Mulhouse Finish

With the Tour still lingering in northeastern France, we rode the tail end of today’s stage to catch our first stage finish in Mulhouse. Our ride started from Aspach-le-Haut, a village so small that a centrally located phone booth served as the main social gathering spot. Despite the town’s size and lack of facilities, Sophie had somehow pre-arranged for the mayor of Aspach to open up the town’s only public restrooms just for us to use before the ride start.

The first part of our ride took in the gentle hills just west of Mulhouse. Our group of 14 easily outnumbered the cars we encountered. We warmed up on a couple of 2-3 mile hills, savoring this quiet time on the road before we hit the official Tour route in Masevaux.

Our merry group at the top of one of the "gentle" 3-mile climbs today.

Once on the route, we got into a pace line to tackle the final 35 kilometers into a nice headwind. Despite the flat to downhill profile of this section of the stage, people were set up and already throwing back the beers—a full five hours before the peloton was scheduled to arrive. You have to wonder how much they see of already blurred mass of colors that makes up a peloton moving at 35 miles an hour.

Our small peloton arrived in Mulhouse in great form. We rode the last few barricaded kilometers of the stage as a group, taking in the growing chaos from both sides of the course. A Skoda truck was set up and throwing out hats to a Beyoncé soundtrack. On the other side of the course, the PMU guys were handing out giant green hands by the handful. We savored our last few meters on the course and made it to within 150 meters of the finish line before we were stopped.

Having completed our stage, we cleaned up and got ready to watch the real Tour come through Mulhouse. Every one took off in different directions to find their spot on the course. I opted for a corner just inside the 1-kilometer balloon. Looking to gain elevation, I focused in on the perfect spot atop a concrete platform. Just a few meters away, speakers were set up to provide us a running commentary on the race action. From my little throne on high I watched Rasmussen fly by on his way to a stage win and Jens Voigt pedal his way to the yellow jersey.