Tour de France, Part 2

All during this time, I had been renting an AirBnB in Chambéry, staying with this nice lady Helene. She did not speak much english and my french has much to be desired, so we did a lot of communicating with cell phone translation apps! But she had a boyfriend who spoke pretty good english and he told me that the Tour de France was coming close to Chambéry. It was going to go through a village called Culoz and was at the north end of Lac de Bourget, the lake that starts along Aix-Les-Bains. Well, how could I pass up this opportunity, being so close and everything.

I starting looking at maps to see exactly how far it would be and how I might get there, not having a car. At first, I thought I might be able to ride my bike to Culoz. It would be a long ride, maybe 40 mile just to get there, and have to ride back, possibly later in the evening. I took a ride out to Aix-Les Bains to take a look at the road to Culoz . I pretty quickly decided against this idea. Parts of the road looked pretty sketchy for riding. Little to no shoulder and lots of traffic.

So next, I looked into a boat shuttle. I had heard there was a boat that traveled up lake. I had known about it because I had (and still do) think about riding the Via Rhona bike trail which is a dedicated bike path that goes from Geneva, Switzerland to the Mediterranean Sea. The Lac de Bourget boat ride connects bike riders to the trail. I went to the ticket office to inquire about it, but quickly found out the schedule was not going to work out, at least to get to Culoz to see the Tour.

But wait! The train goes there. And European trains are awesome. This turned to to be the perfect solution to my problem of getting there, and back. On the day of the TdF stage in Culoz, I got on the train around noon. In one of those small world things, I was sitting across from 2 young women who it turns to were Americans. So I asked where they where from and the were from Bellingham, Washington. And had very recently been to Lake Chelan and Leavenworth, both towns in the county I live in.

Once in Culoz, I, and everyone else on the train started walking to where to race would go through. I was only about a ten minute walk. The race would itself would be exciting, but not until it passed through Culoz. The crux of the day’s stage would be the climb up the Grand Colombier. It was a climb rated Hors Catégoire. (beyond Category) which is the highest rating for climbs. And it would also be a summit finish which are always exciting. It was too far to walk to get there, so we would all just have to read about it later.

But it was a fun atmosphere none the less. The clown parade went through and I got some candy and a few hats that were given out, from the sponsor cars. I even got some dish soap? Did I mention it is a clown parade? Note: It’s not really with actual clowns. The floats and cars in the parade are just ridiculous looking. Anyway, we all had some fun waiting for the riders to go by.

And then, in a while after the clown parade, the tour officials drove bye, then an endless escort of motorcycles, and finally, just like that, the riders and their team cars came through and then were gone in an instant.

The nice thing about this stage of the Tour compared to the stage that Steve and I saw was that there was no waiting to leave. We all just walked back to the train station and got on the train and we’re heading back to Chambéry. Just like that!