END-OF-YEAR FRANCE PHOTS

Though these photos aren't bike-focused per se, I wanted to post a year-end batch of never-been-posted photos from our Paris trip last spring, which was amazing, incredible and everything we imagined it would be. (Most of them haven't been posted yet anyway.) Please enjoy!

Sunrise over the Seine.

Crescent moon under Tour Eiffel.

The boy Baker looking out the window of our Paris hotel room.

Parisian schoolkids pass in front of Notre Dame.

Youth choir inside Notre Dame. I'm not the least bit religious but the sound of their voices in such an incredibly beautiful, historic place absolutely gave me chills.

Baker chatting up some breakdancers in front of the Paris Opera House.

Throng of Mona Lisa admirers at the Louvre.

Shakespeare and Co., the famous bookshop just across the Seine from Notre Dame.

Fabian Cancellara destroys the field at Paris-Roubaix and WE WERE THERE! (Photo by Baker McQ)

Happy New Year from the McQs! (Photo taken at Luxembourg Gardens.)





SEATTLE TIMES PARIS BIKE STORY

Click here for my Seattle Times story about the Fat Tire Bike Tour I enjoyed about six weeks ago in Paris.  Includes pretty cool video I shot while riding the Place de la Concorde, Tuileries Gardens and elsewhere.

LOOK WHAT I DUN

Inspired by Paris-Roubaix, I've been taking my old road bike out on dirt roads and rail trails. However, I forgot to decrease the tire pressure and yesterday, just after dropping Boonen and Cancellara on the Boulevard Trail (in my mind, that is), I hit a bump that sent my flying over the handlebars and sorta cleaved my clavicle in twain. (See above.) Everything is put on hold for now.  

In other news, click here for a vdeo I put together of me running the streets and sites of Paris.

LAST PARIS BATCH (MAYBE)

Well, we're back in the U.S. of A. and in fact I've already been on a 40-mile road ride with the boys--Scott TC (which now stands for Titanium Cancellara) Young and Mellow Johnny Boy Clark. I was jetlagged as hell but it was fun as heck nonetheless. I loved Paris to death but it's great to be back. Here's quite possibly the last batch of Paris pix. (Fer now.)

A golden girl at sunrise on the Jardin du Trocadero just across the River Seine from Tour Eiffel. (Am I impressing you by using the French names for landmarks?)

 The top pic was taken during an early morning run; moments later, I came across this photo shoot taking place using the Tour Eiffel as a backdrop.

View south from atop the Arc de Triomphe.

For a small guy, Napoleon sure was buried in a big box. 

  Painter painting a painting of Napoleon at Musee de l'Armee.   

Coolest guy in the world. Came across this jazz combo in Monmartre and the seated guitarist in the black jacket had serious major crazy chops. His fingers flew like a butterfly or hummingbird or something all over the neck of his guitar. I was awestruck and mesmerized and I--I must confess--am in no way, shape or form, a jazzer. Thus, I dubbed him the coolest guy in the world. (Looks a bit like Fabian Cancellara too.)

Sculpted detail at Notre Dame.

Uh, ... ick.

The Wall for Peace at Parc du Champ de Mars. Ironically, the domed building in the reflection is Ecole Militaire, an elite military academy that Napoleon once attended.  

  Bake and I attach our family love lock on a pedestrian bridge over the Seine.

Rue du Champs de Mars, the street where we lived.

The family at Jardin du Luxembourg, Bake's favorite place in Paris. (Because of the cool playground.) 

MORE PARIS-ROUBAIX IMPRESSIONS

In La Trouée d'Arenberg (the Arenberg Forest), when the breakaway passed by, nobody paid much attention. It was more a moment for us fanatics by the side of the race course to check our positions, to lock in our sightlines for the next minute or so when the big boys, the guys who really mattered, would be passing by—Cancellara, Boonen, Hushovd, Fleche, and so on. They were preceded by a thunderous roar, the crowd erupting as big Tom Boonen—and he does look big; Cancellara appears to be getting smaller and smaller, albeit faster and faster, in comparison—led the peloton through the cobbled road in the woods. At 2.4 km, it’s the longest, but apparently not the hardest section of pave; still, the bikes rattled and thrummed, bounced and jostled like they were riding down the middle of a railroad track.

Boonen, the hometown favorite (“Tornado Tom Frits” read the homemade banner held aloft just down the way), was having fun. His hands on the top of the bars, he appeared to be pulling everyone through, like some beast of burden pulling a plow. Just in front of us he turned around to inspect the damage he’d done just as I remember him doing at the same spot in last year’s race. (Though then of course, I was watching the Versus telecast.) This year though there was a difference: Fabian Cancellara, just two spots behind him, watching Boonen like a hawk, letting Tom do all the work, and waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Which of course he would do in historic fashion riding away from everyone with some 30 miles to go.

