Stage Eight

 

For the first time this year I thought I was going to ride a stage in its entirety, but as I closed in on Limoges, the Stage Eight Ville Arrivée, I realized I could shave eight miles and two Category Four climbs from the route and save myself well over an hour.  With time crucial in getting into Limoges before noon and on my way to Stage Nine, I did not hesitate in heading directly to Limoges on N21, rather than taking the meandering route the peloton would take on secondary roads.  I hated to forsake the growing fervor of the fans already lining the route and all the finishing touches with the 25 and 20 and 10 kilometer to go arches being mounted, but time is always of the essence when trying to keep up with The Tour.

I had ridden N21 two weeks ago on my way to Spain and knew it was perfectly amenable to cycling and its grades would be much gentler than those on the alternate route, enabling be to conserve energy for the hills to come on Stage Nine.  I also knew from my scouting of Limoges where the stage ended and the whereabouts of the tourist office, so I could ride in stress free.  I just had to find the Orange telecommunications outlet to finally get the SIM card in my iPad activated,  after having been thwarted a couple times earlier elsewhere.

The Orange shop was just a couple blocks from the tourist office and the stage finish.  The attendant couldn’t get my two-year old card to respond, delaying me nearly half an hour.  Thankfully the new card immediately connected so I no longer have to worry about being near Wi-Fi to get a stage result if I can’t  find a bar to watch the action.  I could well be stuck in no-marks land tomorrow as Pogaçar and Vingegaard duke it out on the Puy de Dome, so I will be able to live it blow by blow.

My preview of the Ville Départ in Saint-Leonard-de-Nobart thirteen miles away also paid off, as I knew precisely where the stage would start and where I would find the yellow course markers, and also that there was a water spigot behind the tourist office, which was my first destination on this hot day.  Poulidor’s hometown had mounted a couple of new tributes to the national hero in the past two weeks.  One was a large mural on the side of fhe tourist office and another was a portrait capturing his genial charm.

There were more tributes to Pou Pou along and on the road.  

Part of the route included a few miles of a fifteen-mile circuit named for him around a lake. 

 I could have added to the Poulidor theme by going by his grave in the local cemetery, but I didn’t care to spare any time in getting down the road.  I knew I couldn’t reach the climb to the Puy de Dome the next day before the route was closed, but I wanted to get as close as I could and if nothing else be in a town with a bar when I was told couldn’t keep riding.

I put my new SIM to use at five pm when I was still three miles from a resort town on a lake that might have a bar.  The terrain had been brutally hilly with climbs of a mile or two one after another.  Mads Pedersen, a former world champion, became the second Dane after Vingegaard to win a stage, breaking Philipson’s sprint streak, as this one had a bit of a climb more suited to Petersen.  Philipson still finished second, racking up more points in the Green Jersey competition, almost making a mockery of it.

If it hadn’t taken so long to get a SIM card to work back in Limoges I would have made it to the resort town in time for the finish and seen it on television and saved myself a few mega bites.  As it is, I can parcel out seventy-five a day for the twenty days I have remaining in France.  Wi-Fi has been so plentiful this year, with supermarkets offering it unlike previous years saving me from having to find a tourist office, i should have no concerns of exhausting it.  I’ve managed just fine without that luxury for my first eighteen days here. 

A four mile climb after the resort town had me sweating buckets.  I shed my soaked shirt after a mile and continued barechested for the first time in these travels.  Many of the men sitting outside their campers along the road had shed their shirts too or at least had them fully unbuttoned.  There were enticing campgrounds along several lakes on the route, but I was happy to end up beside a bale of hay and have a vast field all to myself.  

Stage Seven

 

It was as if I was chasing a break trying to get to Saint-Pardoux-la-Rivière in time for the stage finish.  I was giving it an extra level of exertion despite the heat and the rolling terrain all the while monitoring the time just as the chasing peloton monitors their speed as they chip away at the time gap they must overcome, which they invariably do.  I was confident, too, that I could reach my destination by five and was holding something in reserve in case I needed to speed up.

