Tour de Jeff

Holy cow. Today (and I use that term loosely) I have been in a car, on a boat, in a plane, on a train, in the Metro and finally in my bed in my Paris apartment.

I missed all of the Eurosport coverage of the Tour de France today so I'll give you a recap of my activities. By the way, I will look on various other sites to find out the news of the day and add those to a few upcoming posts.

Here's a list of the events, beginning at 3:50PM on Monday, July 16...

Finish packing
Hop in Limo
Wait 20 minutes for boat
Boat to Logan Airport
Wait for plane
Plane to Heathrow
Tube to Waterloo Station
FOUR hours early for the Eurostar
Check bags with some bag checking firm
Wander around London
Dine on sausages, ham, beans, toast and tea
Get tea to go and then wander back down the Thames
Get back to Eurostar with 100 minutes to go
Had a French beer
Played a slot machine
Retrieved our bags
Got in the queue at the Eurostar
Waited 45 minutes
Hopped on the train
Moved our seats
Then got booted from our new seats by 14-year-old French kids
Got off in Paris
Took the Metro to Republique
Walked to the apartment
Got the walk-through
Paid the money and the deposit
Went food shopping
Bought paper towels instead of toilet paper because I don't know French
Went out to eat
Saw the edge of Notre Dame
Came back to the room - The Tour is still not on Eurosport
Wrote this post

How's that?

Back at the office -Tour de France

Well, I hope you enjoyed all those random bike pictures. I was unable to get a spot to watch the tour and blog about it, so I was going about the city taking photos of bikes in various stages of use.

Now I'm back at the office and here are some bits of info about the Tour de France and about today's stage one events - courtesy of Versus.com and other outlets.

(Info that appeared on the Versus Newsflashes today) -----------

One of the five British riders in the peloton is also the youngest in the 94th edition of the Tour de France. Geraint Thomas of the Barloworld team was born on 25 May 1986.

The average age of competitors in the 2007 Tour de France is 28.5 years.

The tallest rider is Marcel Sieberg (MRM) – 198cm.

The shortest rider is Alexandre Botcharov (C.A) – 164cm.

The average height is 179cm.

The heaviest riders are Robert Forster (GST) and Gert Steegmans (QSI) – 87kg

The lightest rider is Amets Txurruka (EUS) – 56kg.

The average weight is 70kg.

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News outlets are also still harping about doping and how tarnished the Tour de France has become. I only hope that none of the riders are caught this year. It might make it tremendously easy to get rooms all over France to follow TDF08, but I would hate the spectacle of it all.

**By the way, I plan to do the full Tour de France excursion in 2008 and will be blogging it from TDF08.com. That is unless someone purchases that domain name from me.

More info shortly.

It's Now Race Day

It's now past 12AM in London and the race is mere hours away. Actually, it's just a short time trial, and it doesn't go off until 3PM local time (10AM on the East Coast of the United States), but it's the day!

Updates to come. I'll also put a link here to OLN/Versus dispatches so you can see how racers are doing.