I helped a friend move today - started pretty early this morning, so today we have an evening blog. I spent quite a bit of time last evening on the blog site,after getting flicked by Flickr. But for the past couple of hours, I have been googling all my Tour lodging reservations and printing out the hotel websites with directions, etc. Hotels on the Autoroute are well-signed, with neon lights just like here in the US. But when I’ve stayed in small villages, sometimes there is only a tiny, unlit sign, or none at all - very difficult to spot where you are staying in the dark, or even in the daylight.... And street signs can be pretty rare in small towns and villages, too. I often use Via Michelin to get route directions....

I started to program in some waypoints on my Garmin GPS 10, but the first couple of towns (like first start town, Fromentine) wasn’t even on the drop down list of waypoint choices. I hate those damn drop-down menu lists of towns (or anything else) that won’t let you type your own choices. So I get a list of six or so places that start with Fromen..., but none are the right place. Hope this is not an omen, or indicative, of how my GPS experience is going to be.... Oh well, I’m a great map reader and I’ve always done that, so I’ll just navigate the old-fashioned way, while the German and French TV folks fly be me on the roads with their fancy GPS directions.

I surfed over to Fumy’s website and see that they are putting up some pages in English. The link below will take you there. Fumy is a real cool dude, with some great pics on the site. Fumy has been cycling and competing since he was seven or eight years old - check out his Biography. Fumy is really nice and he is so funny - but he is also determined and tough when he is riding. His family has very high expectations of him with the Discovery Team, and he is not gonna let them, or the team, down... As a successful U23, he’s in the learning mode with the team this year (so is “Billy” Bileka) - Johan and Dirk are excellent with young riders.

If you read my blog from last January, you will recall that during training camp in Solvang, I drove Fumy down to the shopping center, and went with him for his first-ever American shopping trip. He was very cool about paying in US dollars. I thought it was really cute that one of the first aisles we went to was the candy section.... I didn’t say a word.... But he very gallantly and politely bought some candy for me, too.