T21/22: Paris

No riding yesterday for my transit day to Paris. I caught the TGV and we had a max speed of 300.1km/h...not bad. 

I'd booked my accomodation through airbnb.com which worked brilliantly and I highly recmmend it. What I do not recommend at all is lugging a bag on wheels in one hand, a man-bag over the shoulder and a bike bag on wheels in the other hand whilst negotiating the sweaty, smelly, hot and filled with stairs subway. I need a man-servant for it is simply not possible to manage stairs with that much bulky gear without significant risk to one's personal safety. Anyway, I made it and the flat is great.

Like I've mentioned before...Paris doesn't exactly rev my engines - snice n all but I'm not sure about all the fuss (especially when you are solo)...it's just another big city with too many humans, tourist prices (like $6.57 for a 250ml bottle of lemonade to watch the tour in a brasserie), and a few cool buildings. I am an art philistine so that doesn't help.  To be fair, there was a massive public concert on in Chatelet and that was very cool - and doofy. To be completely frank, it was better than say the Australia Day concert on the lawn at PH with a couple of outdated Aussie Idols. 

Now this morning I didn`t get up till 9am, which was very nice. The order of the first part of the day was hanging out with Christopher who made his way over from London yesterday afternoon. After dropping him back at Gare du Nord for Eurostar, I unpacked the bike. I need something fresh for the blog devotees I thought. So to spice it up for yo'all, I decided on Jezza's Twilight Tour of Gay Paris (that's Gay Par-ree, not the Tour of the Cox Bar in Chatelet which is a COMPLETELY different thing!!!). It's a speed tour of the main landmarks in one hour between 7pm & 8pm (totally light still with sun setting). I seriously had to rock out the Sydney urban MTB skills in the traffic.

Here goes, spot them if you can:

Now what was cool - smacking down the Champs-Élysées at over 50km/h past tomorrow's finish for the pro's. I was in the drops, out of the saddle and true to my word, as I smacked it over the line some bystanders cheered wildly - ahhhh, Cav for 3 seconds!!! 

A dude doing tricks in the park:

And back home safe to #23...

For the tan dissers check out this razor sharp line (even darker in real life...honest)!!

Tomorrow I tackle the Champs-Élysées with around 10,000 others as we ride one lap of the pro circuit at 2.30pm. Wish me luck - it's timed and there are numbers!!!

Sorry about uploading the last fews rides - without the rest of my Diamond Cycling Tour possie, I am without a computer that has Garmin Communicator installed. Damn those 1st world problems.