(Apologies for the delay...it's been a crazy week!)
(From Lindsay)
Tour day…finally! And it was finally time for me to wear my "GO LANCE GO" t-shirt that I'd had for six months. We woke up around 9am and had breakfast at a café at the hotel. They had this really yummy bread and homemade granola and cheesy eggs! After breakfast we headed to the train station and made our way to Rotterdam. It was about the same as taking Caltrain from San Francisco to Palo Alto or from Penn Station out to Long Island…it was a pretty quick trip. Once we arrived in Rotterdam we walked around for a few hours (since we had about 5 hours to kill until the start of the time trial). We went to the team setup area where each team has their bus, bikes, etc all set up in an outside open area. It’s basically the equivalent of the 49ers locker room being right in the parking lot. You could get within a few feet of the buses and riders – it was pretty incredible.
We settled in on a spot along the course that was about 1km from the start. Since the course was an out and back (around 5.5 miles) we were able to see the riders on the way out and again on the way back. We stood around in this spot for over two hours waiting for the race to start. I ran down the course to try and find a pizza place while Brian held down our spot. I came out of the restaurant to find it pouring rain. Since we didn’t want to lose our spots right up against the railing we sucked it up and just stood out there in the rain with our pizza. Any other day we would have been miserable, but this was really a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Once we realized that we were due to be standing around for another three hours and the rain wasn’t letting up Brian ran down the course to a vendor and bought us each a poncho for 10 euro…guess that’s one expensive souvenir!
It was finally time for the race to start and before the riders went off the team and race sponsor companies came through in cars and vans (like a parade) and threw products out on the street. We collected things like hats, pens, cookies, lens cleaner, bottle openers, etc. We piled our swag up in front of our feet for safekeeping (kids were trying to steal it!) and settled in to watch the race. I was really excited to get a "king of the mountain" hat - the one in the photos with the red polka-dots.
Once they got started each rider went on the minute. Each rider had a motorcycle lead and a car following them with their name on the front. Some riders then had TV cameras following them on a motorcycle as well. We met a nice lady from Chicago in the crowd and she gave us a roster of riders so we were able to keep track of the race and cheer appropriately. We’ve been getting into cycling and the tour for a few years now and we now know enough to have favorite teams and riders. I was SOOOO excited to see my favorite rider, Thor Hushovd. He rides for Cervelo TestTeam and is the national champion of Norway. That was definitely a highlight to see him ride right past us. During the race we also met a couple of Dutch guys who were able to translate the race results (everything was being announced in Dutch) and in turn they started asking us all of these questions about Lance Armstrong.
It was an amazing time watching the race and despite the rain and standing for over six hours I would do it again in a second. After the session ended we walked around the area looking for souvenirs. On an interesting note they didn’t have hardly anything in terms of merchandise. I really wanted to get a hoodie or green jersey (the jersey they give to the best sprinter aka Thor Hushovd) but all they really had was a choice of three t-shirts, hats, bike water bottles and a bag that contained a t-shirt and other random souvenirs (of course I got one of these!). It was nothing compared to the merchandise tents they set up at Super Bowl or even your average college basketball game.
After our shopping we walked back to the Rotterdam train station and headed back to Amsterdam. We were exhausted and just grabbed a quick sandwich as we walked back to the hotel. We watched Con Air on BBC as we fell asleep – so excited to go back to the Tour.
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