What a tremendous day of cycling! Stage 6 began back in Belgium which meant Fien and I got up early to leave the Netherlands via train and bus before we walked down a residential street that was the official border of Belgium and the Netherlands. All the cars parked in driveways on the right had Dutch plates while the ones on the right had Belgian plates. Crazy.
I’m not sure how to describe the place where the sign on happened. It was kind of a park under a bridge and the riders had to descend a steep and angled ramp before rounding a sunken outdoor theater type place. It was an odd space but it did mean that the riders had to go through a narrow passage to get to the stage to sign on, so we had an absolutely ideal position for autograph hunting. I was desperately running out of space on my flag for signatures so my plan was to be brutally selective this morning when asking riders to sign.
Gijs Van Hoecke (you may remember him as the young Belgian cyclist who was sent home early from the 2012 Olympics after a particularly drunken night).
Vladimir Goesev.
Johnny Hoogerland.
Way back at the stage 1 sign on, Jan Bakelants came over to sign my flag and Fien and I reminded him that we had been good luck for him the 2 days he came to see us during the Tour de France (he wore yellow at the end of that first day and was in an impressive breakaway the other day). Jan remembered us and said he would look for us on Saturday since he would need some good luck on the triple ascent of La Redoute on stage 6. Sure enough, Jan spotted us right away and made a beeline for us this morning (much to the chagrin of the pushy woman next to me who wanted his autograph).
We had a small gift for him and were delighted to see how happy it made him! The peloton loves to drink Coke so we found him a “Jan” Coke bottle.
Tom Veelers.
Gediminas Bagdonas.
Juan Jose Cobo.
Roy Curvers.
Pippo Pozzato.
Matthew Hayman.
Andre Greipel looked at us apologetically when we asked for a signature since he literally had his hands full.
Albert Timmer.
Andriy Grivko.
Francois Parisien probably wakes up with a smile on his face, he’s just that friendly. Today he asked if I would be on the climb and he was awfully glad when I said we would be there to support him!
Tim Wellens.
Jurgen Roelandts.
Sebastian Langeveld.
Manuel Quinziato.
Lars Boom signed my flag.
And then he tried not to laugh while ignoring the loud, aggressive woman next to me.
At 12:45 sharp, the gun went off and the stage was under way!
The peloton did a lap in town and returned about 20 minutes later with Greipel in the lead and Phinney, Boom, and John Degenkolb in pursuit.
The peloton (well, a fraction of it anyway).
