Visitors, velib and Yellow jersey

27 July 2008- Check me out! After 2 weeks of visitors, I took a good long ride on the Velib. I walked Greg around Paris for 3 days but got sick after Chad shared his virus with me. Greg made it out of France and later that day Chez Nickell received my French friend from high school. I thought I was getting better and joined Monsieur at a museum I hadn't yet been too. About 2 rooms in, I almost fainted. Good thing I had a Frenchman with me and he took excellent care of me to get home. Poor guy, good thing he is a foodie so the museum wasn't going to be the highlight of his trip anyways. He took us to great dinner and chatted with our gardienne. Excellent to have a friend fluent in French come visit in France. He didn't want to leave after the croissants and coffee out on the balcony. The day he had to leave, his replacements arrived, the Brothers L. Their visit was timed perfectly, to watch the Tour de France arrive in Paris.

Here is the winner and a pretty good shot of him, Carlos Sastre. Spain is riding high, they won the Euro cup and Tour de France. We were camped out on the most famous street of all, Champs Elysees. We bought plenty of swag and really enjoyed ourselves. The beginning started with a parade of trucks and cars a la parade style. The funniest thing was it was just advertising. Even the Genderarme were out recruiting with a car. Champion grocery store, Xtra laundry soap, Vittel water and lots of others were swerving their ways up and down the CE avenue. Kind of cool to see tractor trailers driving crazy, honking and just having a good time. The 8 laps around CE go pretty fast. Next year, we will have to mix it up with a mountain stage. But I definitely enjoyed seeing and experiencing a stage in the Tour. Especially cool to see the final and not have to travel outside of our newly adopted city. Yet another thing checked off my to-do list, see a stage of the Tour de France.

So back to my long Velib ride this morning. It was 9 km and oh yeah, along the Champs Elysees. That is right my friends, I rode the Tour de France. Not really, it was about 1030 this morning and I was chosen along with 364 other Velib members. In honor of the one year anniversary of Velib, 365 participants got shirts, hats and breakfast and the opportunity to ride the lap on a brand new Velib bike. I won and Chad didn't. Ha ha. It was amazing. Sorry for the bad picture but that is all my cell phone could handle. Me and the Obelisk at Place de la Concorde. It was fun to go under the inflatable 1 KM marker, ride up to the Arc de Triomphe, and coast back down to Concorde. Chad was at the beginning/end to mark the occasion. The first picture shows me and my fellow Velib-ers. I am the one in between the cars. Vive le Tour!