Stage Fourteen

 

Sleeping under the canopy of a thick forest, the morning light didn’t wake me and I slept until 8:30, a much needed couple hours of extra sleep.  Thankfully I didn’t need to be on the road by seven, as has all too frequently been the case, as I wasn’t getting anywhere near today’s stage, starting in a corner of the Alps some eighty miles away.  

The route wasn’t coming my way, so I didn’t need to be in a rush to try to intersect with it.  It would be a day off The Tour route until later in the day after I watched the end of the stage in a bar in Annecy and would then pick up the next day’s route a few miles out of town and have the company of course markers as evening came on.

It was just thirty-five miles to Annecy and its spectacular lake, but I had a steep five-mile climb over a ridge to get there and then some more climbing after dipping into a valley.  I was caught by a downpour halfway up the climb and pulled over under some trees joined by a couple of cyclists and a motorcyclist.  The cyclists were just out for a morning ride and had no rain gear, as it was one of those surprise mountain storms that come and go.  This one went in less than half an hour.

As I approached Annecy the traffic thickened considerably.  It is a large tourist town that is a very popular getaway, especially in the month of July.  Most of the patrons at the bar I selected were sitting outside and were of many nationalities—German, Chinese, Dutch.  The bartender could have been Parisian.  When I requested a menthe á l’eau he told me to take a seat and give my order to his waiter.  It was no surprise that the cost was double what I’d been accustomed to paying in small towns.  I was relieved it was no more than that.

The stage in the Alps was once again the Pogaçar/Vingegaard show though they were surprised by the Spanish Ineos rider Carlos Rodriguez on the descent of the Beyond Category climb seven miles from the finish who took the win and thanks to the ten second bonus slipped into third place by a mere second over Hindley, who wore the Yellow Jersey a day.  Pogaçar’s teammate, Adam Yates, who wore the Yellow Jersey the first few stages, moved up to fifth, just thirty-six seconds from third.  It’s turning into a barn-burner for third as well as first.  Ineos had the best rider last year too after the two top dogs, when Geraint Thomas took third.  It is a small consolation for a team that won The Tour seven times with Wiggins, Froome, Thomas and Bernal.  

After the Ineos stage win yesterday the retired American pro Ian Boswell, contributing to the  British Cycling Podcast, asked the Ineos director Rod Ellingsworth how many Tour stage wins that was for his team since it was founded as Team Sky thirteen years ago.  He didn’t know, as overall wins is the only thing he really keeps track of.  He thought maybe ten.  It was actually twenty, and today was number twenty-one. The Ineos riders all have a yellow number on their back as the leading team, and they’ll extend their lead after today.

Vingegaard reversed his dwindling lead and added a second to it today thanks to a time bonus on the final climb putting him ten seconds ahead of Pogaçar.  He sprinted past Pogaçar as they neared the summit and earned eight seconds, while Pogaçar earned five.  Pogaçar gained back two seconds of it at the finish line when he nipped Vingegaard earning a six second bonus for finishing second behind Rodriguez, while Vingegaard earned a four second bonus for finishing third.  It couldn’t be more nick and tuck.

Pogaçar tested Vingegaard on the final climb taking off earlier than usual 3.6 kilometers from the summit.  Vingegaard clawed his way back and regained him after two kilometers.  They rode together until just before the summit when Vingegaard was the first to go and had the superior sprint this time.  Tomorrow’s stage ends with another Beyond Category climb.  The next day is a rest day, so they won’t be holding back.

The traffic continued to be relentless leaving Annecy and no less so even when I came upon a course marker after a two-mile climb, the worst traffic since Paris.  And it didnt let up even after dark past my tent off in a clump of trees.  Out in rural France there is virtually no traffic after the dinner hour.

Rummaging through my panniers I discovered I still have some Cheerios I brought from home that I’d put in a zip loc bag and had been snacking on early in the trip.  It’s not the only food I’ve been carrying for over fifteen hundred miles.  I brought two jars of peanut butter and have only finished one, rationing it out.  I also still have some powdered Gatorade that I’d just been using on the really hot days.  It’s nice to know I can lighten my load, or at least compensate for the caravan loot I’ve been gathering, by powering through them.  Tomorrow will be another caravan day and then a break for a few days, as I won’t bother with Tuesday”s short time trial, choosing instead to get out of the Alps and on to flatter terrain.

