On the 20th of july Celia, Pat, Rachel and I headed to Vebier in south-west switzerland to see the last part of the of one of the only swiss legs.... We had to take a fairly early train and TONS of people were headed our way. Everyone and their dog. Most of the dogs were quite small though and polite and appropriately dressed for the occasion so that was fine.

On a side note europeans don't use lines at all. I mean the adults are a little better and if you give a good glare and throw some elbows and you define your "spot" in the line but the children are wild things and have no respect, NO RESPECT. I'm practically and elder after all.
This is rachel cheering like nobody's buisness. Note free water bottle, free flag, free hat! I also got said hat but i wanted one of the polka dot ones so i asked an old french man if he'd humour me with a trade. He already had two anyways...... This was after asking the drunk couple in front of us is they would give me theirs cuz they had like 5 of them but no, they already had a yellow one and they only had one polkadotted one so no they can't give the cute hat to the poor canadian. jerks.


More cheersing. I had my camera out cuz this was my tester run. We were kinda up on the hill so we got to see most of the finish but the picture opportunities as far as the riders go were not so good.



























This is a view from the top of the mountain where verbier was located. we took several trains to the bottom and then lined up for about an hour and took a cable car to the top for the very respectable price of 10 francs.
This is the finishline. Some hubbub for certain. note the abundancy of yellow hats..... and my matching hat in the picture below. Below is a picture of a helicopter which i liked and therefor included.





























































This is my Coop add. Coop is one of the two main grocerystores. I thought the colors were nice...













Here are some switchbacks leading up to the finish. There were thrown toghether campsites all along the route and "pseudo racers" ie they have the gear and the bike so they'd better suit up and get out there! typea guys.












Here are some St. Bernards posing for the camera....surrounded by police? really cute, really huge and slobbery.












They had a whole band of swiss horn players all of the slightly older generation and i'm fairly certain they hiked all the way up the mountain because we saw them at the top and the bottom and my physics classes are telling me that there is no way its plausible for those instruments to make it into the cable car.












This is another panorama. one of the nicer ones.......