I stuck to my shorts, but I dug out gloves for the first time. They were damp even though they had been wrapped in a plastic bag with my wool hat at the bottom of my waterproof Ortlieb panniers. Its impossible to keep the moisture out when one is opening the panniers several times a day and placing a not entirely dry raincoat and other garments in it.
When the sun finally emerges for more than a glimpse I will have to lay everything in my panniers out for a blast of its heat. That wasn’t today. At least there was no rain and the cold meant I had a hint of a tailwind allowing me to reach Tours, 78 miles from my campsite, by five for the stage finish. I was riding the transfer route from the end of Stage Five to the start of Stage Six, so there were no Tour decorations, though enterprising towns could have erected some to salute The Tour, as much of the entourage would be following the route I was on.
The route wasn’t without its thrills though, as when I came upon the first canopy of plane trees of the trip my heart leapt with joy. These noble, statuesque trees tightly lining rural French roads give a jolt of delight almost as strong as the course markers do. Besides their beauty, they provide shelter from the wind and the sun, not that that was needed this day.
The next mile to the heart of the city was a torment following dual tram tracks that took over the road, the majority of which was a pedestrian walkway past a succession of fancy shops. A few cyclists were riding down the middle of the tracks and I followed suit, though being wary of having to swerve and having my wheels swallowed by the tracks and joining all The Tour casualties. I know Tours well, having visited Florence and Rachid most of my summers in France, so headed to the train station by the tourist office where I expected to find a few bars to choose from.
It was past five, but I wasn’t concerned as I had heard on Lance Armstrong’s podcast that the peloton planned to protest yesterday’s perilous stage, which meant they’d be well behind schedule. If the peloton had decided on a slowdown, the stage might not finish until six. The riders had reason to be upset being forced to ride very narrow roads at the end of the stage when the racing is heating to a feverish pitch, but their protest comes much too late. All the teams preview the stages weeks before The Race, so they knew what awaited them. The time to protest was weeks ago.
Perilous, semi-suicidal stretches are nothing new to The Tour. I well remember a truly dastardly descent on a narrow, twisty road through a forest that I came upon when I was pre-riding The Tour route in 2012. It amazed me that the riders could descend such a road at full speed.
I expected great carnage. And there was, except that it preceded the descent when every rider and his mother was riding pell mell, knowing what was ahead, wanting to be near the front when the descent began. There was a high speed crash dwarfing any of this year’s crashes that wiped out quite a few riders. It became known as the “Massacre at Metz.” One can Google “Tour de France Massacre at Metz” to see footage of it and read all the gory details.
The Garmin team took a big hit. Cavendish was among those who went down. He was infuriated that Sky’s directeur sportif Sean Yates didn’t instruct any of his Sky teammates to wait for him and draft him back to the peloton so he could contend for the sprint. That was the year Wiggins won The Tour and Yates was entirely focused on that and wanted all of the riders looking after Wiggins in the final miles of the stage.
There is no disputing that there are stretches in every stage that are danger zones. The riders are fully informed, before the stage and then reminded during the stage by their directors via constant radio contact. Risk is a factor that can’t be eliminated. Riders must be highly vigilant at all times.
It was 5:10 when I entered a bar by the train station and had to ask to have its television turned on, as everyone was sitting outside. It took a couple minutes for the bartender to find The Tour station. And shockingly it was showing commercials, which usually only come at the conclusion of the stage. Maybe the peloton was going so slow, the station was filling time with early commercials. But when it returned to the coverage Thomas Voeckler was interviewing Pogacar. The protest evidently had been minimal not effecting the finish time.
The stage was over and I had to find out on line that Cavendish delivered a stupendous win. Like Van der Poel’s it came a stage late, but was equally storybook, thrilling the entire cycling world. He hadn’t won a stage in five years and was thought to have been washed up, having missed his team selection for The Tour the past three years. He was just a last-minute addition to his Belgian team. He’d somewhat returned to form and his supporters, including George Hincapie, were predicting a stage win for him. Many were rooting for it, but few expected it. I greatly regretted missing his trademark explosion of emotion after this win, knowing it would have been off the charts.
Florence and Rachid were wary of having anyone enter their apartment in these times, so I found a campground and they came to visit me. The nearest campground was actually on the route the peloton would be following out of Tours, so my day wasn’t without a few miles of The Tour route. It began with my second dose of plane trees for the day, these gussied up for the peloton.
Florence and Rachid joined me not long after I’d set up my tent. We’ve been great comrades for twenty-five years going back to the days when Florence and I romped about Chicago’s Loop as bicycle messengers. That’s as irrevocable a bond as Tour de France teammates. It’d been two years since we’d last visited. We could have talked all night, but had to curtail it a bit after eleven when I began to yawn uncontrollably.
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