I rolled into Saint-Pardoux-la-Rivière by five and began my search for a bar.  The only one was a PMU bar whose lone television was restricted to horse racing.  I filled two of my water bottles with the ice cold water from the bar tap and went across the street to the Hotel de Ville hoping it had Wi-Fi.  One never knows if a town will have public Wi-Fi and this one did.  

When I connected I went straight to the Letour website, as it has better graphics than the cyclingnews website.  It was two kilometers to the finish.  I had cut it perilously close.  I didn’t even have time to scroll back and see how the stage had unfolded.  I just had to wait a couple of moments to learn Philipson had won his third sprint finish of this year’s Tour and that he had chased down Cavendish who had opened up his sprint earlier than usual, trying something different.  It almost worked, as he finished second, the thirty-second time he has fallen just short in a Tour sprint. 

 

Philipson, who is ten years younger than Cavendish and who has said Cavendish was one of his childhood heroes along with Sagan and Boonen, afterwards said he would like to see Cavendish break the record he shares with Merckx, but not so much to let up just a little so he could have done it on this stage.  

Cavendish had to have had mixed feelings of disappointment and encouragement at coming so close, but at least gaining a  bolster of confidence  that Philipson isn’t necessarily invincible.  He most definitely has a chance of a win before The Tour ends in two weeks.  It is now one third over.

Cavendish is the elder of The Tour.  His fourteen Tours are the most of anyone in the race, one more than Boasson Hagen and two more than Sagan.  The most all-time by anyone is eighteen by the French rider Sylvain Chavanal, one more than George Hincapie, Stuart O’Grady and Jens Voigt of the US, Australia and Germany, all overlapping with my two decades of riding The Tour.  

Each of them rode their Tours in consecutive years, Chavanal 200l to 2018.  My eighteen have come with an initial sixteen straight starting in 2004, broken by the delayed 2020 Covid Tour, revived in 2021 with my seventeenth, then broken again last year as I missed the Copenhagen start. Here I am, back for my eighteenth in twenty years.  Will I have enough left in me to surpass Chavanal next year?

As I continued riding the Stage Eight route that I had begun the evening before, now just a day ahead of the peloton, I was hoping to latch on to others riding the stage as I’ve done in years past.  But the only cyclists I encountered was a group of six fast-riding, husky, middle-aged men all wearing different jerseys and followed by a support vehicle with Dutch license plates and spare bikes on the roof.  Evidently my eight a.m. start fifteen miles into the stage wasn't early enough to encounter others, as Ralph finally met up with a swarm of them in Limoges at the end of the stage and later that evening the hotel he ended up in Saint-Leonard-de-Noblat, the start of Stage Nine, was packed with them.

The urge to decorate and mount bikes along the route and to honor The Tour in some manner continues to possess the French.  I was once again rewarded with a dazzling array of clever and inventive decorations from hay bale concoctions to jerseys hung on a bush to embellished bicycles and a pyramid of bikes and a stunningly artistic owl with a bright yellow beak and bicycle wheels as eyes.

All along the route were signs reminding all that the week-long Tour de France Femmes will include this stage on July 25. One of these years it would be nice to stick around after The Tour de France Hommes and have an extra-week of biking in France following the women.

Stage Six

 

And order is fully restored to The Tour.  The Yellow Jersey did not give HIndley the extra watts he needed to keep up with Vingegaard and Pogaçar. As expected they left him behind when the climbing got serious on the Tourmalet leaving him two-and-a-half minutes in arrears by day’s end dropping him to third place behind the two studs, a place on the podium he will be battling to retain over the next two weeks while Vingegaard and Poçachar wage all-out war for the top rung.

