The Adventures of Lorie and Brian Groth

I got to see the peleton of the 2007 Tour de France this morning! I stood on the foot bridge at Embankment and looked down one street as they came towards me and down another as they rode away from me. I have added another video from the prologue (below) and more photos from Stage 1 with the peleton. It started this morning at 10:25, so I got to the bridge (a good viewing point) at 9:55 but all the good railing spaces were taken, so I stood behind people. By the time the race started, the bridge was packed with people, but not for long since it only took a couple of minutes for the riders and their support vehicles to go past us. After I saw them, they only had 215 kilometers to go. See their web site for details of the Stage 1 route.

I took quite a few photos of the support vehicles, because I was surprised at just how many cars there are. Here’s a good quote from the Tour’s web site:

Everyone thinks of men on two wheels during the Tour, but few are aware of the cavalcade of around 1,500 vehicles that follows the riders up and down the length and breadth of France and beyond, including official vehicles, motorcycles, and tour buses, as well as 13,000 policeman and 2,300 representatives of the world media who all, in no small measure, play their part.

Today (Saturday) was the start of the Tour de France, which is starting from London this year. I naturally had to check it out even though I would prefer to be on the course on a cool road bike versus on foot in the crowd, but it was pretty interesting anyway. Today was actually the prologue where individual riders take a lap around the city and the fastest one gets to wear the yellow jersey on Sunday for Stage 1 of the race. Stage 1 starts in London too, so hopefully we can see the peleton, not just individual riders like today. Below are some short videos I took, but make sure to check out the photos too.  

We still enjoy seeing the cars that aren’t available in the US. The Fiat 500 is making a comeback, but all newly redesigned of course. Check out the video:

Comeback for iconic Fiat 500: Italians prepare for the re-launch of the Cinquecento, a compact car which Fiat says will become the iPod of cars.

 

The weather is an interesting beast here in London. It was sunny earlier today, but just a few minutes ago (at about 5:15pm) we got some good thunder, lightning, wind, rain, and ice (I’d say hail, but these were good ice chunks). Within a minute, gutters were washing over and car alarms were going off. It looked like it was calming down, but it got worse: stronger rain, wind, and quite a bit more hail – enough so that if you were outside, you would be in pain. The gutters in the streets were like little rivers, chunks of ice and something have come through our chimney into the (the living room), and our garden (the back "yard") is filled with ice, except where there is now standing water attempting to drain. This all took about 10 minutes and now it is starting to get a little sunny again.

Milo is such a bouncy dog that he needed to be drugged just to pull the stitches out. We didn’t want to risk having him jump just as the knife was next to him while cutting the stitches, which is what he just about did at first. So, he is now completely out of it while relaxing on the couch with Lorie. I’ve added a couple of new photos in the Milo In London photo album. (scroll to the end to see the new ones)

For those of you who have visited, you know I walk Milo by the Thames River and am often amazed by the fluctuations in the tide. It moves about 16 feet (4.7 meters) each day, and that’s just over the next few days. Check out the tidal flow near the Hammersmith bridge from http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/coast/tides/tides.shtml?date=20070628&loc=0115:

Two houses in Fulham have been torn town and are being replaced, with new houses complete with basements. These houses are what us Americans would call "row houses", but are quite normal in London. I promised my brother photos of the dividing basement wall being built, which are concrete blocks with packed-foam insulation, so here they are: