Help -- how to watch the Tour w/o Versus!

[tulip]

The steephill feeds do tend to drop out from time to time. The commentary, however, is great. Eurosport UK is very good. If that one drops out, there are others, but it does help if you understand another language.

I agree with the sports bar idea, however, since you won't be able to watch it live.

[Mr. Bloom]

SilverSon has been watching live stream on www.versus.com/tdf

He found it on his own and swears he's (I mean "I'm") not paying for it...

[Possegal]

I think the bigger problem here is that Emily can't watch LIVE anything, as she'll be traveling. She's looking for a way to watch something like the edited versus version at night. Or does anyone store the live stream to watch later on replay, as it were.

I have to say, in all my looking around to find streaming video, I've yet to see any stored video. If you click on the live feeds like versus or steephill after the stage is over, you won't get anything. It would help if there was a way to watch the evening version of Versus online, I have not seen that but it doesn't mean it isn't out there.

I second the idea of a nice sports bar. Reminds me of the year my hockey team won their first Stanley Cup and I was living in Oxford Mississippi and no cable or regular TV stations were showing hockey. I went to a sports bar, explained my predicament and the kind bartender handed me the satellite book and said - find me a station. I gave him the local Pittsburgh sports station and there I sat, all by myself, watching hockey on the one big screen TV, while everyone else watched basketball on all the other TVs.

Good luck, I hope you find a way to watch. I was at my cousins a few years back on the final weekend of the Tour and I did email first to make sure his cable had at least one station I could watch for Tour coverage. So I understand your dilemma.

[Jo-n-NY]

Emily,

Can you call the cable co. and see if you can get an upgrade short term.

JoAnn

[emily_in_nc]

Thanks for all the suggestions. Possegal is exactly right -- we can't watch anything live, which rules out all live feeds. We'd need stored video, and I kinda figured that wouldn't be available. We'll be either on the road or preparing for or participating in the two-day sale during the daylight hours on Wed-Sat.

We talked about trying to find a sports bar, but this is four nights in a row! I don't mind an occasional night out, but we're likely to be pretty tired in the evenings so not up for a lot of activity, and the in-laws don't actually live in sports-bar heaven, just a small town in Ohio. There are biker bars there, but not so sure about sports bars. I don't even think there is a bike shop.

Staying in a hotel or paying for them to upgrade cable (they'd need digital cable, a new box, and it looks like a full year has to be ordered) would negate any $ we might make in the sale, so it wouldn't be worth our even going.

I think we've just about decided to just record the evening coverage here at home on Versus from Wed-Sat nights and try very hard to avoid spoilers. We have two DVD recorders so can actually get all four nights on DVD. If Lance wins it all, it will be impossible not to hear it somewhere, but if he doesn't, and we avoid sports and news websites and TV coverage, we might be able to make it home without it being spoiled. Even if we do hear who won, which we probably would no matter how careful we are, we'd still enjoy watching the coverage, even after the fact, and being able to zip through commercials would be nice.

If we do go this route, we just have to hope for no power outages while we're gone!!

[Possegal]

This year in general, due to Lance, it is hard to avoid. My local news has been known to comment, that doesn't usually happen.

In the meantime, I'll keep my eyes open and see if there is any stored video of the days stages anywhere. Maybe it is out there but none of us have needed to find it before.

[Triskeliongirl]

Can't you just do the yard sale the following weekend? Its just too exciting a weekend to miss.

And don't discount sports bars without calling around. In woods hole, I would bike to what was more of a cafe, and watch the broadcast. You just need to find an establishment with a TV willing to turn it on to the braodcast, and maybe have a meal or snack there while you watch.