This past weekend I had the opportunity to go with some co-workers to the mountain resort town of Verbier in southwest Switzerland. Verbier is popular year round, but peak season is definitely during the Winter for skiing (so I'm told). Like most all place here, Verbier was easy to access, about an 1 1/2 hour train ride from Lausanne.
The event that brought us to the town was the Tour de France. The Tour does not occur exclusively in France, but crosses into most all of France's neighbors. Since it was a Sunday and because the town has not hosted the Tour ever before (again, as I was told, but I didn't verify), there was a lot of anticipation.
The atmosphere was that of the NC State Fair spread throughout the entire city, with a parade thrown in. No one knew what kind of weather to expect. We were told to prepare for conditions ranging from almost snow-like to blistering heat. At least we knew we'd need sunscreen lotion either way. I think the different expectations are best illustrated by the range of clothing, or lack thereof, we encountered people wearing: were way too many fat guys without modesty or self-confidence issues sporting only Euro-swimming shorts (aka something akin to thongs) at one extreme and then this crazy Russian who looked like he had literally killed a bear on his way here and threw it on his back for use as a coat. He was 6+ feet tall, with a nice flowing mullet and was covered head to toe in fur...or maybe he was just another topless guy, it could really be either now that I think about it. There were also marching bands in crazy costumes, countless poser cyclists who were not in the race, and just about everything else you could imagine. I never thought I would see an African guy with the Norwegian flag on his underpants along with his only other article of "clothing" being a blond wig stuffed into a Viking helmet with the horns on it. You know, the one you see people wearing at Minnesota Viking NFL games.
The whole event went on all day long. Everyone just sat around having fun waiting for about 4 hours for the cyclists to come by. In fact, the cyclist were really just an excuse to hang out with a the mountains as a back drop...that was honestly my reasoning.
Our group included me and three other expats living in Lausanne and we met up with two families, one of which works for our firm and has a chalet in the town. So that was convenient. They were very kind and hospitable to allow us to go to their place before the race, eat a prepared lunch that was delicious (lamb, cheeses, and sliced meats) and to have a viewing location already scoped out from a scouting trip they had done the previous day. In total, there were a dozen or so; I don't have the exact number because the total includes the kids from the two families who I couldn't keep track of.
On to the pictures, including the world exclusive first published photo of me on this side!
A group of riders headed towards the finish line. The hill, well, was not a hill; it was a mountain, and the riders came up it as fast I would be going if I were going down the mountain.
Picture of me in a cycling jersey. If you think I'm wearing this because I find the red polka dots becoming, you would be right. But it is also the jersey that signifies the rider who is the overall "hill climbing" leader. Whenever the course passes through a mountain course, the riders earn points on how they perform. The overall points leader in the mountain courses earns the right to wear the jersey seen below. It's exactly like the yellow jersey for the overall leader. I don't know what happens if the overall leader is also the mountain points leader. So, since the course we attended was a mountain course, they came around and passed out free jerseys. It was like a parade all day long.
You can see the section of road where we were sitting. There were mountains on all sides and had a good amount of snow on the peaks from the snow they had the previous week. Yet I got sunburned despite applying lotion all day long.
The all day parade came up this road before the riders arrived. Besides the jersey I have, they threw bottles of water from the parade, too, which was nice on a hot day...except they were not going what I would typically think of as "parade speed". That is, they were gunning it up the road and the girl was chucking the bottle of water like they were mortars. In more than one instance a bystander got smacked in the head or other comical areas with a flying bottle of water.
The St. Bernard Pass is an historical road through the Alps into northern Italy that is close to where we were. Here is a group of the famous St. Bernard dogs named after this area. In the past centuries it was a dangerous route due to the quick weather changes and travellers occasionally became lost. The dogs you were trained to take the stranded travellers "hot chocolate" in the container strapped to their collar and lead them back to safety.
Not a very good picture of the street scene on the way to the race. You can barely see some of the marching band in their outfits on the right side.
Video of the riders coming by (finally) is next. The ratio of automobiles to bicycles was something like 5:1. The cars and motorcycles stayed right on the riders' tails. Lance is NOT in this video. He finished 9th and moved from 4th to 2nd overall, but lost time to the overall leader, Contador. Yeah, I had to read that on espn.com just now. It's not like I have any clue what I'm talking about otherwise. Oh yeah, I made up that whole story about the polka dot jersey earlier...
Really fun day overall. Hope to come back for ski season! Afterward we all went to dinner in town where I had chicken...and it was GOOD. Woke up at 7:00 AM, head hit the pillow at 1:00 AM. Worth it.
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