Sean's race day!

Claire and I got up at six in the morning to meet up with some other wives to carpool to the top of the mountain. We were ahead of schedule, and managed to find some breakfast at a Patissieri. It was quite an adventure. We took a bus to a train station and found the rental car place (which took a while because their rental car buildings are not marked and look empty from behind). The GPS system wouldn't work and we were just kind of driving around lost, when Katerina thought to go to the train station for a map! So we managed to find a map with Mont Ventoux and Katerina and I navigated from the back seat:) We made it to Bedouin and found the main road closed for market day but we managed to find the detour easily. From the distance, Mt. Ventoux is this huge mountain with a bald spot on top and a tower at the peak. Claire had asked me "Mommy, is that a light house?" and I simply said I didn't know. Little did I know that the race ended at the base of that tower! BTW, that tower is on top of a huge two story building (that is not even visible from the bottom) The race had started, so when we began to climb, we found ourselves passing the Adecco racers. Tanya saw Aaron and Katerina saw Kimmo, but there was no Sean. I wasn't surprised. I knew he wanted to be a front runner;) Sure enough, we found Sean already climbing and he was in third place. We stopped at the side of the road to cheer them on. The bottom third of the mountain is a lovely forest terrain. You really couldn't see down or up the mountain and you didn't know for sure how high you were. I got some great pics of Sean. It was so great to be there for him. We climbed up some more and paused again at a restaraunt. Sean was still in third, and I got more pictures. The terrain here had changed. Instead of woods, there were just green patches with lots of barren rock patches. We cheered the first thirty or so people and then we climbed higher to catch the front runners. Sean was in fourth at this point, and we left just in time, because the first and second place people had already finished when we got up there! Sean finished fourth, and I was so proud of him and so thankful that we had made this trip together and that I could be there for that moment:) It took three hours for all of the contestants to finish. Sean played percussion with the drum circle most of the time after the race. We walked down the mountain briefly to cheer others on. It was like a three hour party up there. After everyone finished, we went to a restaraunt on the mountain for lunch. It was three in the afternoon! It was a long day. The climb down was less scary, but we got lost going home. I had a wonderful dinner with my carpooling friends, Katerina, Tanya, and Rowen.