Today was a day of liberation, of pushing through mental and physical crashes to live another day, to pick yourself up and start fresh all over again. And again and again, no matter how many attempts it takes.

[ Warning – ramble alert. In true traumatized fashion, ]
Stage 3 of the Tour de France ran from Wanze, Belgium through 13.2 kilometers of famous cobbles in the north of France to finish in Arenberg. As predicted, today was a crash fest. Frank Schleck (Saxo Bank) was forced to abandon with a broken collarbone. Lance Armstrong (Team RadioShack) lost time on the stage when his tire flatted in a narrow cobbled section and he was forced to wait for team support for an equipment change. Armstrong finished 2:08 back from stage winner Thor Hushovd (Cervelo Test Team), and dropped from 5th place and 5 seconds back to 18th place and 2:30 seconds back.

Because I like to get my research straight from the horse’s mouth, this from Lance Armstrong’s Twitter: “Well, that’s the way the ball bounces. Bad luck indeed. Keep my head up and move on.”

Similarly, my own stress-fest of today included renting a car and driving said car through cleverly blocked French streets, getting yelled at by a red-face police woman (her apparent rage only made me want to sit in one place and stare blankly for just a little bit longer), trying to find each of my destinations, and finally, my arrival to a beautiful, well-kept hotel that made it all worth it.

First of all, I’m amazed that I am allowed to rent a car with little more than a few signatures and the showing of my passport. Never mind that I have no idea what the signs mean, who has the right of way, can I just run this intersection or do I have to stop? What does that triangle mean?? I must have broken a multitude of traffic laws in the course of my day, but hey, so did the people around me.

Leaving Liege, of Liege-Baston-Liege, one key freeway entrance was blocked. It took me three laps around the same few city blocks as directed by my English-speaking Garmin to figure out that it wasn’t that I’d missed the exit, but that the exit was SIMPLY GONE. Thanks Belgium to your commitment to continual road construction, and cleverly obscuring said road construction!

I did finally make it out of Liege to the start of Stage 3 in Wanze. Just in time to literally jump and run out of my car to the start line, snap a few pics to prove I was there, then run back to the car in hopes that I would be able to follow someone to the finish/cobbles area so I wouldn’t have to deal with foreign names and blocked roadways again. I followed a slew of cars, comforted by the array of press, official, and tv/radio stickered cars. Though I get that it’s probably weird to have someone you don’t know tailgaiting you, c’mon now…..help a sister out. I was following on publication’s vehicle, when they proceeded to deliberately drop me. Thanks guys.

So I struck out on my own, Garmin in hand. Many of the names I typed into the Garmin yielded “No Search Results”. What?? How is ARENBERG not in your system? I drove and drove and drove, to end up at least somewhere close to the finish, then I could back-track my way to the cobbles.

As luck would have it, and as the Universe always seems to nudge me gently in the right direction when I get lost, I pulled off the freeway just to stretch and reprogram the Garmin with something closer to the cobbles. All of the street name intersections I typed in were either “Not Found”, or obviously not in the area I wanted to go to. In frustration, I just went with the original programming to try to get to the finish line.

As I’m boiling with frustration sitting in the car, a giant SUV parks next to me. Funny thing in Europe – people have no problem parking mere inches from you, then open their car doors and PUSH them open against your vehicle, all while looking you directly in the eye. Glad it’s not my car!

After they leave, I notice a few cars pull into the side road I’m on. I drive into the roundabout, ready to throw my hands up and head straight to the finish, cobbles dreams dashed, when I look over and see tons of people….walking….down the street. I notice a couple of bicycles. I notice a French policeman. What the…? Could it be?….

I drive up to the policeman and wrestle with words and gestures, “Pavé! Pavé! Pavé?” and point to the Tour map, down the road, and to the “Presse” sticker on my car.

“Oui,” he answered, much to my surprise. Ha! I was just a kilometer away from cobbled goodness, and I almost turned around and left! It was just like the story in “Think and Grow Rich” of the miner who stopped just 3 feet short of a vein of gold worth millions.

Not only was I super close to the cobbles, but I got to drive down them. THAT was awesome – gauging by how my car was bumpin’, and how other team cars that rolled by were grinding their car-parts on the cobbles, I was fully expecting carnage-fest on the cobbles.

Riders zipped by likety-split fast with no apparent problems (at least from my observation, and in my part of the cobbles).

Heading back to the finish line was a joy. French police pretend they don’t understand or speak English, until they are absolutely forced to. After blocking traffic in a roundabout, an increasingly red-faced police woman finally got frustrated enough with me to use her English – “STRAIGHT!!!!” she finally screamed and pointed in a definitive direction, after minutes of yelling at me more and more loudly, and gesturing more and more wildly.

Ha! I KNEW you knew English! Gotcha!