The Tour is one big moving circus.

The smallest portion of the whole thing is the peloton; 180-or-so guys on bikes. Even when you add all of the staff and gear from the teams themselves that still only makes up only 10 percent of the Tour caravan.

Add in journalists, police, publicity caravan, the dudes who put up the barriers... and you easily bump that to more than 5000 people who cover the Tour from start to finish. Some are more visible than others and some are taken for granted. Like the guys who put up the signs for race? When do they do that? Or the guy who paints the finish line and does the timing.

These are things that I honestly take for granted. What? It’s not normal to have a finish line in every town? You mean it’s not normal for French towns to have 25, 20, 15, 10, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 k to-go signs? They don't just appear?

Shit, its 11 in the morning on Saturday before the TT and it just started to rain. Sometimes it’s the best to go off first in the time trial. Get your ride in early and then just lay in bed and watch the race on TV. Really, if you beat the rain you can watch everyone else tip toe through corners that you absolutely flew through. But I don't go till 2:30, it will be nice and dry by then right? Don't think so.

Okay, back to my thought. The reason I brought this all up in the first place are the Gendarmes - the French police - that patrol the race. There are all sorts of different genres of police in France and these guys are the top moto guys.

They point out dangerous traffic islands ad corners and pass back-and-forth through the peloton, almost invisibly. They are like the blue angels on BMW motorcycles. All uniformly driving massive bikes through holes that don't exist and not interrupting the race.

They even drive in formation to and from the race every day, making them look more impressive and classy even when they aren't working. I have known the chief of this squad for the last 11 years; he likes to practice his English and has always hung out with the Americans since Boyer. So he tells us some of the behind the scenes stuff about their jobs and what it’s like year-round, at the Tour and not. All these guys do are bike races, parades and some other duties.

They are badass and I will never take those boys for granted.