After the Tourmalet came a final climb to the finish where Vingegaard and Poçachar went toe to toe until the final mile-and-a-half when Poçachar did to Vingegaard what he did to him yesterday and went on to win the stage, though not by enough to claim the Yellow Jersey, which fell into Vingegaard’s lap.  Order was so fully restored that Poçachar regained his impish sense of humor.  It was his tenth Tour stage victory.  He was so happy he said, “I’m coming for you Mark,” referring to Cavendish and his thirty-four wins.  He might have said the same thing to Darrigade in Dax, as his twenty-two stage wins are the fifth most ranking behind Merckx, Cavendish, Hinault and Leducq.

Cavendish would have laughed at his brashness, as that is his modus operandi as well.  A former teammate, David Millar, who now does Tour commentary and is part of a podcast, mentioned that he asked Cavendish the day before what he thought of Hindley surprising all and taking the Yellow Jersey.  His response was, “I don’t care.  That’s not my race,” as all he’s interested in is the sprints and the Green Jersey.  

I had the full Tour flavor watching the last ninety minutes of the stage in a working class bar on the outskirts of Libourne, the Ville Départ for Stage Eight.   It was actually a PMU horse racing bar that usually restricts its televisions to horse races.  I was lucky there was a third television across from the bar for the enjoyment of the bartender and a few others, with the two sets showing racing in a back room with grizzled characters sitting at tables filling out betting cards.  Disheveled characters shuffled in and out of the bar all the while I was there including a woman with a lot of rouge and a dog.  She seemed to know all and exchanged kisses on the cheeks with just about everyone.

It was only a minor distraction to the action on the screen with the Van Aert the hero of the day leading his teammate Vingegaard with Pogaçar on his wheel and five others up the final climb until he’d exhausted himself and Vingegaard took over 
while Pogaçar bided his time. Among those he was towing was American Powless, who’d gone up the road to collect king of the mountain points, regaining the lead for the polka dot jersey.  Vingegaard yesterday waited until the final kilometer of the last climb to attack.  Pogaçar went with just under three kilometers to go.  

It was a great relief to him that Vingegaard couldn’t follow, as he admitted that his explosive effort the day before  was quite impressive and that The Tour was over if he could continue that.  But The Tour is not over by any means.   No one is ready to concede the title to either of them.  There will be a truce on the next two flat stages until Sunday’s sure to be epic climb up the legendary Puy de Dome where Anquetil and Poulidor had one of the all-time great battles in 1964, which this just might rival.

I had course markers guiding me for several hours as the crew placing them caught up to me at 10:30.  After four hours I was back on my own when I left the Stage Seven course that concluded in Bordeaux and headed to the Stage Eight start in Libourne. I was pedaling at a steady clip intent on making it to Libourne by four.  I was catching up on the five podcasts I keep up with offering daily half hour or so analysis of each stage by experts who have ridden The Tour or covered it for years.  All were aghast at the UAE and Jumbo Visma teams allowing Hindley to escape up the road the day before.  Luke Rowe, the Sky team captain who shepherded Froome to four Tour wins, called it a “massive fuck-up.” George Hincapie on the Armstrong podcast said their team director Johan Bruyneel would have been screaming in to the radio for everyone to chase down such a breakaway.

When the day’s action in the Pyrenees concluded I set out on Stage Eight, whose course markers wouldn’t be placed until the next morning.  I was still in the Gironde département as evidenced by the signs I had seen along the road all day.

The same message had been painted on the road hoping to encourage The Tour organizers to include their département again.

I encountered only one cyclist all day who might have been riding The Tour route, a young guy who sped past me with a mini-frame pack who blurted “courage” not wishing to slow for anything more. A handful of camping vans had claimed spots along the road with a better than twenty-four wait until the caravan and the peloton would pass. 

A traveling Belgium bar and cafe had set up shop with a giant photo of Wout Van Aert at one end of their spread and a vintage Eddie Merckx car at the other.  

Between were several tables under umbrellas and music coming out of speakers.  It was a pleasure to be riding the route without gendarmes stationed at every intersection awaiting the opportunity to tell me to stop riding and to be able to take a break without the worry of trying to get as far down the road as possible before it became closed down.

