Wow!

SPF 30 sunblock from a tiny pharmacy near my hotel: 12 Euros

Lunch consisting of 1 French baguette, several croissants 3 large bottles of water: 7 Euros

More than 4 hours standing in the sun just to hold a place on a barricade to watch the race: Free

Seeing my first "live" stage of the greatest sporting event in the world: Priceless.

Words can't do this day any more justice. Here are some photos of the day.

My vantage point: After riding just a mile or two into the course, I found this corner and arch that I thought would be a great vantage point for watching the race, and for capturing some great photos. Arrival time: 10:30 a.m.

These first few pictures are of the vehicles in the Publicity Caravan that runs through the tour route starting about an hour ahead of the riders. (1:30 p.m. - 3 hours spent standing in the sun, holding our place a the side of the road)

Some of the cycling teams, in this case Française des Jeux, the French national lottery, had vehicles in the caravan.

Many if not all of the vehicles have people on board who throw out samples of their products or trinkets such as key chains, hats or newspapers. I came away with a small pile of stuff. Some people I was standing with were very adhament that they needed the laundry detergent sample thrown out by this vehicle because they were 3 days overdue to do laundry. I gave them the laundry detergent packet I picked up with no argument.

And then the racers started coming through (2:30 p.m. - 4 hours spent standing in the sun)

After a couple of teams had gone through, it was time to break out the beers. When Rick went to buy the beer, he asked the shop owner if it was legal to have an open container on the streets (as if we would have cared, really). The owner replied: "This is the Tour de France. Today, it is legal!

And the team cars came through following each team. Here is one of the team cars carrying spare bikes for the America team Garmin-Slipstream, based in Colorado.

Me and the Devil. This guy has been coming to the Tour de France for 20+ years, and he is always seen in the TV video feed in the mountains, usually running alongside the riders as they climb the mountains. He showed up on the other side of the street for us, so we all went over and had our pictures taken with him.

I even got to hold his trident! This was the highlight of the day for me. :-)

Here is one of my favorite teams: Euskatel-Euskadi, from the Basque country of Spain.

3rd team from the end, Saxo Bank. It was great that as they approached us, the overall race leader, Fabian Cancellara, wearing the yellow leader's jersey, was at the front of the "train." After today's results, Cancellara now leads by 2/10 of one second.

In the green sprinter's jersey, here is Mark Cavendish, who won the previous 2 days' stages.

And here he is: Lance Armstrong, wearing the greyish helmet. The Astana team was the final team to run the course.

And here they are just coming into the corner. At the end of the day, Astana won the day's race, and that put Lance into 2nd place overall, falling just 2/10 of one second behind Fabian Cancellara (above). GO LANCE!

And last but certainly not least, the 3rd place overall rider, Alberto Contador, winner of the 2007 Tour de France. He is wearing the orange and yellow Spanish National Champion's jersey here.

Last team (Astana) came through the our spot on the race course around 5:30 p.m. For anyone who's counting, that meant 7 hours standing in the sun, but it was so worth it. This was a phenomenal day!