Reims, Ville Départ Stage Four

A monument in Bar-le-Duc to Pierre and Ernest Michaux, who in 1861 added pedals to the forerunner of the bike.

The house where Pierre Michaux was born in 1813 in Bar-le-Duc.

A replica of the Michaux invention in the Bar-le-Duc tourist office.

Early Tour decorations along the road.

Photos of seminal Tour events in front of Épernay’s City Hall.

Posts.j along The Tour route through Épernay wrapped in Tour colors.

The final roundabout before the finish in Épernay.

The Carnegie Library in Reims, the only one in France.

One is never far from some historic site in France nor far either from a site with some cycling significance.  Halfway between Nancy and Épernay, the Ville Arrivées for the third and fourth stages of The Tour, Bar-le-Duc offered up a magnificent monument from 1894 to honor Pierre and Ernest Michaux, the father and son blacksmiths who in 1861 had the stroke of genius to add pedals to the two-wheeled draisienne, the forerunner of the bicycle, elevating it to a viable means of transport.  The pedals attached to the front wheel allowed one to generate much more speed than the scooter-effect of simply pushing one’s self along.

Pierre was born in Bar-le-Duc in 1813. There is a plaque on the home of his birth up a steep hill half a mile from his monument in the center of the town.  He moved to Paris as a teen and worked on carriages until he created that miracle machine that changed history and that everyone had to have. He established the first bicycle factory employing 300 workers. They produced 200 of velocipedes a day.  The tourist office in Bar-le-Duc had a replica of his invention.

Many of the towns along The Tour route already had mounted painted bikes and arrangements of wheels that would be the envy of any sculptor or florist.  Every year residents along The Tour route affirm once again that there are no bounds of creativity when it comes to expressing one’s affection for the bicycle and The Tour.

The affluent wine-town Épernay, the stage three Ville Arrivée, the first in France after one and two in Belgium, allocated funds for an array of dazzling decorations.  Among them were fifteen eye-catching photos along the sidewalk in front of its City Hall of seminal events in Tour lore—Coppi on L’Alpe d’Huez in 1952 (its first inclusion in The Tour), Thevenet on Pra Loup in 1975 defeating the seemingly unconquerable Merckx, Ocaña’s crash in the Pyrenees in 1971, Anquetil and Poulidor sharing a podium and others of Bobet, Hinault, LeMond, Indurain, Thomas, Evans, and Voeckler in Yellow.  Passersby couldn’t help but stop and gaze upon these storied figures in the heat of action.

The peloton will be flying past them on their way to the finish a mile away up a steep final climb that will thwart the sprinters.  Posts along the route had been wrapped in the colors emblematic of The Tour.  A roundabout where the riders will make a hard right before their ascent was adorned with a giant wicker basket that had a band of yellow wheels around it, the first stunningly original creation I’ve come upon this year.

A steep climb of over a mile in the otherwise flat terrain separated Épernay from Reims, the next Ville Étape fifteen miles away.  Reims, like Nancy, is among the larger cities in France with a population of nearly 200,000.  It has such a varied and vital array of happenings it had nothing on display as of yet Tour-related.   The city is always bustling with tourists attracted by its spectacular World Heritage cathedral where for centuries the French kings were crowned.  A statue of Joan of Arc faces it, as she came to Reims in 1429 to tell Charles VII that the voice of God had instructed her to lead French forces to repel the English.

Just a couple blocks from the cathedral is the lone Carnegie Library in France, erected after WWI to replace the one that had been destroyed during the war.  A bust of Carnegie stands in the walkway to its entry.  I spent an hour sitting at a desk reading until the library closed at one for lunch.

Reims is one of the nine cities in France hosting matches in the women’s World Cup that just started.  A few clusters of fans waving their country’s flags added to the ambiance of this most pleasant of cities. 

Saint-Dié-des-Vosges

The route the peloton will take out of Saint-Dié-des Vosges.

A bridge the peloton will cross in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges.

A giant bike in a roundabout outside Saint-Dié-des-Vosges.

One of many posters in Colmar promoting the coming of The Tour.

The countdown to the coming of The Tour in Mulhouse.

A memorial to René Pottier at the summit of the Ballon d’Alsace for being the first to cross it in the 1905 Tour de France.

A monument to those killed defusing land-mines at the summit of the Ballon d’Alsace.

