Brilliant day... Kearie is floating on cloud 9...

Hi all

Well, what a day. We started out for Epernay at about 6:30 this morning, Kearie managed the early start quite well, which was lucky. I had left the car on a slope in the car park, so that I could roll it back , and that worked quite well, for a few feet, then it stopped.. I told Kearie she would have to give me a push, which she did, I hate not having reverse.

Once we got to Epernay, I managed to enter a one way street, the wrong way. I completely panicked.. I have no reverse. I tried to turn around and the car was too long. I made Kearie get out to push again, but she couldn’t make the car move,it was uphill, shit!! Well there was nothing for it, but to drive up the road the wrong way and hope to hell we didn’t meet anyone. We found a car park and went through that, to get back to the right way, all good. No problems, until, I did it again.. I tried the roll thing and that worked out pretty well, luckily as there was a car in front of me, coming up the street I was trying to enter. I turned to go the right way and the road was blocked for the tour . A car was reversing back at me and I had nowhere to go... I saw he was a dude and thought he should know how cars work. So I told him, I had hired the car and I couldn’t find reverse. He was lovely, he got in the car and lifted the collar on the gearstick and placed the little sucker in reverse. Who knew?? I have never seen anything like it, but now I have reverse. I could have kissed him. We feel much safer now.

This morning at the tour was awesome. We decided to wait near the sign in board, we had already seen a start and Kearie wanted autographs, so that is what we did... Wonderful idea, many of the riders came up and spoke to us and gave Kearie autographs. She had taken a photo of Stuey O’Grady 2 years ago and had printed it out, today he signed it for her. She is in seventh heaven. We were also interviewed by SBS and Channel 10. We felt like morons. It is amazing how silly you sound when you are not expecting to be interviewed. So if you see us, take pity. Kearie had just gotten Mark Renshaw’s autograph and Channel 10 stuck a microphone under her nose and asked, what is it like to be at the tour? Hello? What do you answer to that when you are floating around on cloud nine. I think we were interviewed because we had so much Aussie stuff on us and with us. The Europeans don’t seem to take anything, so no one knows where they are from, but we were festooned in Aussie stuff and heaps of photographers were taking our picture. Why not I say, we are very proud aussie’s. I did make the comment to Kearie that we are perfectly normal people at home, but get us at the tour, with our Aussie paraphernalia and we turn into bogan country bumpkins, it is quite amazing.... and a little weird.


Everyone is loving the nails, I have had heaps of comments, everyone from Welsh men to French girls.....


Mark Renshaw, signing an autograph for Kearie


Stuey O'Grady, signing for Kearie, she als got Chris Horner, Baden Cook, and aomeone else. She had a brilliant day..

After the riders left Kearie and I were going to do some sight seeing and meander around the country for the rest of the day. BUT as we were leaving this guy came up to give us passes to the VIP area at the finish of the stage.. What were we to do, so we drove 120 miles to the end of the stage to see what the VIP set up was like. He said it was free drinks and food all day... What could we do? Because of road works, it took us longer to get to Metz than we had planned, but we still had about 30 minutes up our sleeve. But Metz was all road works too, I am surprised that the tour wasn’t moved to somewhere else, it was a nightmare, even with reverse, it was a nightmare. We finally got to the tour and this other guy offered us a VIP pass. Well there you go. Unfortunately it was impossible to get to the VIP area, the police would not let us through, never mind we saw, Robbie McEwan outside the Greenedge bus being interviewed, so that made Kearies day even better. We caught another glimpse of Cadel, but he is almost a protected species, you can’t get anywhere near him. Overall we had an awesome day and tomorrow we are going to relax and enjoy the French countryside. We have driven through it, but haven’t had a chance to enjoy it, so now we will.

We are staying in Metz tonight and I wll be asleep very early, I am exhausted

Take care

Lones