Tour de Lance

A week after arriving in Paris, we got to see Lance Armstrong finish his last Tour de France. Overnight rue de Rivoli became English speaking as all the people following the Tour clamored into town. Since the Tour route went right in front of our hotel, many streets were shut down between us and Champs Elysees. It took us over an hour to walk up to the Champs Elysees. Along the way we bumped into the head of France's UT Alumni Texas Exes in her burnt orange (or is that tres cuit l'orange?) shirt. We also met the head of Democrats Abroad in Paris, also from TX. We waited and waited and waited for the cyclists. Finally the Tour whizzed by. Dang those guys are bookin'! My camera was having trouble with motion blur, but I got some good shots of the peleton. It was impossible to get a shot of Lance, he was buried in the pack. Finally they finished at Concorde, and played the US National Anthem. It was soooo weird to be in public in Paris singing the Anthem. We got to see the teams take their victory lap, finally they were going slow enuf that we see Lance. We even had our TX flag out for him (the special one our friend Jimmie got for us that flew over the TX Capitol).