Stage Five

 

Time trials are known as the “race of truth,” but the mountains reveal truths as well. Today’s first foray into the mountains answered the question hovering over The Tour of who is the stronger of the past two winners and overwhelming favorites to repeat.  

Last year’s winner, Vingegaard, took a whopping minute out of the winner of the previous two Tours, Pogaçar, riding away from him a kilometer from the summit of a Category One climb eleven miles before the finish and held him off to the finish. He didn’t win the stage nor gain the Yellow Jersey just yet,   both went to Aussie Jai Hindley, who joined a breakaway group of podium threats that Pogaçar and Vingegaard inadvisably let get several minutes up the road, as Hindley, a former Giro winner, was considered the strongest rider in the peloton after the top two and was the oddsmaker’s favorite to finish third.  

His two prime rivals weren’t showing him a great amount of respect to let him off the leash.  Vingegaard brought back much of his advantage finishing only forty-six seconds behind, which he could easily overcome on any long climb, unless Hindley is invigorated by the Yellow Jersey and can stick with his attacks, which so far no one has been able to do.  

Suddenly The Tour has another storyline, though it could go poof on tomorrow’s second day in the Pyrenees with a finish up a Category One climb after dealing with the Beyond Category Tourmalet.  It will be must viewing.

I had the pleasure of watching today’s action in a bar with two other patrons who were already riveted to the television when I arrived with ninety minutes left in the stage.  The bar had Wi-Fi, so I could supplement the French commentary with updates from the Tour de France website and the cyclingnews website.  

It would have been a perfect setting if only there’d been a L’Équipe newspaper laying around with its multiple pages of Tour coverage. It would have been nice too if  the bar hadn’t been infested with flies that were nipping at my ankles.  At least there were easily accessible electric outlets so I could do some charging, though it wasn’t a great necessity as I had spent two hours earlier in the day in a mediatheque (library) taking my first prolonged break of this ride.  

For the first time in two weeks I wasn’t pressed to be getting down the road as I was bypassing the Pyrenees and was starting on Stage Seven to Bordeaux, two stages ahead of the peloton.  It would make for stress free riding for a couple of days simply enjoying the glorious French countryside.  I made no demands on the legs letting them soft pedal and have a recovery day.  My present short-term goal is to get to the Stage Eight start by Friday morning just as the course markers are being mounted and before whatever groups there might be here this year riding a day ahead of the peloton.  

The past few years there has been a group of women doing it, but with the brutal first three days of this year’s Tour such groups may have opted out, as they wouldn’t be able to ease into the demands of riding over one hundred miles a day for three weeks with relatively flat days as is the customary start to The Tout.  They could have been done in after a day or two of this year’s two killer opening stages.

Ralph, who I’ve yet to cross paths with since he stays at hotels and eats in restaurants and resorts to trains like an otherwise civilized human being, rode a day ahead on the Dax stage a couple days ago and reported only one encounter with two guys who said they were riding a day ahead with a “Pedal for Purpose” group.  I hope to find out more on Friday, riding a day ahead myself before letting the peloton catch up to me on Saturday.

Today I was actually riding two days ahead, something I rarely do as the course markers wouldn’t be mounted until the next day.  The route often revealed itself with fresh pavement and barriers stacked up waiting to be put in place and crews out cleaning the road and trimming trees and signs advising locals the hours the road would be closed.   Plus there were many decorations already in place.  Surprisingly there was a camper van already parked with a course marker in its window choosing to avoid the strain of the torturous Pyrenean climbs.

I patronized a Carrefour supermarket for the first time this year.  I had been sticking to the Intermarché, as it is a co-sponsor of a team, and E.Leclerc, as it sponsors the climbing jersey, which Carrefour used to do.  At the two stores I’d been sticking to I’d been asked at checkout every single time if I wanted a receipt (“ticket” as they call it), a move to cut down on wasted paper.  Carrefour has not instituted such a policy, so it’s not government mandated, as is not providing plastic or paper bags.  Everyone has been trained for years to bring their own.  

