*yawn*

The weekend was nice. If you do not take the weather into consideration, that is.

In case you get the posibility to watch today's Tour stage on TV where you are (le tour.com has worldwide scedules), use that chance and take a good look at that weather. I felt really sorry for the riders, today was a day when I would have never wanted to be on a bike for 5 hours. No matter what glory would be ahead for me.
Standing at the side of the road was icky enough. It was cold. It was wet.

It was still funky though, all in all.
Saturday, after we had decided that it was way to late to try to get up into the mountains, Dad and I had a good place about 1000m away from the finish line in downtown Colmar, at a double-curve (just as last year), next to nice and friendly people from all over Europe, basically. It rained on and off while the caravane came through, lots of stuff like last year, still funny though.
The funky thing was that when the field finally arrived, it was nicely spread out, and we got 25 minutes of arrival action, with Lance Armstrong and Jan Ullrich both coming in with the pack and a German chap riding for french team Credit Agricole winning the meillot jeune. Great arrival.

Once we were home, after some beers and a little rest, Dad and I went out for dinner. Looked at various restaurants but with it being Saturday night, it was pretty hard to find a place somewhere nice. Ended up at one of the more traditional Restaurants on cathedral square, the food was great (far better than the last time I went there), and the wine was, too, and I got all tipsy and hence started smiling at a frat guy sitting two tables away with one of the fraternities elders. They were from the worst fraternity in town, actually, the most conservative, most radical.
They wore the traditional cap and band, and talked loudly enough about frat matters to be easily identified. Had a very entertaining time listening to the chat that guy (strawberryblond, from up north) had with the older man from the fraternity. It's all the same bullshit everywhere, really. The same bullshit, indeed.
I really am all fraternity damaged ever since having been with Didi and spending time at that one frat place when I started Uni. Wondered whether they would have talked less loudly if they knew I understood all their code words. Gaaah.
It still was fun, on the amount of 1998 Ihringer Fohrenberg Weissherbst trocken I had had. Oh well.

Dad and I went home, where I made the mistake of going online and reading that one post, and got all angry and agitated, but went to "bed" (on ym air matress, dad got the bed) soon afterwards.
Dreamt some bizarre things that circled around having sex with Evan and advice giving on the boards. A later dream circled around my parents, my shrink (whose identity as my shrink wasn't disclosed to my rents of course), and me sitting inside a shop window having dinner and someone in front of the window out to kill me. It was horrid, and sleeping on an inflatable matress really isn't all that relaxing to start with. I have been dreaming odd things lately in general anyway. Lots about Bilstein (and summer camp type places) and looking after people. Wonder where that all comes from. Anyway.

Woke up not really refreshed and early this morn, and after a small breakfast here at my place, Dad and I took off to France at around 9:30am or so. Made our way into Fessenheim, a small village near the river rhine (and the lovely location of the Fessenheim nuclear power plant, conveniently located not only on the only almost volcanic active area in Europe, but also closer to more German than French cities) at about 10:30, and realised the caravane was already there (even though it wasn't scheduled until 11:15 or so). So I missed out on getting a yellow bag from Crediz Lyonnaise again. Duh. It was raining quite heavily, and the main street was still quite empty, until a good while later. Stood at a fabulous spot again, with a great view down the main road, and in a slight curve again.
Ended up chatting to some people from Canada, and a group of very funky people from Germany who are now headed to Alp 'd Huez (yeah!). Both had a good time, didn't catch anything good from the caravane, but got a cute official T-Shirt from Dad (that will only be worn at the gym though).
The tour finally made it's way into Fessenheim at around 12:15 or so, while it was raining cats'n'dogs and the church bells started ringing. Very funky.

Even though it was just about 20km from the start, a group of 14 riders were a good deal in the front already. Quite impressive. The peloton was already about a minute behind those first chaps, and it was SUCH a great scene, just like I imagined. A rush of colour, and all these bikes, and US Postal leading the peloton with Lance being right in the front of it all, too. Hope the pics I took did turn out well. Oh, the excitement.
It was all over rather quickly though (just as we had imagined), and we left France quickly, went through Breisach, the first place on the German side of the Rhine and had a look at the Cathedral and some cake and coffee somewhere, before we dropped the rental car off and spent the rest of the afternoon at home. It was raining so much by that point that any sort of activity outside would really have sucked, so we watched the tour (by that time, the 14 guys in the front were 30 - THIRTY- minutes in front of the peloton) and I almost fell asleep on my floor, even though the tour footage was very interesting and cool. In the end, O'Grady won the yellow jersey back and got the green one, too (which will, due to the rules, be worn by first runner up, Erik Zabel though). All cool. Even though it sure is bizarre that the teams let a bunch of chaps break away and get a distance of 30 minutes on a basically flat stage in the first week of the tour. I really am a little worried that the teams in the Peloton took it too easily in assuming that those 14 guys in the front won't be able to get through the upcoming mountain stages and the mountain time trial. We will see, we will see.

I walked Dad to the train station at around 5ish, and our cool little weekend ended. I hope he enjoyed it, too. :) It really was nice, and next year, we should really go and see one of the mountain stages.
We really had a nice father-daughter weekend. Good discussions, two great tour stages, nice food and drink.

Now I am all exhausted and tired and freezing and about to head to bed. Prolly after a little eMail to Ev. Will still stay away from the boards, I think though....tomorrow morn with an AAS forum filled to the brim is coming soon enough.
Tomorrow shall be spend with Yoga, getting tons of stuff to the laundromat and studying some more. Oh, the excitement of a normal Monday.

Off for today.