Baccarat to Nancy - With the Tour de France thrown in

The Tour de France is a funny spectacle. What they don't show you on television is the shit show that happens before the riders really even get going. There's a parade of sponsor floats that throw out swag and pump up the crowd. With loud MC's per float. And dance music. And some club dancers. All threw out free crap. People LOVE their free crap and people get into this race, it's crazy. We ended up getting to a very small town or village a few hours before the race was scheduled to arrive. We lucked out with a very beautiful day and so we enjoyed the sight seeing and down time. There were a lot of people and some were in caravans, apparently traveling the route with the race. There were parties and a few would-be tasty bits in very tiny dresses, I presume in hopes, to catch the eye of any professional rider zooming by at a 30+km speed. Yes madame, that heavily sponsor paid rider is going to stop to get your digits. Tour riders are to French women, as to pro baseball jocks are to Yank women, a hunky testosterone filled walking bag of money and fame. 

Views like this was worth all the pain in my thighs

He was a zesty man in very little shorts. Makes me want to do laundry

We managed a sample of these. They were dry. Not impressed

I'm sure it's totally worth it

This town has one AAA-mazing taxidermy store.

So the section of the race we saw was over in seconds(I'm sure I could make some reference to teenage sex but I think that would be too obvious), a bit anti climatic(obvious teenage sex comment withheld again) for all the floats and wait but I will admit, it was pretty cool to be able to see a leg of the race live. I'd do it again. As we left and a few days after, we had people pointing and telling us we were going the wrong way and the Tour was in the other direction. Yep, didn't get old.

I can't remember the name of this town but it wasn't the friendliest for bicycles and the people seemed a bit Mtv's Jersey Shore douchy

If you're keeping count, I think this is spoke #6. I don't even remember anymore

By the time we reached Nancy we were both tired. The race had set us back a bit on the time schedule so we felt a bit pressed for time. Plus there were hills-SURPRISE. We managed to find a tourist information sign that showed us a campground in town. What the map didn't tell us was the sheer epic monster size of the hill we had to climb to get to it. It was by far, the WORST climb on the whole trip. Even Greg said it was hell. I walked it 3/4 of the way and rode the rest. Even walking the sucker was extremely hard. It wasn't just steep, it was long too. I've looked it up on Google maps but the street view just doesn't do it justice or show just how steep the fucker was. By the time I got on my bike and psyched myself up to finish the ride, I saw another cyclist, sans 50lbs of gear, obviously training or exercising, DYING coming up that hill. He stopped where I was and we just shared a common knowledge glance and off I went to meet up with Greg.