Another environmentally friendly policy is doing away with plastic straws.  I’ve sometimes been buying a six-pack of mini-cartons of chocolate milk, each with their own straw.  The straws are cardboard and after a single use have lost their strength to puncture the hole into the carton.  Since I drink two or three at a time I have to unwrap a new straw for each carton, unable to use the one I’ve just drunk from unless I puncture the hole with my pen, which I sometimes have to do if a fresh straw has gone astray.  Surprisingly the six-packs are sometimes cheaper than the liter bottles and provide an extra 200 milliliters.  Since they don’t have to be refrigerated, I can have chocolate milk first thing in the morning in my tent, always a good way to start the day.

Stage Four

 I have been keeping my eyes peeled for UK license plates on the camping vans parked along the route since Lance had mentioned on his daily Tour podcast that the parents of the Yates twins were following The Tour.  I glance at them anyway to see the many nationalities represented as well as the range of French départements, as the last two digits on the French license plates are the clue as to where they are from.  Flags and banners and signs supporting riders are a good clue as well.  

The parents of Yates were said to be as reserved as their sons, so it wasn’t likely they’d be brandishing large signs drawing attention to themselves.  But I figured I’d weeded them out when I came around a bend and saw an older couple mounting a sign reading “Yates You Can” across the road from a large camper with UK license plates.  “Are you the parents?” I asked.  

“No, that’s them over there,” the woman responded, nodding towards a gentleman seated at a table in front of a second camper parked just ahead of theirs.

I glided over to him and said, “You must have been going crazy on that final climb on stage one when your sons were ahead of everyone else.”

“We were actually in the camper driving over to Stage Two.  We had stopped and were watching the finish on our phone.  It was exciting.”

I asked if they had followed The Tour before.  It was their third, while the friends accompanying them were on their seventh after having done segments of others before they started doing it from start to finish. They were full-fledged devotee's.  It would have been nice to plop down and watch the peloton pass with them, but that was hours away.  It was only 8:30 and I was intent to get to the stage finish nearly fifty miles away.

When I started the day, signs warned that the route at that point would be closed at ten am.  I had  gotten far enough down the route that the signs now said 10:30, giving me enough breathing room that I dashed into a supermarket for the day’s provisions and a hit of chocolate milk.  I intended to leave the route hopefully by ten at the forty-mile mark and take a shortcut to the finish.  I started seeing gendarmes posted at all the intersecting roads at 8:45, looking fairly relaxed at that point and posed no threat to evicting me.

There hadn’t been much Tour traffic on the road other than a trio of yellow vans of the course marker crew making sure all the markers were still in tact. The most activity was in towns with people mounting last minute decorations, always a fascinating spectacle as they try to get them just right.

This was the first stage entirely in France.  Tributes to The Tour flourished everywhere.

Residents almost feel it is a civic duty to acknowledge The Tour in some manner.

It is truly a non-stop tribute to the bike.

The bike becomes a totem and most revered object.  

I timed my arrival in Nogaro for two pm when the tourist office and the Orange telecom office would reopen after lunch.  On the outskirts of the town a sign acknowledged that 1973 Tour winner Luis Ocana had lived there pointing towards his former vineyard.  I couldn’t ask about it at the tourist office as it was closed for The Tour giving precedence to attending it rather than assisting tourists such as me.  Just bout every shop was closed too. It was over a mile from the town center to the finish line of the stage at a large motor sport racing circuit.  While I sat outside the tourist office using its Wi-Fi a couple of older gentleman asked me what time the peloton was due.  They weren’t residents but rather Jehovah Winesses.  They gave me a card inscribed with JW.org and Les Témoins  de Jéhovah.