A tribute to the Rubic’s Cube in a roundabout in Dombasle-sur-Meurthe 

I had to dig into my emergency rations when I was caught by a surprise French holiday on Monday and all the supermarkets were closed.  It was the Pentecost.  It comes 50 days after Easter Sunday, so the date varies from year to year.  Luckily I still had six slices of bread for what peanut butter and honey I had left, as well as a pack of Ramon and a couple packs of instant oatmeal as well as some Madeleines and two canisters of apple sauce.  I’ve switched from one large heavy glass jar of apple sauce to a four-pack of 125-gram containers in much lighter plastic.  I had to dig deep into my panniers to find them, not sure if I had any left.  Usually I have some couscous and corn flakes, two of my staples,  but they had both run out the day before. 

I almost had to resort to a McDonald’s, as there was one on the outskirts of Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, Ville Départ for stage five.  The journalists following The Tour are always happy when a Ville Étape has a McDonald’s, as it is a source for WiFi.  I feel the same, though slightly less so this year, as for the first time it is blocking blog sites with the explanation that its content could be suspect. 

Along with the the Yellow Arches, Saint-Dié-des-Vosges abounded with Yellow Bikes.  They were everywhere—all over this town of 20,000 and along the road leading into it, in roundabouts, and mounted high on pedestals.  The main boulevard the peloton will depart on was an arcade of large banners declaring “C’est Notre Tour” with the “O” a bicycle wheel. A bridge the peloton will cross was fully decorated with wooden cutouts of the jerseys and a rider on a bike.  

The town expressed its enthusiasm about the coming of The Tour as every town should.   All eyes of the cycling world will be upon it as it launches the first meaningful stage of The Tour with its first dose of genuine climbing, a pair of category two climbs in the Vosges on the way to Colmar.  It will give the riders a taste of what is to come on the next day’s killer stage to La Planche des Belle Filles with four category one climbs.

Colmar hadn’t done anything significant to promote The Tour, just mounting a bunch of perfunctory posters, that had least had an original rendition of a cyclist with a labyrinth of lines.  Colmar was aswarm with tourists, many of them Asian, wandering the old cobbled streets of this German-flavored city.

The Ville Départ for the next stage, the even larger city of Mulhouse with a population of over 100,000, only had a large box, similar to the one in Belfort, with a digital countdown to Tour Day and a list of Tour-related events leading up to it, mounted in front of the city’s cathedral.  I am regularly drawn to Mulhouse as it is the home of my fellow cycling fanatic Yvon. Unfortunately it was in Belgium, so I’ll have to wait until The Tour for our annual reunion.

As I have in the past I came into Mulhouse over the Col du Ballon d’Alsace, a category one climb the peloton will tackle on stage six on the way to La Planche des Belle Filles.  It is noteworthy for being the first significant climb introduced to The Tour in its third edition in 1905.  The first two routes crossed an equally high climb, the Col de Republique outside of St. Étienne, but the grade wasn’t as steep as the seven per cent of the Ballon d’Alsace.

 Henri Desgrange hyped the Ballon wondering if any of the riders would be able to get over it on their one-speed bikes in the pre-derailleur era without having to get off and walk.  René Pottier managed it.  He was the first over, but the effort took so much out of him, he abandoned The Race. He was first over again the next year and went on to win The Race. A plaque at the summit acknowledges his feat.  He was the first of several Tour winners to commit suicide.  He hung himself in 1907 when he discovered his wife had taken a lover while he was winning that 1906 Tour.

Also at the summit is a monument to those who defuse land mines.  It is called “L’Homme Projeté” (The Propelled Man) showing a man sent airborne by an exploded mine. Among the spectators was a guy wearing a red-dotted hat that had been dispensed by The Tour de France caravan. 

On the descent into Mulhouse, about thirty miles away, I could hear the sound of metal on metal coming from my front wheel as I braked.  The steep descents of the past couple of days had worn down my front brake pads.  The rear were fine, as I’d needed to replace them on the way to Cannes.  As always, I began the trip with four spare brake pads along with three spare tubes and spare brake and derailleur cables and chain and the requisite tools, adding a few pounds to my load.  The new pads should get me through this tour and a couple more, but to be safe, I’ll pick up one set of spares at the next Decathlon I come upon.

La Planche des Belle Filles

A week after taking on the Galibier I found myself tackling an even tougher climb, La Planche des Belle Filles in the Vosges.  It will be the finish for the sixth stage of this year’s Tour, and if form holds true whoever is in Yellow after this killer climb will win The Race, as has been the case the three other times it has been a stage finish.

