Stage Four

A stage doesn’t go by that I don’t shake my head in wonder at some completely surprising, imaginative bike decoration that fully validates all the effort and the many miles I ride of The Tour route in search of such manifestations of Tour fervor. Today I was at once dumbfounded and exalted by a “Library Bike,” maybe my greatest discovery yet.  

Libraries and bike touring have long gone hand-in-hand for me. They are twin passions/obsessions, so I couldn’t help but be absolutely thrilled by the brilliant idea of inserting books in a bike wheel to promote what may be mankind’s two noblest pursuits—reading and riding. I’m only sorry I didn’t have time to drop in on the library responsible for this stroke of inspiration.

I can rarely even spare a few moments to pause and appreciate the effort and detail that goes into the many mini-shrines on the route, just slipping past them with a hurried glance.  I’m always pleased though when I do take the time, as I’m invariably amazed by what I’ll notice with a little extra gazing such as the mini-bikes on these window sills.

I am continually uttering “thank you, thank you” for one creation after another.

It was nice to see the Stanislas statue in the heart of Nancy, today’s Ville Arrivée, draped in Yellow, which it hadn’t been when I reconnoitered Nancy a month ago. The peloton bypassed it by a couple miles, as it stuck to the outer periphery of this sprawling city, but I swung by it after I was blocked from continuing on the course at the three-kilometer to go mark when it dropped down onto a superhighway for a kilometer-and-a-half. Away from the roads the peloton would grace, all was still as if this bustling metropolis  had been evacuated with all its inhabitants drawn to The Tour route.

As I merged with the mobs at the finish I was presented with two bottles of cold Vittel water from the first of many sponsors passing out product.  I gave the Giant Screen a brief look and saw that a three-rider breakaway was barely a minute ahead.  I couldn’t stick around and watch the stage to its conclusion as I was meeting Yvon for our annual Tour rendezvous at a bar in a town ten miles away.  It would be the first of four stages we would see together, our most ever, as the next three stages are all within range of his hometown of Mulhouse. 

I wouldn’t be doing much riding in the days to come, but I’d be having a quintessential French Tour experience such as I’ve never had, going to the roadside at some stage mid-point to watch all the festivities and then driving to watch the finish.  Yvon is a master at planning.  He has everything figured out to the minute, just as he did our meeting point at a town 100 miles from Mulhouse.

I arrived at the bar where he awaited me a minute before our appointed time of 4:45.  I had hoped to be earlier, but it took me more than half an hour to extricate myself from Nancy with all The Tour road closures.  The wind had slowed the peloton, so rather than finishing at five, it didn’t reach Nancy until 5:30.  This was one of the flattest stages of The Tour so ended in the anticipated sprint. Alaphilippe in the Yellow Jersey was among those leading out his Italian teammate Elia Viviani.  And he was among those rewarded with a hearty hug when Viviani took another win for the Belgian Deceuninck-Quickstop team, the year’s winningest team.  It was Viviani’s long-awaited first Tour stage win.  He’s among the handful of current riders who have won a stage in all three Grand Tours.

Yvon and I had a pleasant two-hour drive through the Vosges Mountains on highways that I’d never ridden, as they were forbidden to bicyclists.  The scenery was as captivating and pleasurable as if I were astride the bike, despite being confined to a car on a four-lane separated highway.   As we listened to the radio, when the news came on at the top and the bottom of the hour, the lead story was The Tour de France.  It didn’t hurt that a Frenchman was in Yellow, with Alaphilippe holding on to it for a second day.  It’s the first time the French have had Yellow in five years.

Yvon’s partner, Pierrette, had a fine dinner awaiting us when we arrived at eight.  We ate on their patio overlooking their garden where I could set up my tent, my preference for sleeping.  It was actually quieter than many of my campsites in the woods that are often near a road and are accompanied with chirping birds.

We pored over the day’s newspaper, which had four pages of Tour coverage, including detailed route information and road closures.  In two days Yvon and I will be part of the coverage, as he arranged for a newspaper reporter to come by the house for an interview, as he has often done in other parts of the country where we have rendezvoused for The Tour.  Our bicycling friendship is a human interest story no French newspaper can resist. We know we are fortunate to have discovered each other fifteen years ago at the Notre Dame des Cyclists cycling chapel near the Pyrenees.