Verbier (Le Tour)

Okay sports fans, this is it

I've been waiting for this for a long time. Bear with me....I digress. 2002. July.

Phoenix. Summer. Blistering. No sports on TV. Nothing to do. Channel checking. Stumble on Outdoor Life Network. Some kind of bike race. Know a little about this thing called a peloton. Not sure how it all works or what the attraction is. Check it out.

OK. Guys in the main field work 30% less than those in front setting pace. Speeds unbelievable. Riders in the saddle 6 hours a day. Ride close together. Up unbelievably steep mountain roads. Down unbelievably steep mountain roads at 70km/hour. Ride close together...wheels almost touching. This is interesting. Keep watching.

Oh, it's the Tour de France. Heard of that. Oh, they have to work together. Lots of talking. Everyone knows each other. Alliances form so they can accomplish their goals. Holy crap they do this for 3 weeks. And they stay in the same hotels alot of the time. They eat meals together. There's this camaraderie.

And this guy named Lance Armstrong. Won 3 of these in a row. Dude is a stud. French hate him. Rides for US Postal Service. They cover this race every day? This is like a chess match and a marathon and a battle of attrition all in one. I gotta check this out.

Hooked.

Ever since then, I've wanted to see a stage of this grand spectacle. Let me explain a few other "rules of the peloton" and some great traditions that make this event the greatest sporting event on earth. Emphasis on sport. Not entertainment. Can you tell I LOVE THIS RACE?

It's a team sport. Noone can win the race without his teammates helping him. This is so true that the yellow jersey winner historically gives ALL OF HIS WINNINGS TO HIS TEAMMATES. In recognition of the hard work they did to get him there. And because once you've won the Tour de France you're gonna get major endorsement and other money anyway.

A few other tidbits:

The team:
-Domestiques - haul your drinks, your food, etc. if you are a key member of your team. They also fall back to wait for you if you have a flat or a fall or whatever...then they lead you back into the peloton (remember you work 30% less if you follow).
-On mountain stages, the team will always lead the peloton, setting a tough pace trying to get other riders to fall off the back of the peloton and lose time.
-If the yellow jersey is on your teammate, you are expected to defend the jersey with honor
-Defending honorably means you accept the responsibility of setting the pace in the peloton
-Everyone knows their role and fulfills it

Rules of the peloton:
-Never attack the yellow jersey when he's down, stops for a bio, or needs an equipment fix
-Never attack in the feed zones
-Never attack a teammate
-If your teammate is in yellow and gets attacked, the team's first responsibility is to counter
-Do everything you can to ensure the yellow is never isolated (or on his own to defend)....although this almost always eventually happens in the mountain stages

Jerseys:
-Yellow (Maillot Jaune) for the overall time classification leader. This is always won by the strongest man in the combination of the climbing stages and the time trials. The best rider overall always wins. The race is a battle of attrition and always reveals the strongest man.
-Green for the best sprinter overall
-Polka dot to the best climber overall
-White to the best young rider

What's Involved in Viewing a Mountain Stage:
Get there early. Hike 1km from your parking place at the bottom of the hill to the gondola which takes you to the top. Hike down to the vantage point you want. We pick a high wall which overlooks the street on one curve, then slightly up the hill to get a roadside venue out of the second curve. Next to last hairpin on the climb. The climb is 8.5 kilometers of killer switchbacks. There will be some attrition today.

Morning starts a bit grey and almost snowing, but clears around 10 and reveals a panorama of indescribable views....up to the ski runs on one side.....down over the valley below on another....church steeple against the granite backdrops.....a postcard for sure.

Spend the day hiking around, hanging out, checking out the crowds and festivities and wait for the riders to arrive. We go our places at about 8 am and waited till almost 5pm before they showed up.

Had a great time just hanging out, getting sun and then the excitement builds. The tour sends a bunch of sponsors trucks, busses, cars, etc. to get the crowd whipped up into a frenzy.
























Tom Kilbane (a friend from Portland) starts sending me text messages of the action as the riders get to the bottom of the hill. And the excitement builds. Then the lead rider arrives, just flying by and burning his competitors for minutes and seconds. The excitement is in the air. Electric. People have been waiting for hours, enjoying cold beverages and waiting for something to holler about. Here it comes.




































































This in case you hadn't noticed is what it looks like when you're 37 and starting (barely) to show your age. Andreas Kloden drags Lance up to Verbier. Lance looked very tired going by.











Then the rest of the riders. The peloton is fractured but remnants hang together. And before you know it, it's all over.