The first time was in 2012 when Bradley Wiggins became the first Brit to win The Tour.  He didn’t win that stage, though he was wearing the Yellow Jersey. His teammate Christopher Froome, more of a climbing specialist, won it in somewhat humiliating fashion, looking over his shoulder to see if Wiggins could keep up with him, as he was supposed to be leading him up the climb.  Two years later Vincenzo Nibali was first up the climb while wearing Yellow and maintained it to Paris.  The last time the climb made an appearance was in 2017, Froome’s fourth Tour win.  I’ve been on the scene for all of them,  but had never had the time or energy to make that final climb to the finish of the stage, so was glad to finally have the opportunity to experience it.

The climb peaks out at only 3,766 feet at a minor ski resort,  but the grades are much steeper than the Galibier, starting at 10.5 per cent, steeper even than the opening ramp  up L’Alpe d’Huez, and finishing off with a stretch of  22 per cent.  This forest-encased climb took an all-out, leg-busting effort.

I was riding along with a couple thousand others, all wearing Lycra astride light weight racing bikes with a number on their bike for this group event.  Friends of the participants were scattered along the route with a mob at the finish under an arch where all the registered riders were handed a medal.  I’m not sure where they started, probably somewhere in Belfort, a city of 50,000, fifteen miles from the steepest final three-and-a-half miles.  It was a gradual climb all the way.  Once the road turned nasty many were sprawled along the road or were reduced to walking.   

Those who had some energy to spare gave me a thumbs up or a gasped endorsement of “Super” or “C’est bien” or “Chapeau” or a few other of the accolades the French disperse including that most unique to them, a simple “Respect.”  That goes in a country where philosophical intercourse is inbred, where alongside “People” type magazines in the supermarket are magazines of philosophy. One encounters a greater degree of intellect and humanity than elsewhere.  It is a country that provides pianos in train stations for people to play and has television shows in prime time Friday nights with pundits discussing books.  Respect is something the French are looking to grant and when they offer it they mean it.  To be the recipient is always touching.

Even with grades nearly double those of the Galibier, I was feeling stronger than I had a week ago.  I wasn’t passing anybody, other than those off their bikes, but I maintained a good steady pace and got up that 22 per cent grade, though with a little tacking.  I’d managed the 18 per cent finish on Flèche Wallon a few years ago, so knew it was within my capabilities on a loaded bike.  My legs are coming around.  Now I need to start increasing my mileage, as I have kept it under 75 miles a day so far since this block of training started two weeks ago.  It’s four weeks until The Tour starts.  I’m confident I’ll be ready for those day-long stints of one hundred miles and more.

The steeper stretches had me standing on the pedals.  I had just been listening to Bobby Julich’s daily podcast during the Tour of California.  He had been commenting that when one stands on the pedals, their heart rate goes up as a whole new set of muscles are recruited for the effort.  He was right about that, but it was still within a tolerable range.

Julich is new to the VeloNews podcast.  He has a vast store of anecdotes and great breadth of knowledge, having finished third in the 1998 Tour de France as well as winning Paris-Nice and an Olympic medal.  He now works as a personal coach after stints coaching for Sky and CSC and was continually dispensing insightful advice and observations on what the riders were doing, right and wrong.

He mentioned that former World Record holder and Yellow Jersey wearer Chris Boardman was the most considerate roommate he ever had.  When he got up at night to take a leak, he tried not to disturb him, so sat on the toilet to diminish the sound of his urine.  He now lives eight minutes from George Hincapie in South Carolina and rides regularly with him and Christian Vande Velde, who feature in his recollections.

If he continues to podcast during The Tour, that will be another podcast I’ll have to listen to after every stage along with those of Armstrong and Wiggins and the Warren brothers and one by the BBC and Cycling Tips and the grandfather of them all, The Telegraph with a trio of first-rate  British journalists (Moore/Friebe/Birnie) with contributions from an Italian and French journalist.  They all add great luster and insight into the racing and complete my full immersion into The Race.

I got my first dose of more than faint Tour fervor in Chalon-sur-Saône, the stage seven Ville Arrivée, the day after La Planche des Belle Filles.  The city of 47,000 had decorations everywhere.  It’s city hall was adorned with a banner across it and two more wrapped around columns. A digital clock counted down the days.  The vast plaza in front of it was adorned with bikes painted green and white.  Throughout the city strings of mini-flags of Tour jerseys hung over the route the peloton will follow to its finish along the Saône River.  And bike sculptures turned up here and there.  I was happy to drift around the city soaking it all in.  This is what I come to France for.