The mountainous terrain has done in two more of the top sprinters—Ewan and Jakobsen.  Philipson isn’t going to have much competition on the final two sprint stages.   Lance will be sorry to see Ewan go as the number on his back, 181, has special significance to him, giving him a jolt of pleasure whenever he sees it, as he mentioned in a podcast after Ewan finished second on a stage. That is the number he pinned on his jersey before every stage of his first Tour win in 1999.  The next six years it was number 1 as the defending champion.

Stage Thirteen

 

I didn’t have that rare good fortune of once again coming upon a town on The Tour route with a screen mounted for all to gather around to watch the day’s action, but my day was highlighted by several other rare pleasures that more than made up for it.  

One was coming upon two UAE water bottles of Poçachar’s team laying along the road on a stretch that hadn’t attracted any fans.  I go years without finding a water bottle, as they are a more prized item than a course marker and don’t require pliers to pry them loose.  They are always pounced upon immediately with greater fervor than anything tossed by the caravan. The bottles were both full of water and perspiring from the cold water within.   

Evidently a domestique had gone back to the team car to load up on bottles to spread among his teammates and not all needed them, so these extras were tossed aside.  There were slight abrasions on both, but they were otherwise bright and new, fresh out of the box.  I’ll now make them two of the three bottles I have mounted on my bike and become a genuine Pogaçar supporter.

Almost equally exciting was landing a pair of socks with the Tour de France logo.  Those were the socks I was vying to get from the caravan.  I failed again, but a woman accompanied by her husband and young son who struck up a conversation thanks to my loaded bike, was clutching a pair, the first time I’d gotten a close look at them and realized they were a more prized item than I realized.  When I expressed admiration for them, she said I could have them.  I was so delighted I didn’t think to offer her one of the course markers I had garnered. I was regretting that oversight for miles, as I could have replaced it multiple times over.  That won’t take any of the joy though from wearing socks with a Tour de France logo.

Not only did I fail on the socks, I failed on the bicycle key chain, but I did snatch the key chain with mini-screwdrivers.  I also failed on both of the canned drinks being handed out, but nabbed several packs of crackers and cookies along with some candy and the mini-sausages, that I immediately added to the small plastic bag in my handlebar bag with madeleines.  I also scored another pack of detergent and a sturdy plastic shopping bag, my beat haul yet.

During the hour lull between the caravan and the peloton I ventured over to a nearby train station and took advantage of its Wi-Fi to get a FaceTime report from Janina on the tornado that hit our suburb the evening before.  Janina had been clearing out the overflow in the pantry that blocks the door to our crawl space beneath the house when the tornado struck.  It passed by so quickly, she didn’t have time to go below.  It blew the mass of magnets off our refrigerator and a Tour de France poster over the stove off the wall,  but it otherwise spared the house.  Two willows in the back were toppled and a couple of smaller trees.  Janina was still shook up by the experience as she gave me a tour of the damage.

Our conversation went on so long I all of a sudden noticed a helicopter overhead signaling the arrival of the peloton.  By the time I got back to the race course the spectators were all coming towards me, the peloton having come and gone.  The peloton had a tailwind and had been a few minutes ahead of schedule.  All was forgotten when I came upon those water bottles a few minutes later.

And then an hour later I stopped in the town of Saint-Rambert-en-Bugy in a gorge to watch the final hour of the stage which concluded with an eleven mile Beyond Category climb up the Col de Colombiere.  There were no bars so I had to settle for a pizza parlor, which was just fine except that it didn’t offer menthe â l’eau, just soft drinks.  A bunch of rowdy guys were sitting out front screaming “Pinot, Pinot” when ever a cyclist passed.  Turns out I was in the hometown of  the French favorite Thibaut Pinot.  He lives nearby, 2,000 meters from from the pizza parlor one guy said, and frequents the parlor.  He lives on a farm with goats, who were featured on the recent Netflix series on the Tour de France.  

When the peloton reached the climb three UAE riders with the same red water bottles now in my possession took the lead with Pogaçar and Vinegaard just behind.  They were four minutes behind the Polish 2014 world champion Michal Kwiakowski riding for Ineos who had a one minute lead on three others.  They couldn’t catch him, but Pogaçar managed to pass all but one other, able to gain the third place four second time bonus, after he blasted off with an all-out sprint less than a kilometer from the finish with Vingegaard dangling four seconds behind.  So Pogaçar chips another eight seconds off Vingegaard’s lead, now down to nine seconds.

When it was over I had the best riding of the day ahead of me for three hours on through the gorge with the Alps looming in the distance.  Off the main road were occasional side roads leading up over passes that made made Pinot the rider he is.  I camped in a forest for the first time in a while, which meant the Bastille Day fireworks I could hear going off were blocked to me.

