Sunday, July 19

Crowd above during the race - it was crazy! We had a person butt right into our group - I swear he leaned on me during the whole parade and while the race went on (the parade lasted about an hour, the race about 5 minutes!)... I don't think he though anything of it - he kept talking to us (in some language that I couldn't understand) and expecting us to understand him...

Pictures above with some editing in photoshop - I think they look neat this way (and better than the blur that I had in my pictures by themselves)...

As we pulled out of our parking spot (just a spot of grass along the road - we saw the Astana bus behind us (which Dustin was excited about as he really likes Lance Armstrong...) - too bad Lance wasn't in the front seat - what a picture opportunity that would have been...

View before race (this was just after the finish line on the course - do you see all the cars lined up!)

What the racers looked like from my camera during the race - it was all a blur to me!! Darn, should have had a faster shutter speed set...

Below are pictures of the parade before hand...

My best biker picture, too bad he wasn't part of the race...

Brenna with her free balloon (with rice in it for noise) and her free hat. I was surprised by how much free stuff was given away...

Before the race. We took our spot 3 hours before the bikers came through.

Hello All!!

Hope all is well out there. Yesterday, we headed off for France to watch the Tour de France (a big check mark off of Dustin's list - he was super excited about this trip - I hope it lived up to the hype for him - it was pretty neat). Our drive to our destination took longer than planned as Brenna likes to check out all the bathrooms along the way (which to her credit she used all but one - and I don't really blame her as it would be called a "squatter toilet" - just a round hole in the ground - yuck!). I found the French bathrooms to be in one word - "yuck" as they frequently did not have toilet paper, soap, and towels to dry your hands (Brenna refuses to use the air dryers - she doesn't like the noise - so my pants end up being the towel - joy!). If you are ever doing a road trip in France - take along toilet paper and antibacterial hand stuff (we of course forgot one of the bizillon bottles of hand santitizer (guess I should have double checked in the diaper bag... - don't travel in Europe without that stuff - especially with kids!).

As you can see by all our pictures - we had lots of time at the race location (and in the same spot) - boy are my feet aching today! Dustin was a great dad and entertained Brenna alot - she did great with him! Good thing for Dustin, he decided to go to Paris next weekend and catch the end of the race - I am so excited for him on that (and now a little bit jealous!). One of the other Americans came with us - hopefully he had a great time and wasn't too put off by all our bathroom stops along the way! It was a challenge to keep our spot right along the barricade - we had one guy just come right up between our friend Noah (the American who came with us) and myself. I kept trying to make myself as wide as possible - setting my feet out in a wide stance, but people kept trying to crowd right in. Dustin and Brenna ended up being pushed somewhat to the back. We had a good location - it was about 350 meters from the finish line (we got the race location about 4 hours before the racers came through and this was the closest we could get to the finish and be "on the front lines").

Brenna was exhausted by the time we got back to the car, but she managed to eat some supper before she passed out. I think she has a cold starting - poor thing. She had a runny nose today and she sneezed alot yesterday. With all the weather changes here, I won't be too surprised if we all come down with something - but let's hope not.

We worked on cleaning and packing today. Brenna really loves helping with both of those :-) I also made a "case" for my ipod when Brenna and I come back to the US - I'll post those pictures tomorrow along with my other project.

Well, that is it for today! Take Care!