All that Belfort, where the stage would start, had to show for itself was a mini-monument with a digital clock at the stage start by the city’s enclosed market.  I was a week late to Belfort for its Fête du Tour ride, which Mâcon was having this weekend.  I was riding hard to reach Belfort to arrive before its tourist office closed to find out if there was a ride the next day.  Rather than riding out of the sprawling city to find a place to camp I took advantage of its municipal campground, not wanting to overcook my legs knowing La Planche awaited me.

That was a good choice, as I arrived at the campground at the same time as a French cyclist, so we were able to share a campsite.  He had left his home town along the Mediterranean west of Montpellier and was headed to Copenhagen.  Ten years ago, he and his wife had spent six months bicycling around South America on a tandem, starting in Buenos Aires, looping over to Lima via Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia, a route I knew well.  He’d been able to take off for so long as he’d lost his job during the economic downturn and with no work available in his field decided to take a dream bike trip.  He’d recently retired and could take another long ride while his wife continued to work.

I’d had a most sociable day, as earlier I’d met a couple from Idaho riding Surleys with disc brakes who’d flown into Barcelona and were headed to the Ukraine.  They didn’t have a return ticket, as they didn’t know when or where they would end up, but knew they could get a cheap flight home on Norwegian Air.  They too were of the older set and veteran touring cyclists.  Their favorite trip had been through Scandinavia into the Arctic to the Nordcap, the northernmost point in Europe in Norway.  They generally camped wild.  The Frenchman did occasionally, but preferred camping with amenities. All would have made agreeable traveling companions if we’d been going in the same direction.   

The cycling has been as sensational as ever, no rain other than a couple of nights while camping, sunny, warm days and roads with little traffic, especially in the Vosges, among the reasons I told Jerome McDonnell that France was my favorite place to cycle.  The interview has drawn a considerable number of readers to the blog, some who even sought out my post on the first Carnegie library in Texas I visited that I mentioned in the interview.  It’s more about a dog who gave chase and the rare ornery librarian who oversaw the library, but still emphasizes its grandeur.  It can be found here:

http://georgethecyclist.blogspot.com/2005/11/comanche-texas.html

Mâcon, Ville Départ Stage Eight

I have listened to Jerome McDonnell’s mid-day, hour-long Worldview show on Chicago’s NPR station ever since he took over the helm from Sondra Gair in 1994, so when he emailed me a couple days ago with an invitation to be a guest on his annual bicycle show I had no hesitancy in saying yes. He interviews guests from war torn nations all over the world.  Making a connection with a wayward cyclist from a campground in France didn’t concern him in the least.

He is an adept, most personable interviewer and a devotee of the bicycle, commuting nine miles every day via bicycle.  I knew I would be in good hands with this Chicago institution. He said he had been following my blog for years and knew the extent of my travels and interest in Carnegie libraries and considered me “one of the world’s greatest cyclists.”  I wouldn’t say such a thing, though when one looks at everywhere my bicycle has taken me the past forty years, it is an assumption one might make.

We arranged to check in with each other a couple hours before airtime to confirm we had an adequate connection.  He has learned that Apple’s FaceTime is most reliable and so it was. He suggested we tape the interview right there, but I was along the road in a strong wind and more background noise than there would be at the municipal campground five miles away in the city of Mâcon that had been my destination, knowing that it would have WiFi to ensure the quality of our connection.

The only question he asked me before the interview was if was all right to mention my age.  Certainly.  It wasn’t part of his introduction, just something he slipped in later on towards the end of our twenty-minute conversation.  I’ve always wondered how he preps for his show with the wide array of subjects and guests that he covers.  He certainly did a thorough job knowing what questions to ask me.

One can give it a listen at https://www.wbez.org/shows/worldview/wbez-enters-the-ring-again-for-2019s-bike-to-work-week/b3fb8b1b-7853-4ae2-9638-e0334ad71abaI conclude the show.  I tried to anticipate what he might ask.  I thought one of his questions might be if I had a favorite Carnegie library among the more than 700 I have  been to so far, but he had run out of time when the subject of Carnegies came up.  We went too long as it was, as I noticed he edited a few minutes out of some of my long-winded responses.  

There was much I was hoping to squeeze into our conversation, prominent among them the story of the tiny town of Merom in Indiana, the smallest community with a population of just 500 to receive a Carnegie grant, the usual $10,000 and among the last in 1916. The message board outside Merom’s library read in bold capital letters, “WELCOME GEORGE CHRISTENSEN.”  Coming upon that was almost as much of a thrill as being on Worldview.  The librarian at the Vincennes Carnegie had alerted the Merom librarian that I was headed her way and in typical small-town America hospitality aimed to please.

