way up the climb.  Another observation -- the hill climbs over here are generally steeper than what we encounter in the USA...steeps generally greater than 8% on most climbs.

In the pm we travelled to the Provence region of France (village of Valaurie) in prep for our climb up historic Mt. Ventoux on Monday 7/21. What a beautiful region is southern France -- the scenery is spectacular, and vineyards & wineries are everywhere.  The pic below...Mt. Ventoux...