We had breakfast on Friday then visited the Reims cathedral in daylight; needed to see inside. Very interesting. Some of the stained glass windows were quite modern looking ...
... not to Sandy's taste but then church, in general, isn't to Sandy's taste anyway ! :).
Back to the hotel, we checked out and hit the road, arriving in St. Quentin en Yvelines (Guyancourt) around 12:30. I got going with my bike and Sandy checked out dry cleaners. The dry cleaners won out and we headed into town. We dropped off the sweater and pants then had some lunch; headed back to the Novotel.
I'd seen Jerry and Dick at the Novotel along with many others. That of course kept multiplying as the day wore on and we ate dinner at the hotel. Jerry had his daughter Michele and grandsons, who headed off somewhere else for dinner and Jerry joined us. Jerry and family had spent the better part of a week in Barcelona prior to flying into Paris. Michele's husband flew in today from Denver. Interestingly enough, their flights were through Toronto.
That day was done -- oh, except to mention that the bike seems ok; today found that the shifting could use a little tweak before heading out on the ride, but not much. I'd changed the rear derailleur without riding on it so that isn't too surprising.
Another day dawned. Jerry and I met up with Kathy Brouse (the latter unplanned) downstairs and headed to our 8am registration at the new Velodrome. They started about 15 minutes late, but as we had the first booking, at 8am, that did
didn't impact us too much. We were in and out in about 45 minutes. Others, later, took two hours or more.
Not all 100 Canadians made it into the picture, but we did pretty well.
I'd love to do a couple of spins in the Velodrome but we were restricted to walking in the center, for registration.
When I got back from registration I checked the dining room for Sandy, thinking that she might be there for breakfast, but no. When I went into the room, she was still sleeping ! 9:30 ! But of course that's still 3:30 our body clock time; we'll have completely adjusted by the time we head home.
I went back downstairs after changing, meeting up with Kathy and Jerry. Sandy wasn't too far behind. Not long afterwards we were joined by Guy, Peter, Dave McCaw and I know that there were others because our table overfloweth.
Later Sandy, Jerry and I went into town to hit an ATM and Sandy bought a new sweater. We met Stephen and Andrea, Henk, Paul Rozelle ... it's amazing who you meet even though there are 5000+ riders.
We are going to Versailles for dinner in a few minutes. Tomorrow ... we'll see ... but the day ends with the riders heading off into the sunset -- yes, we do ride west so that might happen.
Onward !
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