Tour de France
Sunday, August 31, 2003
Well I am not much of a sports fan...I played rugby in Uni (translation – got the crap kicked out of me week to week), did karate in high school...Infact the most athletic activity I was doing of late, was the 5 floor marathon when the escalator was not working in my apartment building....
This aside, I was in France and for hell or high water, was NOT going to miss the Tour de France….I mean, what would al the die hard France fans at home think of me, if I missed it?!!Now here is the thing, even if you do go, you do not see that much…We went to Bastille to watch…You stand on the edge of the street for about 2 hours, waiting for the bikes to pass…About 5 minutes before, every rude bastard in Paris (this is French, and foreigners) pushes in front of you. Then when you manage to prop yourself up just high enough of the head in front of you to see the race, the bikes come and then pass you within the space of 10 seconds (give or take the poor slow buggers at the back).
And that is it…I mean, there is a pre-race parade with some of the cheesiest (no French cheese joke intended) marketing promotion I have ever seen – Including a 12 foot Arnold Schwazenegger torso stuck to the roof of a 4WD that was threatening to terminate the crowd…pics here
