Etape du Tour

The Etape du tour.....Sunday july 6th with a 7am start. Not my cup of tea these early starts as my brain hasnt woken up yet, I cant bring myself to eat that early, and .....rain and cold are not my pals! Lucky for me I was dossard 12 but Philippe was 8932 meaning we wouldnt see eachother for the day and i suspected if he started it would be about an hour after my start....so off we went quite early, a few interviews on the start line, 9000 plu speople were actually ready to ride with rain gear, winter clothing was out.....we took off at 7 promptly and it was sprinkling. we managed to become quite rapidly a group of 150 or so riders pushing over the first efforts of the day at km 48 and 70, two small but never the lestt climbs. From there through Lourdes and then off towards the tourmalet. In Lourdes some guys decided to go bowling and I was one of their pins so down I went in a big pileup. I lost a small amount of skin, nothing major but once back in the front group I realized all I could use was the 15. All of my other gears wouldnt catch so the chain was riding on top. I went down on the derailleur side and it did get quite a kick....I muscled up the tourmalet as far as i could in my 51-15 and when I saw the Mavic support moto I stopped him and we spent a good 8 minutes fixing my derailleur. Now it worked but I was far from my group and not possible to catch back on...oh well, I continued on alone asking myself why I decide to do these kinds of things on the weekends and when I finally made it to the top of the tourmalet I had to stop and put on my plastci cakcet. Visibility was less than five meters and I was so cold I could barely hang on to my breaks. THIS WAS NOT FUN. I did realize as much as i would have loved to stop that stopping would be worse as I would be even colder, there would be no one to pick me up so....I pressed on. i caught a few guys in the valley below and we pressed on to the Hautacam which was steeper in parts than I had remembered.....The top is a dead end so you have to turn around and ride down and ofcourse it had again started to rain and I FROZE like I never have all the way back to the car. The entire 11kms down cyclists were riding up the other side of the road....one long bike ride....i could see them all suffering and they could see my teeth chattering.....all the way down I heard pals call out go marion or hey, yo! I was atlast starting, for the first time of the day, to enjoy myself??? Then I heard Philippe, hah! all dressed on the side of the road. They had waited a half hour before their start and by the time the gun sounded he was already soaked and cold so opted to turn in the direction of the hotel... a wise move id say.
In any case with my derailleur troubles I ended up 170th or so and very happy to finish. wont do that again in the rain!!!!