Tour de Suisse Part I

This is a movie shot by me with my Nikon D90.
Converted to M4V to be smaller.

When Andy got off his bike to be dressed up for the race, he gives his headset to his brother Frank.


This is also experimental. I am experimenting with movies. Hope it works.

Tour de Suisse 2008 Part II

I am back from Switzerland. I will try to post some pictures and to comment
on them but Tour de Frace is just around the corner so I don't know if I can
find time to do so.

You see, I am following all the stages of TdF this year. I have to prepare for it.

It was a great race. Fabian Cancellara won two stages, Team CSC riders did
very well and showed that they were on form for the TdF. However, the most
important thing is that they finished the race. In other words, coming to the
finish safe and sound is the most important thing.

Frank had an extremely unbelievably huge mega luck to survive that crash 
with only scratches, little cuts and a bit of pain in the back. 

The day after the crash, at the start in Ambri, I asked him if he was really
really OK. He said, "... Yeah, I've seen better days but ..."

Anyway, I will try to update this blog before TdF.




Hi, Paul. I did not expect to see you on top of Klausenpass.

Tour de Swiss 2008 Part I

The event is held 14th to 22nd of June this year. Last year I followed 
all the stages of Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré. It was fun! I intended
to do the same this year but it turned out the first couple of stages
would be held tooooo far away from my home in Germany. Shame!

So I switched to Tour de Swiss. Switzerland is not too far.

I intend to visit Switzerland between 15th and 22nd. I cannot follow
all the stages simply because I have to be careful about the money. Tour
de France is nearing and I know I spend a lot of dough in July.

My plan for the moment, I will ...

• Stage 1:14th (Saturday) be working and will miss out on the stage
  
• Stage 2:15th (Sunday) be in Langnau im Emmental
  
• Stage 3:16th (Monday) be somewhere and training on my bike
  
• Stage 4:17th (Tuesday) ditto
  
• Stage 5:18th (Wednesday) be at Lukmanierpass
  
• Stage 6:19th (Thursday) be in Ambri, I guess
  
• Stage 7:20th (Friday) camp out at Klausenpass and be painting
  
• Stage 8:21st (Saturday) be at Klausenpass
  
• Stage 9:22nd (Sunday) be in Bern
  

This way, I will save some money while having fun and can train
myself to be fit for Tour de France.

Reference altitudes and longitudes

1. Langnau im Emmental (N46 56.397 E7 47.144) The Start of Stage 1 and 2
   
2. Altdorf (N46 52.964 E8 38.490) The Start of Stage 8 and 9. William Tell?
   
3. Bern Finish (N46 57.710 E7 27.946) The Finish of Stage 9
   
4. Klausenpass (N46 52.103 E8 51.379) The Finish of Mountain ITT, Stage 8
   
5. Mauensee (N47 10.025 E8 04.333) The ravitaillement of Stage 9
   
6. Lukmanierpass (N46 33.797 E8 48.068) A category 1 mountain top of Stage 5
   
7. Ambri (N46 30.851 E8 40.912) The start of Stage 6 and it is an airport
   

You can copy what is between (  ) above and paste it in "Fly to" in Google Earth.

Tour de Romandie 2008 Part I

I will start updating my blog this week. It has been an up-hill
battle since March 24th when I went to 24th Rund um Köln. Since
this Monday I have been to so many races on weekends.

Now I have some time to organize this blog and sort out the
pictures I took.

Come back in a week; sometime late May and you will see the results.
To begin with, I upload two photos I took at TdR.

I picked up two musettes from Team CSC at the Ravitaillement. Who
discareded those musettes? I know from the pictures below that
Volodymir Gustov and Kasper Klostergaard passed by me with the bags.
This fact eliminates these two riders since I found the bags about 200
meters before the point where I was. And the picture of Jens Voigt without
the bag may suggest that he dropped one of them.


Jens Voigt without the bag.


Two Team CSC riders with the bags.