1. Journal: July 24, 2004
2. Ready for the rain
3. Enjoying the rain
4. French countryside
5. French village
6. American artists
7. Ullich doing the TT
8. Lance doing the TT
9. A beautiful rainy ride
10. Back to Tour de France page

Click on listing for details and pictures.

Spent night in Swiss hotel in town of Le Brassus, right over the border from France.

We in the high, alpine foot hills and unfortunately, the mountains caught and held the rain the next morning causing us to rethink our ride to the time trial. It was our last ride of the trip and all of us really wanted to ride. After reviewing safety, we set out in what turned out to be one of the most beautiful rides of the trip. We went 100km, riding from high alpine valleys to low alpine valleys to rolling French farm land. We started at 1000 meters, went up to 1200 and then went mostly downhill over rolling hills ending up at 400 meters in elevation. We had a mixed group of riders on this trip and we all worked together to get everyone up and down the wet roads safely and fast. After the previous 5 days of hard riding us all had improved our road skills immensely and were feeling pretty pleased with ourselves.

Once again our tour leader, Peter, found and staked out a great spot to view the individual time trial. We were in a gorge what was still wet form the earlier rain but drying off quickly. We caught the last 60 or so riders. Mike staked out a spot on a 90 degree curve and I was up by our campervan where the riders had to slow a bit as they went uphill. Mike and I both were within one foot of Lance as he rounded the curves. The concentration and determination on his face was not to be believed.

We saw Hincapie, Landis and other USP boys as well as Ulrich, Basso and Levi. There were only a few minutes between riders but Mike and I were able to get the SPC AD logos down on the road.

Another wild decent (only 10m kg this time) dogging cars, bikes and pedestrians, to Quingey took us to our bus and a 3 ½ trip to Paris for the final day.

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