If there had been time to recount the seventy miles I had ridden before our interview I would have told him of having visited the grave of Roger Pingeon, the 1967 winner of The Tour de France, who also won the Tour of Spain in 1969 and finished second to Eddie Merckx in the 1969 Tour, the first of his five wins that The Tour is commemorating this year with its Grand Départ in Brussels.

Pingeon was buried in his hometown of Beaupont twenty miles from Mâcon.  He died two years ago and this was the first time I had been in the vicinity since his death.  As I was searching for his grave I vividly recalled the fond memories of my wanderings around cemeteries looking for the graves of other Tour winners—Anquetil, Bobet, Fignon, Coppi, Pantani, Robic, Garins, Petit-Breton, Lapize and a few others.  When I’m in Belgium in a couple of weeks, I hope to add a handful more to the list.

Beaupont’s cemetery was one of the smaller ones I’d been to.  I guessed right in perusing the right side of the cemetery first.  His grave was two-thirds of the way down and at the far right side.  The outline of France with a cyclist etched in the middle on his tombstone caught my eye before the name. All the flowers on the grave somewhat obscured an additional plaque of the young Pingeon in a Yellow Jersey.  The same photo adorned a small billboard beside the City Hall a couple blocks away.

Beaupont was the quintessential French small town.  It has a population of just 500, but had a small, grand cathedral, a prominent City Hall to be proud of, a WWI memorial, a cemetery and most important of all, a bakery.  It is always a debate as to who is the most important resident—the baker providing everyone with their daily baguette or the mayor trying to keep everyone happy.  

The sizeable city of Mâcon along the La Saône River will be hosting the start of the 8th stage of The Tour.   Tour banners adorned all the light fixtures on the two-mile route out to the municipal campground on the outskirts of the city.  A fixture was mounted at the starting point of the stage along the riverside boulevard with a digital readout counting down the days until The Tour’s arrival—39.  A billboard in front of the City Hall advertised a ride for the locals this Saturday celebrating The Tour (La Fête du Tour), an event many of the Ville Étapes put on.  With luck there might be a similar ride in Belfort, where I could be Saturday as I enter the Jura mountains. 

The Galibier

As I approached the Col du Galibier a sign warned that it was closed.  My heart sank, as that would greatly alter my plans, effectively denying me access to a couple of Ville Étapes I wanted to visit, and force me to go through the large city of Grenoble, which I would prefer not to do.  I held out hope that the snow on the road might not be too deep and still passable by bike.  Just before the start of the climb at the summit of the Col du Lautaret was a restaurant that would know.  

A trickle of cyclists had passed me as I finished off the 21-mile 4,304 foot Lautaret climb.  As I neared it’s summit I could saw the happy sight of a string of cyclists inching their way up the Galibier.  That was no guarantee that they could get over it, but a good sign.  A bartender confirmed that cyclists were managing it, but that there was still a danger of avalanches and that it was possible that there could have been some during the night that blocked the road.  No cyclists were coming back, so that was further encouragement.  

I paused to eat and rest my legs before the final five-and-a-half mile effort to 8,668 feet, the sixth highest pass in the Alps.  A barrier blocked the road, though it was easy enough to get around.  The legs felt surprisingly good on day seven after two weeks of atrophy at Cannes. I remained in my lowest gear and luxuriated in the absolute silence with the absence of motorized vehicles other than the occasional battery-assisted bike.  The still heightened the roar of the few fast-rushing streams along the way and gave a distinct clink to the water dripping off the walls of snow lining the road.  

My thought returned to my previous rides over the Galibier.  The last was in 2011 when it was a summit finish in The Tour de France for the first and only time. It commemorated the 100th anniversary of its first inclusion in The Tour, the first year the Alps were attempted by the riders in its ninth edition.  They had managed the Pyrenees the year before, even though one rider, Octave Lapize, famously called The Tour organizers “Assassins” for inflicting the brutal mountains on them. 

In 2011 I reached the Galibier the night before the peloton and camped half-way up it.  That was lucky, as the next morning the road was blocked to cyclists, letting me have the road to the top all to myself.  I didn’t remain there as it was too cold and the large screen television had been parked at the start of the climb, so I returned to it to watch the day’s dramatic action highlighted by a long successful breakaway by Andy Schleck with Cadel Evans chasing after him to preserve his chances of winning The Race the next day in a time trial in Grenoble, which he did.  Thomas Voeckler also was heroic clinging to the Yellow Jersey one last day, making it his second ten-day stint in Yellow, bringing great joy to the French.  There was still some graffiti on the road from fans who must have used some high-quality paint—“Cadel” and “Andy and Frank” (the Schleck brothers) and “Leopard” (their team). 