Stage Twelve

It was a day of Great Seconds—the second time in five days I had the pleasure of a community viewing of the stage, and on the battlefield it was the second win for Cofidis and the second win for a Spaniard, emphatically breaking the droughts Cofidis and Spain have been suffering at The Tour.  

There was celebration all round on Stage Two when a Cofidis rider won a stage for the first time in fifteen years and great relief two days ago when a Spanish rider won a stage for the first time in five years, maybe the longest for the country that has produced many great riders and winners of The Tour from Bahamontes to Indurain and Contador.

So today when the Spanish rider Ion Izagirre riding for the French Cofidis team won the stage after riding away from his breakaway group nineteen miles from the finish there was more great jubilation by all connected with Cofidis.  The crowd of a hundred or so I was watching it with all applauded, expressing their French allegiance.

I had the opportunity to stop and watch some of the action on another screen set up for community viewing, but the screen under a small tent with several rows of benches was packed and standing far back in the sun wasn’t something I cared to do.  Just a few miles further in Chénelette, twenty miles before the stage finish in Belleville-en-Beaujolais, I came upon a bigger screen in a large square with seats fanned out around it with plenty of trees providing shade.  The seats were filled but I could sit down in front of a tree and soak it all in.  

It was the hometown of Henry Anglade, who had three top five finishes in The Tour, including second in 1959 behind Bahamontes.  There was a photo of him mounted beside the road and a banner across it bearing his name.

Hopefully I’ll have another community to share the experience with on Stage Thirteen on Bastille Day.  Towns all along the route ought to be making a festive occasion of it.  It’s too cold at Super Bowl time for such events back home.  Super Bowl parties are mostly at homes and bars, not town halls or parks, where mass bonding can occur as happens at the Tour de France and the World Cup too.

I didn’t get to see the peloton in the flesh today.  I arrived in Roanne two hours before they set out and just after the caravan was on its way.  I couldn’t follow the route out of Roanne as it was already off-limits, so I took a route parallel to it through the high country.  The route would make a big “S” through the region for 105 miles.  My more direct route was about half that.  I could have arrived at the finish about the same time they did if there hadn’t been so much climbing.  As it was I was a little more than an hour behind them.

It was just eleven miles to the start of the next stage in the smaller town of Châtillon-sur-Chalaronne.  I shared the road with a steady stream of RVs following The Tour, but not too many official vehicles as most of the staff and press and teams seemed to be staying in the much larger Belleville.  

I went over one hundred miles for the first time in these travels maximizing my time on the bike all day trying to arrive in Roanne in time for the caravan and then trying to arrive in Belleville before the peloton, just falling short on both counts.  I camped a dozen miles into the next stage just past a large bird park that had been a stage start one year, just as Vulcania was this year.  There are similar themed parks (medieval, a recreation of pre-historic caves, Euro-Disney and others) scattered around the country that are happy to pay the hefty fee to be a Ville Départ for the massive, world-wide publicity it brings them.

I was glad not to be camping in a bivvy sac as the night produced a heavy dew and cool air descending from the nearby Alps dropped the temperature to fifty.  I needed my windbreaker in the morning for the first time.

Stage Eleven

 

The Moulins mediatheque, just a mile from the Stage Eleven finish, was in full Tour tribute mode.  All the librarians were wearing yellow t-shirts, a pyramid of books on cycling greeted all who entered and a room to the side had been transformed into a mini-museum with a wall of classic Tour photos and a row of vintage bikes from a local collector and a large television screen showing Tour highlights.  

Among the photos were the four French post-WWII Tour winners, all of whose graves I have visited, wearing their saggy Yellow Jerseys and expressions that implied they were just barely tolerating being photographed.  And among the bikes was a Peugeot PX10 that the next French Tour winner after these four, Bernard Thevenet rode to victory in 1975 and 1977 Tours and the very bike I rode coast-to-coast in 1977 and to Alaska four years later, back before there were touring specific bikes, and before high tech came to racing bikes and one could buy the exact bike the pros were riding for less than a king’s ransom—just $250, though I had to swap out the tubular wheels.

I couldn’t have found a better place to await the arrival of Florence and Rachid, who were driving down from Tours, two hundred miles to the northwest, to join me for our annual Tour rendezvous.  It’s usually been in Tours, as the Tour frequently passes through or nearby, but this year Florence and Rachid were kind enough to come all that way to me.

