Tour de France Stage 6: Arras - Reims ***Spoilers***

pottssteve

Whoever thought to bring in Flecha to LeMond on Tour is a genius. Intelligent comment, comfortable in front of the camera, and it means less of Greg!

pottssteve

Gap down to 3'09"

No_Ta_Doctor

Who's driving the peloton?

GentlemanBear

Cheng-watch?

peat

Why aren't ES showing this? Why do we have to keep watching Greg fumble infront of the camera? They are just saying stuff to fill time anyway.

above_the_cows

Here's a cow found on the Cathédrale Notre-Dames de Reims:




Cow gargoyles. That's something new.

adr82

That is some sort of demon cow

GentlemanBear

Cheng Ji second wheel... for a moment there it looked like Astana were fanning across the road diagonally into the cross wind...

ddraver

Kittle saying he'd have been a student if he wasnt a cyclist and gone to a lot of student parties...Christ he would have cleaned up there eh...?

(Sorry Girls)

salsiccia1

Above The Cows wrote:

Here's a cow found on the Cathédrale Notre-Dames de Reims:




Cow gargoyles. That's something new.

Great find, that 8)

No_Ta_Doctor

Is that one of The Pedro's with a guitar on top of the gargoyle?
They were named after a donkey.

spaceman147

No tA Doctor wrote:

Is that one of The Pedro's with a guitar on top of the gargoyle?
They were named after a donkey.

above_the_cows

No tA Doctor wrote:

Is that one of The Pedro's with a guitar on top of the gargoyle?
They were named after a donkey.

It is one of The Pedro's. However did you guess? He looks like the guitarist or maybe more of a fiddler, can't be sure.

Salsiccia1 wrote:

Great find, that 8)

I'd like to pretend I have specialist knowledge or that I searched high and low but no it was the first thing that came up on a google image search for "cows Reims"

pottssteve

Ah, there you all are!

Good to see that normal service has been resumed with Cheng taking his usual 60 or 80km on the front again.

RideOnTime

Above The Cows wrote:

No tA Doctor wrote:

Is that one of The Pedro's with a guitar on top of the gargoyle?
They were named after a donkey.

It is one of The Pedro's. However did you guess? He looks like the guitarist or maybe more of a fiddler, can't be sure.

Salsiccia1 wrote:

Great find, that 8)

I'd like to pretend I have specialist knowledge or that I searched high and low but no it was the first thing that came up on a google image search for "cows Reims"

Lazy and you know it. Get yourself to some dusty old library and the scanning machine.

blazing_saddles

Possible echelons later, according to Kirby.

Paul 8v

RideOnTime wrote:

I can see there's a danger of this thread slipping down the (r)ankings and hence all my pate finding lost. So to keep it up, so to speak, here for those who may not yet have seen it is the Lotto Belisol bus .

You want buses?


This is Neil, the Jens Voigt of our cycling club, also a bus driver, hence the love for the new VanHool...

above_the_cows

Blazing Saddles wrote:

Possible echelons later, according to Kirby.

The klaxon is readied...

above_the_cows

Paul, that is a great avi you have there.

ddraver

Can't believe no one has mentioned champagne yet...me and ma and pa raver had a thouroghly miserabel drive from Beaune through this area in the pouring rain last year in their Camper Van. We ended up in Houfallize...also in the pouring rain for my 29th bday.

First part of the stage see last 2 days

Those hills look like they could be Ardennes like so I'm going to talk about that instead given that I went on a field trip there.

L' Ardenne (Wallonian spelling), is an old mountain range formed during the Hercynian orogeny (That I talked about in stage 1); in France similar formations are the Armorican Massif, the Massif Central and the Vosges (I ve always meant to go MTBing in the Vosges). They represent the northern external parts of the Central European Variscides. It forms of a thin-skinned foreland fold-and-thrust belt, telescoping the Devono-Carboniferous rift and platform sediments of the southern passive continental margin of the ‘Old Red Continent’.



The hills are made of limestone of Devonian age and are comprised of a series of repeated shallowing/deepening phases that can be traced over the whole region. The climate during the late Devonian was warm resulting in conditions ideal for mud mound reef development. An extended carbonate platform developed resulting in the deposition of deep water shales and shallow water mud mounds. These are very different from reefs elsewhere in geological time. Wheras reefs are made of various, usually branching organisms (not calling them plants this time). Mud mounds comprise complex autochthonous micrite-supported cavity systems, now considered to represent either organomineralic deposits (where carbonate precipitation has taken place in association with nonliving organic substrates to form ‘automicrite’) or various types of microbialite (where carbonate forms as a direct result of the physiological activity or decay of benthic microorganisms). Alongside these, stromatolite mounds can be observed.



Later these limestones were exposed and subject to extensive karstification which is where fresh water dissolves the carbonate creating extensive cave systems that are then buried by the overlying rocks. This is beginning to become important as gas and oil discoveries are being found in the Dutch North Sea and also this is beginning to be used for geothermal energy projects in Belgium. Indeed the company I worked for In NL was in charge of drilling the wells for a system near the border with Belgium. Whilst innocently drilling, suddenly, without warning the drill string dropped 10-15m and the drilling mud disappeared completely. Effectively what they had done is drilled into a cave at 2000 odd metres deep. Obviously if that had been filled with oil or gas then there would have been Reims Champagne all round!

RideOnTime

*****echleon alert required*****


ECHLEON ALERT


MAY CONTAIN ECHLEONS

Paul 8v

Above The Cows wrote:

Paul, that is a great avi you have there.

Thought you might like it! You should change yours to a Toblerone ;-)

For the Echelon Klaxon, may I nominate the humble vuvezela? I got one for the tour but it unfortunately didn't turn up in time. It really is the loudest thing ever, going to have to save it for the CX world cup now...

blazing_saddles

It's raining again. Loads of roundabouts on the Reims run in.
ABANDON STAGE ABANDON STAGE!

Kelly now talking about strong wind and echelons.......

above_the_cows

Paul 8v wrote:

Above The Cows wrote:

Paul, that is a great avi you have there.

Thought you might like it! You should change yours to a Toblerone ;-)

For the Echelon Klaxon, may I nominate the humble vuvezela? I got one for the tour but it unfortunately didn't turn up in time. It really is the loudest thing ever, going to have to save it for the CX world cup now...

Ooo that is a good idea about the Toblerone. Less so about the vuvuzela, the most evil thing to come out South Africa since apartheid.

pottssteve

Awww. Poetry corner delayed!

ddraver

Blazing Saddles wrote:

It's raining again. Loads of roundabouts on the Reims run in.
ABANDON STAGE ABANDON STAGE!

And ooh look theyre going slowly...fancy that

above_the_cows

pottssteve wrote:

Awww. Poetry corner delayed!

For shame

ridgerider

Get onto the toll road, much safer.

dish_dash

Above The Cows wrote:

Paul, that is a great avi you have there.

+1

pottssteve

ECHELONS ECHELONS ECHELONS (on a video)