Shortly before the summit the large monument to Henri Desgrange, Tour founder and director for its first 33 years, was surrounded by deep snow.  The Galibier was his favorite Col.  In his typical hyperbolic prose he called all the others “gnat’s piss.”   I was disappointed to see the large wooden doors to the tunnel shortening the climb were closed, so it was another kilometer of an even steeper grade to get over this beast of a climb.  The summit wasn’t as congested as Everest is these days, but there was a wait to get a photo of the summit sign.  

The air was still and no one was in a rush to leave, soaking in the spectacular views in all directions, one all the way to Italy.  Less than a kilometer down the other side the road was blocked by snow about half the length of a football field.  But there was a path through it.  Others were able to carry their lightweight racing bikes through.  I was the first to put down tire tracks.  I had to stop several times afterward on the descent to wipe my rims dry as my brakes weren't nearly as effective as they needed to be when wet.  I was fully prepared to plow into a snowbank if I became a “runaway cyclist” as I came perilously close to. 

Two-and-a-half miles from the summit I came upon a monument to Marco Pantani mounted at the bend in the road where he attacked Jan Ullrich on the fifteenth stage of the 1998 Tour going on to win the stage and taking the Yellow Jersey from Ullrich, which he did not relinquish.  He had won the Giro the month before, the last rider to win both in the same year.  

It was another eight miles to the ski town of Valloire, which will be the Ville Arrivée for the 18th stage of this year’s Tour.  It was virtually deserted early in the ski off-season before the hiking season opens and the Col du Galibier reopens.  There were at least banners on light poles and a large banner across the street by the closed tourist office and church promoting the coming of The Tour.

The road out of the village took me by boarded up multi-storied condo buildings. It was three miles up to the summit of the Col du Télégraphe and then another ten-mile descent to the valley floor.  I had the option to turn right along the river L’Arc to the Ville Étape Tignes or left to the Ville Étape Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne.  I really had no choice as Tignes was via the Col de l’Iseran, which is even higher than the Galibier and was truly impassable.

A roundabout before Saint-Jean had been taken over by a small cluster of Yellow Vests with a sign berating Macron and his wife Brigette.  No one seemed to be paying them any mind with toots of encouragement or disagreement.  A roundabout in Saint-Jean had a giant Opinel knife, as this is where these iconic wooden-handled, folding knifes are manufactured, fifteen million a year.  There’s even a free Opinel museum in the city center not far from the City Hall, which had a wooden Yellow Jersey celebrating the coming of The Tour.  Unfortunately it is closed on Sundays, so I’ll have to wait to see it another time.

It was late in the day, so I was happy to take advantage of the town’s unpretentious campground without a swimming pool, just providing the essential necessities, including a morning baguette if one wished.  My worn muscles welcomed a hot shower after a demanding day over three of France’s most notorious climbs.  I was glad this was pre-Tour and I needn't be in a rush to get going the next morning.  

Into the Alps

If I’m headed eastward into a rising sun to start the day, I’ll opt for a baseball cap rather than helmet taking advantage of the cap’s visor to shield my eyes from the low sun. My helmet has the luxury of resting atop my tent and sleeping bag, with its strap looped through the bungee cords holding down my gear atop the rear panniers, letting it have a view of the scenery behind.

A couple mornings before my arrival in Cannes I somehow managed to forgot my helmet laying in the brush of my campsite in the woods.  I didn’t realize my oversight until I stopped to fill my water bottles at a cemetery fifteen miles down the road. The thirty miles to retrieve it was too much, as I had no time to spare to arrive in Cannes in time to meet up with Ralph and the gentleman renting us his apartment.

Rather than berating myself or feeling anger and despair about losing my helmet, the recent gift of a friend, I was confident that whoever it is that ensures the well-being of touring cyclists would look after it until I could return for it in what would be eighteen days.  It wasn't a tough task, as I’d left it in an isolated enough area that it wasn’t likely that anyone would stumble upon it.

I didn’t think much about it while I was immersed in cinema, though whenever it crossed my mind, I strongly visualized where I’d left it fully confident that it was still there.  After the movies were done and I returned to the bike, I heightened my perception of it as I pedaled along and felt increasingly sure that it awaited me.

I couldn’t directly head to it, as first I had to go to Nice, twenty miles in the opposite direction, for the exhibit on the Yellow Jersey at the National Museum of Sport.  From there it was a little over a hundred miles to the helmet.  I had hoped to camp once again where I’d left it the next day, but the mistral had kicked up and held me back.