Arenberg was the second spot we stopped. The first was Inchy, the first section of pave, and we stopped at a spot about a half hour past Arenberg which seemed almost a repeat of what we saw in the forest—Boonen at the front of the peloton doing all the work, Cancellara wisely tucked not far behind waiting for his moment. One wonders if Boonen got carried away in his quest for a fourth P-R or by the hometown cooking of the French-Belgian-Flanderian faithful.

The roar that erupted each time he pulled the peloton past us was deafening. We attended a few stages of the 2009 Tour of California which was certainly exciting, but the depth of feeling-devotion-history here in Northern France was unlike anything there; you felt it in your very soul. Or at least I did.

***

Still jetlagged, for we'd arrived in Paris just two days earlier, we awoke early that race Sunday morning and rode a cab to Gare du Nord where we caught a train to the start of Paris-Roubaix about an hour north of Paree in Compiegne. Narrow streets choked with fat chunky cobbles got us excited for the start as did the arrival of the Team buses—Saxo Bank, Quick-Step, BMC and all the rest.

We saw Cancellara’s bike but no Cancellara; he, along with most of the big names, must’ve waited ‘til the final minutes to sign in for we saw no one of note save for George Hincapie. As we watched and waited, listening to one overwrought rock ballad after another blasting from the PA (“Too much love will kill you, everytime …”—where did they get these songs?), we heard someone say “Hey, you’re from Bellingham, aren’t you?” It was Chris (whose last name I don’t recall), a real nice tall dude I met while racing some of the Indie Series races last summer. (Small world, or what?) Turns out Chris was doing the same thing we were—meeting up with a British group, Sports Tours International, who would be transporting us to several spots along the Paris-Roubaix route to watch the race. Truth be told, the bus—and more specifically, the hilarious, cycle-crazed guys in the back of the bus—from Britain, New Zealand, Australia, Columbia and the U.S.—were probably what made Paris-Roubaix such a memorable experience for us. Most of the bus passengers were in it for a few days—they’d come over from London a couple days earlier, many even riding 112K of the race course the day before. (Oh, how I envied them.) Jen, Bake and I were among the handful or so who were in it for just a day trip.

They immediately welcomed us into their fold, sharing photos, drink, food, as well as hilarious tales of their misfortunes in attempting to ride the cobbles. A couple of them had hands that were absolutely chewed up with blisters from trying to hold on to their handlebars while battling the pave. Perhaps our favorites were the two young British boys—13 and 14—who had brilliant senses of humor.

One had a charming lisp and at one spot while we were waiting for the riders to come through, he noticed a fan across the roadway who’d obviously ridden out to watch, then put a pair of pants on over his shorts. He must’ve removed the white straps of his bib cycling shorts from his shoulders too because they just sort of hung down behind him.

“It lookth like thumone gave him a mathive wedgie,” he said to me.

It did too. And the phrase ‘mathive wedgie’ will now forever be in my lexicon.

McQ's PARIS-ROUBAIX PHOTOS

Gather 'round kids, here're some phots from the 2010 Hell of the North! And shout-out, props and all that to Baker McQuaide (age 11) who came up with much better pics than I did!

Race poster in Roubaix.

Second-place finisher Thor Hushovd survives the Arenburg Forest. (Bake McQ, photo)

Big Tom Boonen on the streets of Roubaix just before entering the Velodrome. (Bake McQ, photo)

 

Close-up of the pave at Compiegne, about an hour northeast of Paris and where Paris-Roubaix actually starts. (Bake McQ, photo)

Fabian Cancellara's winning bike is the front one on the left.

George Hincapie at the Compiegne sign-in.

Baker McQ at work.

After Paris-Roubaix, an exhausted Baker McQuaide and mum Jen on the train from Lille back to Paris.

AREA FAMILY IN FRANCE

A day after witnessing Fabian C. destroy the peloton at Paris-Roubaix, Area Man goes on an hour-long run under the Tour Eiffel, along the Seine to Place de la Concorde, past Esplanade des Invalides and back to Rue Cler. He is becoming quite the Francophile and will no doubt be annoying about it once he returns to les Etats Unis.

LOTS OF FUN THANGS COMING UP

Big few days which leads to an even bigger week and a half or so. First up, we're heading to Seattle on Wednesday where I'll be doing a slide show-presentation thingee for Team in Training at the big REI. Should be lots of fun. Thursday, check out my story in the The Seattle Times Northwest Weekend section about our little exploratory trip of Birch Bay, Drayton Harbor and Semiahmoo Spit.

Also on Thursday, we fly to Paris where we'll be for the next 10 days! Since we're staying in an apartment (near Rue Cler), once we're back I plan to annoy people by beginning sentences that refer to our time there with "Well, when we were living in Paris, we would ..."

Oh, and guess what happens to be taking place during our time in France: the 108th edition of Paris-Roubaix, the queen of the Classics, the Hell of the North. And guess what, we're hooking up with some British tour group to watch the race. Should be a gas, gas, gas.

For old time sake--and to give Tom a bit of a boost for this Sunday's race--I thought I'd run this photo of big Tom Boonen and I hanging out in Pasadena during last year's Tour of California.