My visits to France have come to be remembered as much for our brief times together as for my three weeks of following The Tour.  They have greatly enriched my time in France and opened my eyes to many of its charms that I may never have discerned.  And I have Osama bin Laden to thank for this, for if not for 9/11 they’d still be living in Chicago and I never would have been able to broaden my French experience through them.  Because of Rachid’s Algerian heritage he was ordered out of the country, despite working as an architect for years, along with thousands of others from Arabic countries, as shameful as the WWII Japanese internment camps.  They are greatly missed by their many friends in Chicago’s cycling and art communities and they miss Chicago very much too.

The television in the mini-museum switched to the peloton’s departure from Clermont-Ferrand.  They were an hour into the race when Florence and Rachid arrived, delighted they’d been able to find a place to park just a block away.  The town was mobbed with fans, but they hadn’t crammed the town with cars.  We strolled over to the race course just a couple blocks away to await the arrival of the caravan.  The temperature had dropped over twenty degrees from the day before and was further cooled by a cloud cover, so we had no need to seek shade or stock up on water.  We found a grassy patch to sit on and chatted as if we had seen each other last week as we caught up on this and that.  

I feared the stage could be delayed, as there had been climate change graffiti on the road for the final twenty miles of the stage, the first time environmentalists had struck this year’s Tour, as if a warning that those who disrupted several stages last year had targeted this stage.  I was woken at one the night before by the bright lights of a vehicle parking near where I was camped and loud laughter.  

I feared it was some late arrivals who might intrude upon me, but after a few minutes they were on their way looking for perhaps a better place to spend the night. In the morning when I began riding I discerned they were the crew that had been painting the road with “ecocide” and “climat” and “terre” and “eau” and things that didn’t register with me such as “49.3,” which Rachid later explained referred to the presidential article that Macron invoked to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.

The authorities often paint over graffiti that doesn’t reflect well on The Tour, such as syringes back in the EPO era.  As I approached Moulins I came upon a crew that had begun applying black paint to the last four letters of “ecocide,” letting the “eco” remain.  Fortunately the environmentalists were content with just graffiti this day, or at least that we were aware of, as the peloton arrived right on schedule.

The three of us spread out when the caravan arrived to increase our chances of gathering what was tossed.  We didn’t do too badly coming up with some hats and candy and packets of detergent and a bicycle key chain and a key chain with a couple of mini-screw drivers in a tiny cylinder.   The bicycle key chain came as a surprise, as it was in a small packet which I had previously ignored not knowing what was in it.  The bicycle is actually sturdy enough to serve as a bottle opener.  If it hadn’t been demonstrated on the packet, we never would have known.  

At last, a cool item to really try for that will make nice gifts for friends back home.  I’ll  be on hyper-alert when that sponsor comes by, as those are often tossed by the handful and are scattered all over making it easy to grab one or more. Florence said even if she decides not to use it as a key chain, she’ll be happy to dangle the mini-bike somewhere, a great use for it.

After the caravan had done its duty we mendered towards the finish line until we came upon a screen mounted on one of the VIP viewing stands to watch the peloton finish off the stage.  The break had been gobbled up and it came down to the sprinters with Philipson showing even greater dominance than his previous three wins.  The sprinters were somewhat spread out making pure speed more than positioning the crucial factor.  This might have been the stage Cavendish could have won if he hadn’t crashed out several days ago.

I had arrived at the mediatheque at ten and it was now 5:30, the most prolonged daytime  break my legs have had since my flight over twenty-two days ago.  They greatly appreciated it,  but were happy to get in four hours at the end of the day, a necessity as the next day’s stage started fifty-nine miles away in Roanne, one of the longer transfers of this year’s Tour.  

I was fortunate to have an alternate route to the highway that most of the Tour entourage would be taking, though a few of the team cars and others chose my route on secondary roads.  Around nine as I was still riding a car pulled over in front of me and a woman hopped out and held out a polka dot hat for me.  She said it came from The Tour, not surmising that I was following it.  Before she slipped back into her car she pulled out a polka dot Jersey she had also gotten and proudly held it up for me to see.  It was a fine ending to another exceptional day at Le Tour.

Stage Ten

 

It was so baking hot today that when I unrolled my tent the poles wrapped in the middle of the bundle were almost too hot to touch.  Often they are still cold being so thickly insulated, but not today.  The heat had penetrated to their very marrow, as it was doing to me.  I was happy to retreat to a bar way earlier than usual, ninety minutes before the day’s uneventful racing ended, to get out of the heat, though the bar wasn’t all that cool, as air-conditioning is not so common nor turned very low.  I’m always amazed how uncomfortably warm Charles de Gaulle airport is at the end of The Tour in the oppressive July heat with the air-conditioning barely noticeable.

