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Saturday, Jul. 22, 2006 - 12:19 p.m.

Tour de France today! I bet I was on tv, too, because there weren't very many people where I was, and I was wearing a red t-shirt and right at the front of the curb. I got lots of cool Tour swag, too. :)

The Tour de France is nuts. Forget the concept of a couple hundred guys basically living on bikes for 3 weeks and riding up mountains I can barely walk up, there's this thing that goes along with the race every year called the caravan de publicite'. (I probably did not spell caravan right, but I'm too tired to look it up.) This caravan is comprised of cars and what can only be described as floats that belong to all the tour sponsors, some of whom also happen to be team sponsors. Cofidis, for example. Cofidis has a team and sponsors the entire race. So about 2 hours before the riders, for the arrival point of every leg of the race, the caravan goes thru. About 50 to maybe 100 vehicles, honking and waving, broadcasting on the radio or over a PA system, and - here's the truly important thing - throwing swag. Every year it's different, and you never know what you're gonna get. In 2003, bandanas and keychains were the big thing. Last year and this, it was cell phone leashes and lanyards. Every year it's hats.

I can not stress to you enough how much fun this is.

You stand on the curb or behind the barriers erected to keep insane cycling fans out of the street, and the dozens of cars drive by and throw things out their windows, and grown adults dive and roll to catch them, just like foul balls at the stadium. In 2003, all I managed to get was a t-shirt I have since worn holes thru and cut up into rags, and a keychain. Last year, MP sent me a box full of stuff, including a bright orange bandana and floppy hat from the Pays-Basque (payee-bask) team as a joke, because she knows I don't like the Basque fans, who are really loud, obnoxious, and drunk off their asses. This year, I was a kid in a candy store. There weren't a ton of people, so I actually got a shot at a good bit of the stuff being thrown. In fact, I gave some of what I got to the kids around me, because the adults were beatin' 'em to the punch every time. So I got pretzles from the Belgian pretzle sponsor, bottled water from the Aquafresh bottled water sponsor (cool; has a tour de france label on it :), a Cochonou clapper baloon, a comic book about a cyclist named Achille Talon (Achille's Heel) from a telecom company, a lanyard from the French Police Nationale (complete with emergency phone number on it), 2 cell phone lanyards from Kleben (whatever they make), 2 beach balls from Aujourd'hui en France (don't ask me what they sell either; I think vacations), 2 neat necklaces from Nestle ice cream for their Extreme brand ice creams, 2 yellow baseball caps from Le Faillitaire that have a devil on them giving the thumbs up (I don't know), 2 Champion cheese baseball caps (they sponsor the King of the Mountains competition, so they have the red spots on them to match the jersey), and 2 jaunty red and white plaid Cochonou baseball caps. I think Cochonou is also cheese. A lot of the sponsors are either banks or cheese people. Cofidis was throwing something, but the girl skipped me. I think they were keychains, and I really wanted one, because they have euro coin-sized plastic disks in them, so when you go to the grocery store, you can use the disk to get a cart, instead of a euro coin, which I don't always have. (You have to insert the coin into the little lock box chained to the next cart, and it unlocks the chain, and then when you return the cart and lock it up again, you get your euro back. I suppose the French are a thrifty people who hate losing that euro, so they don't take the carts home like people in America do. It seems to work, since I have yet to see a shopping cart floating anywhere around Paris.) A couple of other advertisers just didn't throw stuff, which was a bummer, but oh well. There's always next time. I sure wish I'd gotten that keychain, though. ::sigh::

After the caravan goes by, you pretty much just sit around and wait until the riders make it by. I yelled "Go, Floyd," which I'm sure he totally heard, (eye roll), and that's about all I had time for before the entire peleton was by and gone. It's more fun to see them in the mountains, because they're more spread out and pass by more slowly. But it was still keen. :)

Once the riders pass, everyone goes home, and we had ice cream at MP's, which was like 2 blocks away. Then we watched the end of the race on tv, and I came home. There's more to the day - like the woman who totally stole my seat on purpose while I was waiting to change trains - but I'm too tired to type it out. Other than the kickin' gazpacho I had for dinner, from the Catalan restaurant on the way home from the gas station, where I went to buy a diet coke. That was some seriously good gazpacho. I had it with baguette and cheese, nad it was awesome. In a few, I'm going to go have some Cadbury Fingers and enjoy a diet coke.

What? You don't know what Cadbury Fingers are? You never had one? Oh, too bad, so sad - they're yummy. :)

(all right, fine; they're little breadsticks coated in either milk, dark, or white chocolate)

By the way, you should never nuke the baguette for a full minute. 30 seconds should be fine. One minute leaves you with a too hot, chewy mess that is pretty much tough and inedible once it cools off.

But Katie, you ask, why are you nuking your baguette anyway?

Because the baguette is preservative free and molds in the heat, so you keep chunks of it in your freezer until you need it, that's why. And I keep forgetting and over nuking my bread. ::sigh::

Peace out,
Katie

copyright 2002 - 2005 Katie Doyle; all rights reserved
Don't even think it, punk.






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Yesterday's News - Next Stop

In which Katie shares sad news - Wednesday, Apr. 01, 2015
In which Katie returns after a very long absence - Monday, Jun. 25, 2012
In which Katie pokes her head in and brushes some of the cobwebs away - Thursday, May. 06, 2010
In which Katie asks you to write your congressman again. - Monday, Jun. 02, 2008
In which Katie asks you to please click the link and send the message to protect the rights of artists - Wednesday, May. 21, 2008

 

 

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