Rheinfall

The nice thing about the American Women's International club is that they take a trip every month to various sights in Italy, Switzerland, France and Germany. Last Monday (July 6th) I took the 6 hour train ride back to Lausanne by myself from Germany, where Marc and I spent the weekend, so I could join the group for a day trip to Rhine Falls. The train ride was about an hour and a half each way, but our philosophy is, the fun is in the journey! We all met at the Lausanne train station and 2 bottles of champagne and a bag of blueberry muffins later we arrived! We took about a 20 minute walk down to the falls from where the train dropped us off. Rhine Falls is Europes largest waterfall. Of course the first order of business on any of our trips is lunch and wine. We enjoyed a leisurely lunch, European style on the banks of the water. We just spent the rest of the afternoon taking a walk around the falls and enjoying its sheer beauty.
Therese

Verbier (Part I) Le Tour Preview

I am a huge Tour de France fan. As fate would have it, the Tour is coming to Switzerland for 3 days and there was no way I was not going to see this. Stage 15 of the race ends at a ski resort reasonably close to Lausanne in the town of Verbier. So yesterday, Therese and I took a ride up to check things out.....see what parking options we might have.....good vantage points, etc.

After scoping out the town for a bit, we found the information center. #1 Travel Tip: EVERYWHERE in Europe, every city, every town you name it, there is an Information Center - marked by a blue sign with an "i" in it. This is the first thing to look for when you arrive. They have all the info you will ever need.....restaurants, hotels, tours, you name it. And they always speak English. So we learned exactly where the finishing line was going to be and where the end-of-day ceremonies were to be held, etc. In the Tour, there are special jerseys worn by the leaders of each of the various categories of competition in the Tour de France.....there are actually many different competitive categories. Green jersey goes to the best sprinter, polka dot to the best climber, white jersey to the best rookie, and of course the maillot jaune - yellow jersey - to the overall leader. The preparations for this race are immense. The tour traverses many small towns in several countries in Europe each year, and for each this is a very big deal. It brings in lots of money with all the tourists and of course the excitement is high. Every year the tour visits a couple of countries outside of France....Belgium, Spain, Switzerland, Monaco, last year they started in London.....even though the majority of the race obviously takes place in France. So the towns go all out to be good hosts for this epic event. This year's tour is shaping up to be a real showdown.....mainly within one team.....Astana.....which has two great riders, Lance (of course) and Alberto Contador. My money is on Contador. He won two years ago, would have won last year but Astana was not invited to participate. He is the most explosive climber by far and he deserves to be the team leader. Lance kind of hosed that up by coming out of retirement. We'll see.
As you can see from the pictures, the views from the top of the mountain here are spectacular.


The race will finish with what's know as a Category I climb.....the last 8.5 kilometers are severely uphill with several switchbacks (this is one of them) and this will make for an exciting finish as the climb stages usually bring separation to the peloton (group of riders together) and allows the good climbers to gain precious seconds or minutes versus their competitors. The tour is typically won by the rider who is the best combination of time trialist and climber. A straight uphill finish means that the climbers have the opportunity to gain this important advantage uphill without having to deal with any flat or downhill portions where the peloton can regroup and their competitors actually recover lost time from the mountains.









What we learned from the young lady in the information center was that there was NO WAY we could drive up here next weekend. On top of the tour, there is a music festival in Verbier at the same time. The town is completely booked (there are thousands of rooms in lodges here) and the highway up the hill will close at 5 am. She recommended that we go to another town down the hill called Le Chable where we can take a tram up to Verbier. So we scoped out the tram and there's a huge parking lot and we won't have to deal with road closures, etc. So that's the plan. First tram at 6 am. Race finish estimated at 5 pm. Pack a lunch, some wine, something to sit on and get ready for craziness....the town will be packed and people will be partying. Stay tuned.

Munchin' in Munchen

What to do for Fourth of July on a continent where it's just another day on the calendar? Therese and I decided to leave on Friday the 3rd and head to Munich to visit our friends Doris and Hans and enjoy some weiss beer and good Bavarian food. After driving several hours in Switzerland where the maximum speed is 120 kilometers per hour (approximately 70 mph) Therese insisted on driving in Germany. Not because she's a speed demon, but more of a defensive maneuver since she had listened to me talk about how fun it was to do 180 km/hr on the autobahn (approx 110mph) and how smooth the X3 Beamer handles at these speeds. Turns out Therese kinda likes life in the fast lane, too and did really good driving at 160 km/hr. What's amazing is watching the Audi TTs and Porsche 911s fly by at 200-240 km/hr. On these roads you stay in the fast lane until passing and then back over. These speed demons close with a frightening quickness so it's one eye on the rearview mirror.

The only disappointment was the amount of traffic and frequent road work, so it took us almost 7 hours to get there. When we did we were not disappointed as Hans made reservations for us at a very quaint Bavarian restaurant where we enjoyed some of their local weiss beer and some Austrian wines.....which by the way are a good buy here. There was a scandal some years ago which decimated their red wine exports and now they are very cheap and very drinkable.

