Once in a lifetime

Despite the difficulties we have encountered as we adjust to living in a different country, we are fortunate to have had many opportunities to do things we'd never dreamed of doing. This weekend presented one such opportunity--we viewed the Tour de France as it made its way through Canterbury. The weather was beautiful, the diversity of the atmosphere was incredible since there were people from all over the world on hand to watch the race, and the cyclists were fantastic.

After watching the race on TV in America for the last 30 years you don't really understand the excitement of race day until you experience it yourself. We started our day off by watching "le Depart" on TV at 10:30 in the morning. The cyclists departed from London and then rode over 200km through the county of Kent to finish in Canterbury. At about 12 noon we left home and walked to the train station to take the 4 minute ride into Canterbury. The crowds in Canterbury were tremendous. Fortunately we are familiar enough with the city that we quickly got through the High Street crowds and made our way to a back road that took us across town -- without all the crowds. It was about 1pm and the cyclists weren't scheduled to hit the finish line until about 3:30pm -- but the finish line was already packed. We had a plan though!

Earlier in the morning we had dropped off Kevin's car at a parking lot that had good access to the road to get us home and to a good location to watch the race. You can imagine that since most of the roads were blocked off for the race driving around town would not be easy. The early bird gets the parking space though, and we had no problem dropping off the car. We packed the trunk with some camp chairs and a cooler and went back home. When we came back later, we found a viewing spot about 2 mins walk from where the car was parked and settled in. What you don't get to see on TV is the caravan (parade) that preceeds the cyclists by about an hour. You know how you see people on the sidelines waving pink "T's" from T mobile or hitting together 2 long blue blow up tubes--they got those things from the caravan. Candy, shampoo, detergent, key chains, coin purses, bike reflectors, hats, and various blow up items to wave around when the bikes go by---the caravan had lots of freebies. The Tour organizers say that by the end of the tour, the brands represented in the caravant throw out about 16 million goodies.

Carson didn't enjoy the caravan very much. The sirens and music were pretty loud and it made him mad that people were throwing things at him--he did like the candy from Haribo but he didn't like it that about 10 packets of sweets hit him in the head when their car went by. The cyclists came by about an hour after the caravan was finished. The only way to describe this is to say, "wow". The bikes were moving really quickly since they had just come down off a hill and they were accelerating towards the finish line for the final sprint. They create an incredible wind as they zoom by. One car from each of their support teams followed closely behind them. There were a few riders that were behind the peloton and once they came by, the rest of the support vehicles and emergency vehicles came by and, from our viewing point, the race was over.

All in all, it was a fantastic day and an amazing experience. And if you looked close enough, you could see us in the crowd when the bikes passed by :)