 |
| Jens Voigt. Always ok for a picture. Been watching him hammer for 15 years. This guy is actually older than me by six months. Now that is an inspiration. He is a favorite, perhaps, of all time. |
So, it's going to be an amazing day. For a couple of reasons.
One, the sun is shining after-all, and though it's cold and I don't have the right gear for it, I am a man, and I do man things, so I will ride for as long as my fingers and toes can hold out.
Two, Paris-Nice will arrive here in about 5 hours, and I don't mean just Rodez, I mean at the hotel where I am staying. I won't say exactly where that is because I don't want to jeopardize anyones privacy, but it's an interesting little tidbit how this happened.
I checked into my original hotel and it was chilly and dank and sparse and designed by Tim Burton. So, I quickly get online and book the only other hotel that showed availability.
And when I get here, I accidentally discover that the entire Radio Shack and AG2R teams will be staying here. Which means one Schleck, one Voigt and, well, everyone else that in my mind, kicks ass.
And not to mention Laurent, the concierge, whose humor and general sense of warmth can best be understood through the following exchange:
Me: "The other hotel was awful. It was nothing more than a room, and a bed."
Laurent: "Well, you have come to the right place, because here we will give you a bed, and a room."
Later in the day:
I go out for a ride and it's maybe 50, just maybe. But before I go off a Radio Shack car pulls up and I start chatting with one of the guys and telling him my gig, and he says, wait, I must record this. So he gets out his camera and asks me some questions and who I like and of course I gaffe and say "Tejay" instead of "Maxime" but I get nervous when someone else is holding the camera, I guess. If you want to see me nervous, here is that video.
So I take off on my very hilly ride and when I get back to the hotel I think I have plenty of time to get to the course. I know exactly where I want to be: right outside of "Onet-Le-Chateau" where the final climb begins. So I set my GPS.
As I get there, I am seeing nothing, and suddenly it dawns on me that I should be in "Onet-Le-Chateau-Village" which is, yeah, which is tres differente. So I haul ass and I get stuck in traffic and if I came all this way to miss the stage then someone is losing their head.
I finally give up and drive towards Rodez, find parking, hop on the bike, and haul ass up the mountain until I find spectators and I set myself at the 500 meter mark, not on a climb where I had planned, but ok, I'll take it.
And honestly, within maybe three minutes, the field comes through. It was that close.
I can't win every race I enter, but I can still have the thrill of being there. And today was perfect. Simply perfect.