The bar may have had no chill to it, but I was pleased to have my menthe á l’eau served in the traditional manner with a carafe of ice cold water and a glass with an inch or so of mint syrup, allowing me to gradually dilute it over a couple of glassfuls.  And it had the added bonus of a couple of token ice cubes, a not so common luxury over here.

Today’s breakaway stayed away for the second stage in a row with a Spaniard finally getting a stage win, Pello Bilboa, their first in five years and ninety-nine stages.  His efforts also moved him up to fifth overall.  None of the sprinters were in contention as the heat and several climbs did them in relegating them to the back of the bunch.  But tomorrow could be the Philipson show for the fourth time and the last for awhile as the peloton nears the Alps and the climbers will take center stage. 

I didn’t get a hoped for break at the mediatheque in Montluçon, as it didn’t open until two.  That had me out on the road sooner than I expected enabling me to cross paths for the third time with a bikepacker following The Tour, a guy without panniers, just a bag in the triangle of his bike and another small one on a rod extending from his seatpost and a small handle bar bag, less capacity than one of my rear panniers.  It is very minimalist and lightweight, but a current trend away from panniers—bikepacking rather than bike touring.

Our two previous encounters came when I was stopped along the road, once when I was off in the bushes preparing to do a number two.  He saw my bike and stopped to ask if I was okay.  It was no time for a conversation so we just learned where we were both from.  He said Colorado, but had a thick Eastern European accent.  Our second encounter came the next morning when I was breaking camp and he zipped by not noticing me. 

Today we were both riding at a reduced speed negotiating the stops lights and traffic of a sizeable city, and we could ride along for a spell.  He asked if I was going to Paris, a euphemism for following The Tour.  He was more intent on riding the entire route and had managed the Pyrenees.  He was camping with a bivy sac and a sheet to wrap himself with.  

I’m prepared for every eventuality with winter clothing and spare parts and tools and plenty of food along with a genuine tent and sleeping bag.  He was roughing it much more than I am prepared to do.  I’d be worried about running out of food or water or snapping a cable and being incapacitated to be doing it in such a manner, but it does allow him to ride much faster and manage the climbs with considerable less effort.  

As light as he was traveling, he said he could probably do without a couple things he had brought, but we didn’t have enough time together to find out what.  I’d sure like to camp with him some night and see how he does it.  This was his first Tour de France, though he had done other trips in such a manner.  He said he thinks there are a couple of other guys riding The Tour as he is, but he hasn’t spoken to them.  

He had but one water bottle on his bike along with a camelpack on his back.  I have three water bottles on my bike and a fourth in a pannier and still worry at times that might not be enough at night after a hot, hot day.  I have one pannier full of food and have no concerns of running low.  If I were him I’d be very nervous about waking at night thirsty and hungry.  But he’s doing fine.  I know I could pick up a few tricks from him, but he’s riding much faster than me and not really seeing any of the race, just the race course.  And he’s been riding far enough ahead not to experience the race day ebullience of the French along the road that is the essence of The Tour.

Not long after we escaped the city and he sped away, a group of seven middle-aged French guys in matching jerseys and with a lead and following vehicle passed me and an hour later the six Dutch guys I’d seen a. few days ago rode past as well.  The large group of women with a smattering of men that have ridden the past few Tours rode by a couple hours later while I was sitting in the bar.  They were riding at a relaxed enough pace that I would have been able to keep up with them, at least for a spell, as I’ve previously done.

One of the cemeteries I stopped at today to soak my jersey and douse my head was getting a makeover as a community project enlisting a squadron of children.  They were painting its wall and doing some landscaping and seemed to be having a fun time despite the heat.  Pride in one’s town is reflected in many such ways with flowers and other embellishments.  Every town seems to be auditioning for Pretty Village status.  Never am I struck by the thought, “Who would want to live here.” It is quite a contrast to the run-down semi-abandoned towns of a lot of the US, but there is no Walmart here driving small businesses under and leaving their stores shuttered.

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.

Stage Nine

  

My day unfolded just as I hoped it would.  The Intermarché in Felletin, twenty miles into  my ride, was open on this Sunday morning, the terrain leveled a bit and I came upon  my dream scenario for watching the Stage—a small town making a festival of The Tour with tents serving food and music and, most importantly,  a large screen for everyone to gather around and watch the action.  I’d actually passed two such towns, but both came too early to stop.  The third came after I’d ridden fifty miles and was within an hour of the road being closed.