That didn’t concern me in the least.  It just meant I could imagine a little longer that moment of pleasure of being reunited with it. I remembered vividly the dirt road I had turned off on into the forest and where I’d gone off into the woods.  I leaned my bike against a tree and continued a little deeper to where I’d camped, and there it was, shiny and upright, as happy to see me as I was to see it, resting peaceably beside the tree that had blocked my vision of it when I loaded up my bike. There was no evidence of any forest creatures coming by to give it a curious nudge or lick whatever salt there might be in its padding.  It was all ready to return to duty, nestled atop my head, getting a little higher view than me of all the fabulous French scenery.

I hadn’t only missed it as my head covering, but also as a protective receptacle in a corner of my tent for my watch and glasses during my sleeping hours.  The tent had seemed empty without it.  All was now well in my world.

We weren’t the only ones heading into the Alps.  There were brief spurts of convoys of small sports cars on communal drives, not an uncommon site on the scenic roads of France.  Groups in vintage cars or Deux Chevaux like to drive en masse.  Motorcyclists too, often with German plates.  Clusters of cyclists too are drawn to the spectacular riding in the Alps.  The French identify themselves with their strong cologne and their array of words of endorsement and encouragement—“Bravo” and “Chapeau” and “Respect” and “Allée” and “Courage”  and “Oh la-la.” English may have twice the number of words as French, but it lacks an equivalent to any of these, or at least the spirit.  It is in the French nature to respond favorably to someone doing something they like, such as with “Bon appetite” to anyone they see eating.  

The return to my helmet allowed me to approach the Alps on a more gentle route up a valley to Gap rather than tackling them head on from Nice.  Gap would be the Ville Arrivée on the stage originating at the Pont Du Gard, that I visited on the way to Cannes. Gap is such a frequent Ville Étape there were no banners or decorations mounted yet, not even at the usual finish line across from a small park and museum not far from the center of this city of 42,000.

The next day’s stage starting in Embrun twenty-five miles away deeper into the mountainous terrain also had yet to decorate itself for The Tour, as it too had been featured in The Tour every two or three years of late.  

The climbing got serious after Embrun to Briançon, the highest city in France, and then a sixteen-mile climb to the Col du Lautaret and the turn to the mighty Galibier.  I planned to stay at the Deux Glaciers campground half-way up the climb to be relatively fresh for the Galibier the next day and for my first shower since Cannes and first chance to get my iPad up to 100 per cent and to do some wash and have WIFI to give Janina a call, but when I arrived at the campground at seven p.m. I discovered it hadn’t opened for the season yet despite the great amount of traffic.  

It was lucky I had filled my water bottles fifteen minutes before just in case I saw a forest I couldn’t resist.  The campground was fenced in but it was easy to disappear into the bush beside a small nearby lake for much superior camping than the campground would have provided, other than the amenities I generally do without—hot water, electricity and WIFI.

The Centennial of the Yellow Jersey

A visit to the special exhibit on the centennial of the introduction of the Yellow Jersey to The Tour de France at France’s National Museum of Sport in Nice made an excellent transition from twelve days of nothing but cinema at Cannes back to the world of the bike.  It was a twenty-mile ride to Nice, almost as many miles as I’d ridden during the festival on my daily commute from our apartment to the Palais, and mostly flat, which my atrophied legs welcomed.

The ride took me through Antibes past some of the highest priced property on the planet. Some of the miles were along the Mediterranean and some on separated bike lanes, making it more pleasant than it might have been with the constant flow of speeding traffic along this scenic route.

The museum was a couple miles inland adjoining a large soccer stadium.  There were no bike racks so I just locked the bike to itself and leaned it against a window that peered into the museum.  The young woman who sold me a ticket asked where I was from, then, “Is The Tour de France famous in Chicago?”  

“Yes,” I replied. “it is known by all.”  That made her happy.

The introduction to the exhibit stated that 271 riders have worn the Yellow Jersey, not counting Lance Armstrong, David Zabriskie, Floyd Landis, George Hincapie and Stefan Schumacher, Americans all other than Schumacher, who had been stripped of the honor for being drug-assisted.  Byarne Riis offered to return his Jersey after his confession, but they let him keep it. 

Much attention was given to the French rider Eugene Christophe, the first to wear the jersey when Tour director and founder Henri Desgrange decided before the 11th stage of the 1919 Tour, sixteen years after the first in 1903, that the leader needed a bright jersey to make it easier for the fans along the road to identify him.  Christophe wasn’t all that excited about having to wear it, especially when his fellow riders mocked him as looking like a canary and chirped at him.  But just like the Eiffel Tower, that initially had its detractors, the Yellow Jersey has become a world-renowned icon and a garment that every racer covets. 

