Prompt Post: Gala Tour de France

The Gala Tour de France whipped through Luxembourg-Ville last night, and we were there!

The race — fifty laps around the Gare neighborhood — included some of the greatest cyclists in the world: the Schleck brothers (accounting for two-thirds of the Tour de France podium); Thomas Voeckler, French hero of the 2011 maillot jaune; and many more.


There were balloons!

Groups of children rode around the course as part of the introduction of the featured cyclists. Here’s Fränk:

And there’s Andy:

Anita found the Schleck Brothers Fan Club tent and got herself a memento. Now she’s ready for next year’s Tours of Luxembourg and France!

As soon as the race got underway, Fränk went on a mini-breakaway — but it’s hard to get a lot of distance on a 1.7 km course!

There they go again:

Around again:

It was a nice opportunity to fiddle with my camera’s settings.

Here’s the podium stage:

To be honest, we were too tired to wait for the presentation of the winner (which turned out to be Fränk). Did we mention that there were balloons?

You can see Anita’s pride in the Luxembourgish brewing and alcohol-distribution sector. She gave away four beers in order to get her hands on this bit of promotional material. She was too shy to address people in English, and she asked me to explain what she was doing. So I stopped people and told them to have a free beer, in broken French, while Anita held out a plastic cup with a big smile on her face. We can’t imagine that we looked very trustworthy, but some people accepted the beer anyway.

Did we mention there were balloons?

Lazy link of the day: Photos at RTL.lu

Hopefully, we’ll get to show you the video of the Schlecks being Nice Guys during the kids’ race. But the directors are in a power struggle over The Bugle’s Debt Ceiling, so it may take a while.

Note from the Chairman of the Board: This post represents a new angle on Bugle news. For almost a year, our greatest value and singular focus was high-quality content. While we will maintain a high standard for our postings, The Bugle now has a new drive to excellence, in the key area of timeliness. You can look forward to postings that give you, dear reader, the latest in Bakker-related news, without excessive filters and protracted minutia. For example, the events recounted here transpired just 24 hours ago! In select cases, The Bugle will publish a comprehensive follow-up with the wide-ranging research and brilliant presentation that you’ve come to expect.

Also, contrary to Will’s irresponsible rumor-mongering, The Bugle will continue to honor its commitments for the foreseeable future.

11 Comments to “Prompt Post: Gala Tour de France”

  1. Dave said...
    29 July 2011

    I love the new prompt post format. It’s nice to see pictures of an event that happened yesterday!

    Something tells me that since Frank, Voeckler, and Andy finished 1/2/3, the “race” was fixed. Care to comment?

    I also like RTLs desire to show pictures of random people in the crowd not doing anything terribly interesting.

  2. Jaime said...
    29 July 2011

    Balloons = floating happiness

    How many new shirts did Anita have at the end of the day?

    Love the picture with the crisply focused riders with everything else a soft blur – save that setting, Will!

  3. Amanda said...
    30 July 2011

    Oh. . . . jealous.

  4. Anita said...
    30 July 2011

    Jaime –

    I only have two new shirts…. so far! I must acquire an adult version of the yellow shirt the children were wearing. It is a photo of the podium with all three winners – Andy, Tommy, and Fränk).

    More shirts! More shirts!

  5. Laurie said...
    1 August 2011

    So you failed to mention, did they have balloons? AND THERE’S ANITA’S BANK!

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