Laowai

Yes, I have more photos from our trip to Switzerland!

This year the Tour de France went into Switzerland briefly – into the city of Bern. We had to go.

First Brian found us a good spot – around 2 kilometers before the finish – on a cobblestoned climb.

Then you wait for the caravan to come. The caravan is a bunch of wacky sponsor vehicle that have people throwing things out the windows. It’s usually young people – they roll into towns all along the race course and do their best to get the crowd pumped up with excitement. Those young people do this everyday for a month – it’s often a five (or more) hour ride. They have tons of enthusiasm but at the end of the race course you can tell that it must be exhausting too.

There’s Claire waving her arms trying her best to get them to throw some loot our way. It’s super fun.

Then after the caravan you wait some more for the riders to come. It was hot and we were feeling the anticipation big time.

You start to sense the helicopters are getting closer and the crowd down the road gets excited and then there they are! The racers zoom by and it is so exciting to be there in the thick of it.

There’s the yellow jersey on Chris Froome.

I think Claire missed all the riders. After all the excitement of the caravan she passed out on Brian’s shoulder. We watched the TV coverage later and the girls got a kick out of finding our little speck selves from the aerial shots. I’m so glad we went!