The exhibit included quite a few of the Yellow Jerseys of the winners of The Race.  Those of Roger Walkowiak from 1956 and Oscar Pereiro from 2006 were hung side by side, lumping them together as two of the unlikeliest winners of The Race.  There was a jersey from 2003 signed by all the living winners of The Race on the occasion of its 100th anniversary.  Armstrong’s name was in a prominent position, as he had won the previous four editions.  A panel describing Armstrong’s reign was headlined “Soleil Noir” and referred to his era as “epoch frelatée” (the adulterated era).

There was a replica of Christophe’s Yellow Jersey, as he chose to be buried in his actual Yellow Jersey.  I was delighted to learn the name of his cemetery, Malakoff, south of Paris, as another to search out.  Among the many relics in the exhibit was his fork from the 1919 Tour that he broke.  He suffered the same ill-luck in the 1913 Tour.  He was leading the 1919 Tour by thirty minutes when he broke his fork on the penultimate stage and lost over two hours.  He ended up third.  The public felt so sorry for his second stroke of bad fortune that hundreds donated money to him, more than the winner received.  The newspaper that sponsored The Tour ran a list of all those who donated, which ran twenty pages.  The exhibit had a sample of some.

The exhibit also had quite a few screens showing racing footage and interviews.  There was an extraordinary few frames shot by a spectator capturing the legendary crash of Luis Ocaña in the rain in the Pyrenees during the 197l Tour when he was in Yellow and a threat to defeat the seemingly invincible Eddie Merckx.  This is one of those seminal moments in Tour lore acknowledged by a plaque at the site.

Another video of particular note showed the great rivals Jacques Anquetil and Raymond Poulidor in a mob of fans at the end of a stage kissing one another while a reporter attempts to interview Anquetil.  Of more recent vintage was Christopher Froome running up Mount Ventoux in Yellow after his bike was wrecked near the finish in the 2016 Tour. 

One could put on a headsets and listen to interviews with many of the legends going all the way back to Louison Bobet in the ‘50s, one of a trio of three-time winners of The Tour before Anquetil became the first five-time winner.  There was also some historic footage of Bobet climbing the Izoard, near the Italian border, passing Fausto Coppi standing along the route with a camera in hand, as he had declined to race The Tour that year.

I spent over two hours devouring every item in the exhibit and would have spent even more time if my French had been good enough to listen to all the audio provided.  A very young and gaunt LeMond spoke French in one.  The usually grim and determined, stone-faced Bernard Hinault was shown in uninhibited ecstasy early in his career.  

Eddie Merckx holds the record with the most days in Yellow, 111, though he declined to wear the Jersey the day after Ocaña crashed out.  Fabian Cancellera holds the record for the most days in Yellow by a rider who never won The Tour—29.  Patrick Sercu, who recently died, holds the record for the shortest amount of time in Yellow—just twelve minutes during a nine-kilometer time trial in 1974 back in the days when there were two or even three stages squeezed into one day, really taxing the riders.

The sixteen riders who had to abandon The Tour while in Yellow, as happened to Ocaña, were acknowledged.  Most were victims of a crash, but some were sent packing due to drug violations.  The last was Michel Rasmussen in 2007 when it was discovered he had lied about his whereabouts for the drug-testers before The Tour.  There were three occasions when a rider won The Race on the last stage, earning the Jersey, but not getting to wear it in action—Jean Robic in 1947, Jan Jansson in 1968 and Greg LeMond in 1989.  A chart listed the first rider to wear the Jersey for the 24 countries represented by a Yellow Jersey-wearer.  Slovakia was the last country to join the club with Peter Sagan in 2016.

The exhibit couldn’t help but include Yvette Horner, the star of the caravan for many years playing the accordion, and a great fan favorite.  She was pictured three times through the exhibit with someone in Yellow—Bobet at the end of the 1953 Tour, Antonin Rolland, who never won The Tour but spent twelve days in Yellow in the 1955 Tour and Andre Darrigade, who won 22 stages, the fifth most and the most by a sprinter until Mark Cavendish came along.

The exhibit was curated with the assistance of the Amaury Sport Organization (ASO), that runs The Tour.  A coffee-table-sized book was created in conjunction with the exhibit.  After it’s six-month run it could easily be made into a permanent exhibit elsewhere.  I would gladly seek it out again wherever it might turn up.  The Grand Départ for The Tour will be in Nice next year. They might as well leave it up until then.