this is Molly and this is her story
It's funny how conditioned we are to expect that arrows will lead us in the right direction. That photo was taken the second morning we were in France, at Nimes. I was still incredibly jet lagged and after the 3-hour train ride to the south of France, I was feeling disoriented to say the least. We'd gotten out of the train station and had no map and no idea of where we were heading to check out the finish of the TdF's 13th stage. As we're looking around and I'm trying to figure out a way to ask someone in French where the staging area is, Aaron tells me to turn around: I'd been standing in front of a neon yellow Tour de France sign with an arrow pointing left. A sign from some TdF god? We'll we decided that this must be the way to the finish and walked in the direction of the arrow, getting more and more excited as we passed more and more of the yellow signs. At this point it's around 1 pm and we are cooking in the sun--it's gotta be in the 90s. We've probably walked 3 miles already and seen no end in sight to the arrow signs. This whole time we've been walking away from the city centre and by the time we get directed to highway, I know we can't be going the right way even though we've been following the official neon arrows.
And then it hits me-- this is the right direction...but for the peleton the next day when they leave from Nimes! We finally ask someone where to go and she points us back toward to where we came from. The buses weren't running because of the stage finish and no taxis were in sight so we hoofed it back to the city centre. At that time we were all tired, hungry and cranky and didn't find it all funny that the finish was seriously only a few blocks from the train station!
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