Rest Day

 

Stage Ten departs from Vulcania, an amusement park and museum with a volcano theme with the Puy de Dome hovering above seemingly not more than an arm’s length away.  All was quiet around the just erected mass of Tour structures comprising the Start Village, as it was twenty-four hours before the Tour hurricane of swarms of humanity overwhelmed it.  

Just beyond the Village was the first of the course markers that would guide the peloton to Issoire 105 miles south.  Stage Eleven would bring the peloton back north.  Rather than going down to Issoire and doubling back, I slipped over to Stage Eleven on a parallel route less than twenty miles away.  On the way I was passed by the seven remaining members of the EF Education First team, including present King of the Mountains Neilson Powless, and Rigoberto Uran, third in the Tour one year, in their pink jerseys out for a leisurely Rest Day ride.  

They are just one of six of the twenty-two teams without a full complement of riders having lost their leader Richard Carapaz, former Giro winner and Olympic gold medalist, in a crash on the first stage. Only one team has lost more than one rider—Astana havinv lost Cavendish and Sanchez,  The seven withdrawals is by far the least in recent history, due in part to the opening strenuous stages in Spain that spread out the riders sparing them riding tightly packed on those nervous first stages when everyone is trying to assert themselves and there are crashes galore.

The EF riders sped by without a word, but their trailing team car slowed, no doubt curious about the dude wearing a Garmin jersey, a Christian Vande Velde hand-me-down and the team’s previous sponsor.  A young guy in the passenger seat stuck his head out the window holding a video camera and asked, “Parlez-vous anglais?”

“Yes, I’m from Chicago.”

“Do you know who just rode by?”

“Yes, the successor to the Garmin team,” I replied.

“Are you biking around France?”

“Sort of.  I’ve been following The Tour since Bilbao.”

He asked a few more questions conducting a hurried interview not wanting to fall too far behind his riders.  The car sped away and then slowed again and the guy stuck his head out the window once more, this time with a regular camera with a big lense for a few shots, which may or may not end up on the team website.

That was the excitement for the day with no racing to watch, just the podcasts on the previous day’s stage to listen to.  Johan Bruyneel, Armstrong’s former director and a Tour stage winner himself, who has an encyclopedic knowledge of the sport and is attentive to every detail, was the only one of the podcasters to mention that yesterday’s winner Woods was the oldest Tour stage winner at 36 since Raymond Poulidor in 1974, an amazing coincidence that is so amazing it may not be a coincidence, since the stage began in Poulidor’s hometown and was dedicated to him.  

He didn’t mention it, but I read on one of the cycling websites that Mathieu Van der Pole, Poulidor’s grandson and one of the current luminaries in the sport, had a chance to greet his grandmother, who he hadn’t seen in awhile.  Evidently he was brought to tears during the Poulidor pre-stage tribute. 

I had two Category Four climbs to contend with in the first segment of Stage Eleven.  One went on for an extra four-miles after the initial two-mile steeper segment.  It was another hot day and I was sweating buckets so shed my Jersey. 

For several miles the route was lined with photos on vinyl celebrating bicycling in the region.

I was in no hurry other than getting within twenty-five miles of Montluçon so I could arrive at its mediatheque by ten the next morning and have a couple hour break with Wi-Fi and electricity.  It was the only city on the stage route large enough that I could count on having a library with more than limited hours, though it no doubt would close for lunch, so I needed to arrive my mid-morning if I wanted more than a hurried sit-down.  I hoped by the time I was done with my business at the library by noon or so the course marking crew would have reached Montluçon by then and I’d have easy sailing out of the city and on to Moulins.  And the Day Ahead riders could be coming through around then too enlivening my ride before I stopped at a bar to watch the end of Stage Ten.