A stream of people were headed to the track.  The Giant Screen was very visible and easily accessible.  There was plenty of grass to sit on.  Luckily it was a cool, cloudy day, as there was no shade.  I took out my sleeping pad that converts into a chair and plopped down, happy to have a couple of hours off the bike with non-stop biking action to watch.  It actually extended into three hours with not that much action until the end as the peloton wasn’t pushing the pace, recovering from three hard days in Spain with a monstrous ten thousand, nine thousand and eight thousand feet of climbing with two even more demanding days in the Pyrenees awaiting them starting the next day.  

There wasn’t even a token breakaway until well into the stage for the peloton to chase.  They were riding at times eight abreast across the road.  Near the front for a while was the American Quinn Simmons with the longest hair in the peloton wearing the Stars and Stripes jersey of the American national champion as if to acknowledge the July 4th celebrations going on back home.  The screen cut from time to time to interviews with riders at the day’s start, including one with 94-year old André Darrigade, whose statue graced the route.

This was my first full dose of the caravan, as it had been somewhat reduced in Spain.  There were two sponsors dispensing cans of drink, maybe juice, that one had to be ready for as they were handed to outstretched hands rather than tossed as everything else is.  I will now know to be prepared for that in the future, quick to grab what is extended out.  There were several caps and what appeared to be socks along with key chains and pencils and candy and other snacks.  All I was able to snatch was a spiffy red, white and blue cycling cap of the French FDJ team adorned with bikes and a heavy duty plastic shopping bag with the Tour logo that Janina will be happy to put to use. Surprisingly, Vittel, the bottled water sponsor, was absent, which used to delight the crowds and send them scattering as it sprayed those along the route to cool them down.

This was the first stage finish in a small town after three in urban centers, so it wasn’t so mobbed and the vibe was much more laid back.  There was no hint of whatever ruckus is going on in the large urban centers of the country.  

The gendarmes were as much at ease as the civilians, one even putting his cap on a little girl for a photograph.  When the peloton finally arrived a little before six everyone turned to watch them enter the far end of the track before coming around to us.

Philipson won for the second day in a row after a roaring lead out by Pou Pou’s grandson van der Poel, just nipping the Australia Ewan by a fragment of a wheel.  Behind were a couple of crashes that fortunately didn’t take down more than a couple riders each, two of whom had to abandon, both with broken collarbones, the first since the two on Stage One.  Cavendish was up there in fifth, one better than yesterday, but the strength of the others makes it look bleak for him getting his record-breaking win in this his final Tour.  

Since I wasn’t headed to Pau for the next stage start I had a quiet, leisurely ride heading in the opposite direction freed of The Tour entourage rushing to their hotels.  After half an hour I replenished my water bottles at a cemetery and could begin looking for a place to camp, enjoying that I didn’t need to push on as far as possible.  Once again I ended up in a grassy field on the fringe of a cornfield.  No complaints whatsoever.

Stage Three

 

From the very beginning of the day I was passing small enclaves of camping vans parked along the road, many with picnic tables already set up with couples having breakfast oblivious to the traffic passing by.  They were living the Tour de France experience and would have it no other way.  

As I closed to within twenty miles of the stage finish in Bayonne I came upon a van parked alone, a smaller version of the more popular home on wheels that most preferred.  And then my eye caught its markings.  It was the vehicle of the German superfan Didi, known as the Devil, who is almost as synonymous with The Tour as the Yellow Jersey.  The driver’s side window was open.  

I slowed to see if Didi could be seen.  And there he was in all his glory sitting behind the wheel peering at his phone.  He immediately recognized me and gave me a hearty greeting.  He grew up in Eastern Germany so had no background in English and has never picked it up, nor French, so there was no communicating other than the good cheer of seeing a fellow devotee of The Tour.  He used to shout “musée” when I past him, as he knew I had visited his museum near Berlin of the many different bikes he has concocted, some in the Guinness book.  He wasn’t at the museum at the time of my visit, so I picked up a brochure and dropped it by him when I passed him at The Tour later that year, giving him much delight.

