Where I'll be on Alpe d'Huez

I'll be about 3km from the finish, or about 4 hairpin turns left, wearing my green & gold boardies and a singlet. Just look for the fro anyway!
I know I have no photos up yet, I need some time at a computer rather than just the phone.

The story so far

In short: Flew into Nice via Dubai, deployed the bike & found the hostel, checked out Monaco & rode the F1 circuit, then got cracking on the bike and have stayed at Frejus, Toulon, Marseilles, Manosque, Gap, Corps, and now Grenoble.

Some details: Have had a few nights free camping without issue and plan on more. As always the hostels are hit and miss, some sub par, others awesome (the hostel in Nice had a daily sundowner session on the rooftop terrace which overlooked the sea & city). One surprise is how few foreigners have been staying in the hostels - a couple of them have almost exclusively been filled with locals.

The riding aspect has been fine barring two days, one of severe thunderstorms (saw out the worst of it in a bus shelter for a few hours that day) and yesterday's 70km gradual uphill slog into a brutally strong & cold headwind (having to work hard to maintain speed on descents type headwind). Conquered a few small Cols thus far, the largest of which was about 1300m near Gap (in torrential rain with lightning hitting the hilltop a few km's away, that's when the bus shelter came in handy).

The 100km+ days in 34 degree heat along the Med coast have seen me drop a few kg's, I'll keep up the intake of French bread and cheese so that I don't waste away.

I'm planning to loiter in Grenoble for a few days to let some bad weather pass before heading to Bourg d'Oisans to make an assault on Alpe d'Huez and setup camp to await the arrival of le Tour.

Grenoble is a road cycling masochist's paradise - bike lanes everywhere in a city surrounded by unclassified (TdF speak for massive) climbs. Lots of fun to be had here.

One thing worthy of mention was a couple I saw doing the touring cycling thing - both of them with a full complement of loaded panniers, and just for good measure the guy was towing a kid in a trailer, and it was 4km into a 5km @ 12% climb. He was wearing an Australian team jersey - generally I wouldn't think twice about that, but in this case I think the jersey had been earned rather than purchased. Impressive form.