Hans is the archetypal Bavarian. Gregarious, warm, friendly, he makes friends everywhere we go and is so laid back and easy going he's the best travelling companion. It's "all smooth" when you're with Hans. Doris is a gem. She's dragged me home from many an Oktoberfest and biergarten visit and the poor thing is always the duty driver for Hans and me. But she takes it all in good humor. And I have learned another thing - she's always right. She goes along with anything and always has something to add to the trip, keeps track of our progress with the maps and keeps us out of trouble (except for the beer).

On Saturday, we decided to give Hans and Doris a break and Therese and I took a walking tour of Munich. Our tour guide was from the UK and his father, who also worked in the aerospace industry, had been assigned as an expat in Munich for some years. Alex was fluent in German and returns every summer to earn some Euro as a tour guide.










The tour started in the center of the old town at the Marianplatz - St. Mary's Plaza. Munich, like most cities in Germany was devastated by bombing in WWII.....98% of the buildings in the city were destroyed. Think about that for a moment. Churches were generally untouched or minimally damaged......but not for the reasons you are thinking. As an aviator having flown bombers, I can totally relate to the desire to have visual reference points for ingress and egress into target areas......and church steeples are ideal.

Architecture in Munich is very unique.....we need to do some more research in order to understand its origins, so sorry we can't give you some interesting facts about it.









































One of the craziest things we saw was river surfing. Yes, river surfing. There is a line-up....you can come in from left or right......you do your thing on the wave for a couple of turns......and you either fall off or get off.......down the river a bit.....and back to your place in line. There were some very good surfers in this line up......and an old guy there to hold up the reputation of those of us for whom "the older I get, the better I was."

















Of course we had to drop by the world-famous Hofbrau Haus where we took a picture of the "oom-pah" band. This is easily the most famous brau haus in the world.....but the darn things are everywhere......and they all have a biergarten....beer garden. Which brings me to this: why do the old beer steins have metal lids on them? Same reason you put a lemon in your hefeweizen. Becuause bees are everywhere in this lovely country and you need to keep them out of the slightly sweet weiss beer.....bees have good taste too. A bit of lemon does the trick quite nicely.










Schneider Weisse is the second oldest brewery in Germany and a very popular local favorite.





















Here is the way you handle a "proper pour" of weiss beer.......you need to loosen up the yeast which tends to collect at the bottom of your glass. Here's the procedure:

• Make sure there's a little water in the glass (really)
• Have the proper glass
• Tip the glass sharply
• Pour the weiss slowly....to about 3/4
• Take the bottle in between your palms
• Roll the bottle back and forth between the palms
• Pour the rest into the glass
• A perfect pour result is about 3 inches of foam

Sunday morning, Hans informed us that there was a procession in the town of Miesbach, where he and Doris reside and in which Therese and I were staying. This was classic Europe.....classic Bavarian.....local townspeople dressed in Bavarian finery.....Leiderhausen (leather pants for the men) and Dirndl dresses for the ladies. Apparently they were celebrating 100 years of horse drawn transportation in Miesbach......procession was complete with band, local dignitaries, etc parading through town on the way to church. Gotta love Europe.







Later, we decided to go to the "Eagle's Nest." This was a special building at the top of a peak in Hitler's Bavarian retreat.....not the retreat itself, which was the Berghoff.....but at the very top of the mountain. His closest cabinet members, advisers etc. all had their own cabins here.....the Berghoff was Hitler's. He visited it regulary during his reign over Germany. Goebells and others decided to build this beautiful hut at the peak of this mountain as a gift for the Fuehrer's 50th birthday. Mussolini gave him the Italian marble for the fireplace. It has a stunning 270 degree view of the Alps and valleys of southern Bavaria. Today it's basically a restaurant.....good spot for a Schnitzel and......yes, weiss beer. The compound itself is mostly destroyed.....it was heavily bombed near the end of the war and the Germans in their shame had the remainders of the buildings destroyed. I was a little disappointed in learning this. I really wanted to see the Berghoff and the rest of the compound. It had an extensive underground tunnel system between the various lodges (which were spread all over the large compound). the site of the former Berghoff is a glass encased museum.





Above is the remains of the old Berghoff....Hitler's Bavarian retreat. To the right is the Italian marble fireplace given to Hitler by Mussoline for his 50th birthday present. Sorry but somehow we didn't get any pictures of the structure. The trip was a bit disappointing......was very interested in the compound and what went on here, but there is very little of it left and no real focus on it in the museum....which was more about the war (with which I am familiar) and not specifically about this place. The retreat itself was in control of US forces until 15 years ago....it was actually a US military installation.









We finished off the weekend with a wonderful dinner of pork knuckle and local brew at a monestary on the shores of Tergernsee (see is lake).