Not long afterwards reuniting with Didi  I spotted a two euro coin on the road, well worth stopping for.  It was like finding a stack of ten quarters.  It was actually the second one I had come upon, the previous just before I entered Spain.  It made me wonder if there could possibly be a counterfeiting ring in the vicinity.  I had already passed the first and upon close examination this seemed perfectly legit.  One doesn’t hear anything about counterfeiting these days, but it could be going on.  

It brought to mind the two-bit, quasi-mafiosa types who force mini-French flags on fans for a euro during The Tour, giving them something to wave when the peloton passes.  These sleazy, nefarious characters would be likely suspects of passing, if not manufacturing, counterfeit coins.  And not long after they came to mind I came upon the first of this repugnant bunch clutching a handful of the flags besieging a row of parked vans.  Those guys are a blight on The Tour.  The very sight of them turns my stomach, not only that they sucker so many people into buying these cheap tokens of fandom, but that so many people fall prey to their sheningans, and fork over a euro or two if only to appease them. 

The thirty miles of the days route I followed into Bayonne was away from the coast and through small villages.  I kept hoping a supermarket would turn up, as I was down to madeleines and nuts, as no supermarkets had been open on Sunday in Spain the day before.  I was eager for some chocolate milk and a quiche and bread and sandwich fixings.  I was growing hungry, and was forced to wait until Bayonne to eat.  I was counting on at least a supermarket on the run-in to this big city, but there was none. They were all on the other side of the city. 

I was hungry enough to not even seek out the Giant Television screen at the finish nor to see if Credit Lyonnaise had started passing out yellow hats.  Plus I didn’t want to be tempted by an idyllic grassy setting with shade to come back and await the peloton, which hadn’t even set out from Spain yet.  I didn’t care to delay the thirty-one mile transfer to the next stage start in Dax until after the stage finish when it would be a mad rush by many of the Tour followers to get to Dax.  

I would put off my first Giant Screen viewing experience of this year’s Tour until Nogano, the next day, when I’d be in no rush to be on my way after the stage, as I didn’t intend to plunge into the Pyrenees for stage five and six, but rather make a leisurely ride towards Bordeaux, where stage seven would conclude.  I had seen Tour starts in Pau and Tarbes, where five and six would be commencing, a few times over the years and had no need to renew acquaintances, though they both have their charms. 

Once again I was thwarted in finding a bar or cafe with a television to watch the finish.  I had been thwarted too in getting a SIM card for my iPad In Bayonne to have access to internet anywhere, as the outlet of the French provider, Orange, wasn’t still closed undergoing renovation as it had been last week when I passed through on my way to Spain.  So I had to wait until I reached Dax an hour after the stage had visited for WI-FI.  An English couple was peering into the closed tourist office when I arrived.  I asked, “Did Cav win?”  They replied, “No, he finished sixth.  Hopefully he can do better tomorrow.”

The favorite for the Green Jersey, who won two sprint stages last year including the all-important final stage on the Champs in Paris, the Belgian Jasper Philipson took the stage thanks in part to a superb lead out by van der Poel.  Cav was right there so there is still hope he’ll yet win a stage and surpass Merckx for the most Tour stage wins.  Sagan came in 23rd demonstrating he will be a non-factor after dominating the Green Jersey competition for years, winning it six times. 

My next order of business was to find the course markers for the next day’s stage.  A crew was already setting up barriers and loads of locals were watching the huge operation.  A course marker was nearby and I was on my way, knowing it would lead to the André Darrigade statue I had checked out last week. It was looking more prominent than ever adorned with a course marker, though the variety with black stripes on its bottom indicating this was the neutralized zone and the racing had yet to commence.  

I had to go a mile further past several roundabouts when the road became clear of impediments and the fury of the opening kilometers could commence with riders attempting to form a breakaway. The hammer goes down when the peloton comes upon two course markers mounted one on top of the other.

I proceeded ten miles before slipping off the road to camp in a field behind a tree farm and beside a corn field, another marvelous sight marred only by the barking of a deer shortly after I had set up.