The peloton had already set out and a breakaway of a fourteen riders, including two Americans, had established itself.  The peloton was letting them build up a big enough lead that the day’s winner could well be among them.  The peloton was without Cavendish, as he was involved in an innocuous crash near the back of the pack the day before with less than forty miles left on the stage and broke his collarbone.  It was a horrible way to end his Tour and maybe his career and a heartbreaking loss for all, as he had invigorated interest in The Tour going for that record 35th win.  His team boss, the former Kazakhstan rider Vinokourov, said he hoped Cavendish would reconsider his plans to retire.  

And there was more heartbreak today when the American Matteo Jorgensen, who had made a bold attack from the breakaway group twenty-five miles from the finish, ran out of gas in the final kilometer and was overtaken by Woods of Canada and the Israeli team.  It was a crushing moment when he had all the glory of a win on this mythic mountain snatched from him.

For awhile it looked as if Americans might finish one-two on the premier stage of this year’s Tour reintroducing the Puy after a thirty-five year absence.  What a story that would have been.   Powless in the polka-dot jersey was in a group of three trying to catch Jorgensen.   But Powless faltered, as did his fellow countryman.  

The Woods/Jorgenson saga epitomized the ecstasy of victory and the agony of defeat.  Jorgenson had had the camera all to himself for miles and looked as if he’d achieve immortality joining the elite pantheon of winners on this iconic climb, only the thirteenth time it had appeared in The Tour since its first inclusion in 1952.  But he had it pulled out from under him, not only losing out to Woods, but finishing fourth.

The drama of it upstaged the anticipated Battle Royale between Vingegaard and Poçachar tackling the climb ten minutes after the breakaway group.  The two of them did ride away from everyone else.  Poçachar initiated an attack less than two kilometers from the summit.  He didn’t leave Vingegaard in the dust as he had on Stage Six,  but he did open a gap Vingegaard couldn’t close, crossing the finish line seven seconds after Poçachar,  retaining the Yellow Jersey by seventeen seconds.  So the peloton goes into the first of its two rest days with nothing settled other than it’s a two-man race.  The next big showdown comes in four days on Stage Thirteen on Bastille Day which culminates with a long climb up the Grand Colombiere.

This was my first dalliance with the caravan other than at the finish line when they’ve often exhausted their giveaways and only have waves and smiles for the crowd.  If I’d been intent on gathering tat I would have left the crowd by the big screen and ventured a few blocks away where the crowds weren’t so thick, but I knew this caravan didn’t have much of interest, so I lingered where I was and let everyone else scramble for what was being tossed.

I stepped up to the barriers when the two sponsors came giving away canned drinks and was able to snatch one from each—an Orangina and a strawberry/rhubarb drink,  both slightly cool, which I downed on the spot.  I wasn’t desperate for fluid, as The Tour had provided an apparatus with four spigots that was attached to a main valve providing the town with water, another of the many examples of how well organized this mega event is. And that water was coming out cold.  

More than half the crowd left after the caravan passed, as it would be an hour before the peloton arrived.  I could sit and watch the screen with fewer people standing in front of me.  

I managed to get a shot of the Polka Jersey when it sped past and the Yellow Jersey too twelve minutes later.

 

With no French riders in contention there were no cheers or allezs from the crowd, though it stood in rapt attention, probably more focused than if they’d been at home with it maybe on the television and maybe not.  This was a more intimate community gathering than the crowds drawn to the finish line who come from all over. 

I had the option when I came to the town with the screen of taking a shortcut to the Puy de Dome, where I could have been among the mobs at the base of the climb and where the official Giant Screen had been erected, as no fans were allowed up the narrow road to the tiny summit of the dormant volcano.  I was glad I had opted for this more welcoming setting, the screen erected in front of the butcher shop rather than on top of a massive truck along a road.  This was another Vive La France experience.   

With a rest day for the peloton on tap I’ll ride a bit of the next stage and then cut over to the stage after that and once again be two stages ahead and giving my legs some respite not having to ride all day for a couple of days only being able to enjoy the countryside.  I was wondering if the peloton today was able to take pleasure in the narrow backroads it rode for the first two-thirds of the stage since they weren’t really racing, just saving themselves for the climb at the end.  The scenery and the ordinarily quiet roads were certainly sublime.