breakaway group | schwingeninswitzerland

Gendarmes are the French Police. Unless you actually have to work tracking down hooligans who throw tacks down on the route of the Tour de France, this might just be the best job in the entire force. Can you imagine getting paid to ride a motorcycle up and down empty mountain roads all over France? Not too shabby.

After the hike up, people spray paint cyclist’s names on the pavement, picnic and hydrate (and perhaps search for a place to pee).

Then, you wait for the caravan to pass through and wait again. Since the waiting gives you time to enjoy incredible natural beauty and talk with other cycling enthusiasts, it is actually a lot of fun. Soon, the helicopters will stream over the horizon like in the movie “Apocalypse Now.” We hiked up to the mountain to a beautiful spot with a great few of both the mountains and the road leading up it. We weren’t the only ones who liked the view.

With their giant lenses, they were able to get much better shots of Bradley Wiggins and Team Sky streaming up the mountain.

Normally, the first thing you see roadside is a breakaway group of riders. They are usually accompanied by police and cameramen (who you can see in the back). Usually, they follow one another. Having a rider in front of you reduces the wind resistance allows them to expend less energy. This gives the peleton incredible power if and when they choose to exert it.

This is how they get pictures for TV. By the way the US commentators are better than the French ones. Understandably, French commentators are biased toward French riders. It’s not that. They are much less interesting and I learn a lot less from them. They don’t seem to show much of a sense of humor either. Thankfully, Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen do the British coverage we get here in Switzerland, but I miss Bob Roll.

Eventually, the last of the team cars go by and the helicopters move on. After than, there isn’t much left to do except descend the mountain and watch the stage you just DVR’ed.