Stage Five

 

Today was my first day of course markers from the very start to the very end.  It was like being in the Land of Oz merrily having the way guided for me.  Even before I left the campground I had the pleasure of spotting a course marker, as a Dutch guy walked by me carrying one that he’d just been gifted by the crew setting them up.  

He happened to be out along the road when they came by and they generously obliged him with one.  He was quite ecstatic, as he didn’t even realize The Tour would be passing this very spot the next day.  He’d witnessed The Tour in years past, so well knew a course marker was a sacred object, but he wasn’t such a diehard of a fan to know his vacation would intersect with The Tour.

My start was slightly delayed by more rain.  Once again I had to roll up a dripping wet tent.  The day remained overcast, but there was only one light drizzle.  The Brittany-effect continues.  It is said that a visitor to Brittany became so exasperated by the inclement weather he asked a boy, “Does the sun ever shine here?”

He replied, “I’m only eleven, I don’t know.”

But the day was brightened by every course marker.  They came in bunches at sharp ninety-degree turns, any of which could level an inattentive peloton.  

 

And they were to be seen on the dash boards of camping cars taking up an early spot along the road.

Veteran Tour followers also sported water bottles and caps they’d collected.

Exhortations to the racers adorned the road.  There has been frequent mention of Alaphilippe becoming a father two weeks before The Tour started, maybe giving him extra impetus.  It has been called dad-watts. 

I haven’t come upon any Pou-Pou road graffiti yet, but there was a shop window tribute to the deceased fan favorite, and grandfather of the man in Yellow, Van der Poel.

As with yesterday, I had the option of pushing hard to reach my destination for the day, Luçay-le-Male, where I’d be meeting Yvon tomorrow, and where I could be certain to find a bar with a television to watch the end of the day’s stage, or stop at a smaller town before it with a bar.  Since I had time to spare, I took no chances and stopped in Saint Aignan at 3:30, nearly two hours before the end of the stage, and nearly twenty miles before Luçay-le-Male.  It would be the most of The Tour I had seen this year, more than all the other stages combined.  

Since it was a time trial it would give me the opportunity to watch unhindered all of the contenders, and to assess those who were recovering from crashes.  Roglic turned up at yesterday’s stage wrapped like a mummy.  There was concern if he could rest his elbows on the aero bars of his time trial bike. 

Geraint Thomas had been a favorite for the stage.  But after his dislocated shoulder two stages ago, it is almost a miracle he is still riding.  Johann Bruyneel gave Ineos great credit for having a chiropractor in one of its team cars who could adeptly snap it back in place.  That is another example of the team’s extra attention to detail, helped by its budget second to none, that has made it the dominant team the past decade.  

Roglic and Thomas didn’t have dominant time trials, as they often do, Roglic losing 44 seconds and Thomas one minute and eighteen seconds to the winner Pogacar, but it could have been worse. Van der Poel managed to hold on to the Yellow Jersey by eight seconds over Pogacar with Van Aert moving up to third thirty seconds bsck.  Bruyneel picked his fellow Belgian Van Aert to win the time trial and take the Yellow Jersey from his arch cyclecross rival Van der Poel, but Van der Poel rode strongly, just one second behind Van Aert, to keep him at bay and to avoid that somewhat nightmare scenario.

Pogacar now becomes a consensus favorite to win his second consecutive Tour.  Nothing will change during tomorrow’s sprint stage, with most all rooting for Cavendish to win again.  The Alps come this weekend, where Pogacar could well end The Race with two of his main rivals semi-hobbled and the third, Carapaz, nearly two minutes behind.  The only suspense of the last two weeks could be who will round out the podium and if Cavendish can hang on to the Green Jersey.

I had another bartender give me a gift.  This time it was an FDJ key-chain, a trinket that could be caravan fare, representative of one of the French teams in The Tour.  The bartender said tomorrow would just be the second time he had ever seen The Tour.  The first was in 2004 when he was living in another region of France.  I commented that was when Armstrong dominated The Race.  He made a gesture of injecting himself and said, “That was when they took drugs to go fast.  Now they have motors.”

Shortly after the bar I began the lone categorized climb of the stage, a mere hiccup of 2.2 kilometers at a 2.9 per cent grade, no  doubt the most incidental of categorized climbs in the entire race.  Two women on e-bikes flew past me, one a teen and the other someone who could have been her grandmother

Stage Four

 

Now that I was heading south out of Brittany to Tours I expected warmer temperatures, but it was the coldest yet when I set out this morning—46 degrees. It’s nearly July.  How could this be?  The Tour was being tormented for starting a week earlier than usual to accommodate riders wishing to compete in the Olympics.

I stuck to my shorts, but I dug out gloves for the first time.  They were damp even though they had been wrapped in a plastic bag with my wool hat at the bottom of my waterproof Ortlieb panniers. Its impossible to keep the moisture out when one is opening the panniers several times a day and placing a not entirely dry raincoat and other garments in it.

When the sun finally emerges for more than a glimpse I will have to lay everything in my panniers out for a blast of its heat.  That wasn’t today.  At least there was no rain and the cold meant I had a hint of a tailwind allowing me to reach Tours, 78 miles from my campsite, by five for the stage finish.  I was riding the transfer route from the end of Stage Five to the start of Stage Six, so there were no Tour decorations, though enterprising towns could have erected some to salute The Tour, as much of the entourage would be following the route I was on. 

The route wasn’t without its thrills though, as when I came upon the first canopy of plane trees of the trip my heart leapt with joy. These noble, statuesque trees tightly lining rural French roads give a jolt of delight almost as strong as the course markers do.  Besides their beauty, they provide shelter from the wind and the sun, not that that was needed this day.  

I hadn’t intended to make it to Tours so early when I set out, but when I discovered I was making better time than the past few days with the terrain flattening and a slight wind assist, I decided to go for it, limiting my time off the bike.  It was nearly five when I crossed the Loire into Tours by the old, grand library where Stage Six would commence.  There was a marker at the precise spot below an over-sized Yellow Jersey draped on the building.

The next mile to the heart of the city was a torment following dual tram tracks that took over the road, the majority of which was a pedestrian walkway past a succession of fancy shops.  A few cyclists were riding down the middle of the tracks and I followed suit, though being wary of having to swerve and having my wheels swallowed by the tracks and joining all The Tour casualties. I know Tours well, having visited  Florence and Rachid most of my summers in France, so headed to the train station by the tourist office where I expected to find a few bars to choose from.

It was past five, but I wasn’t concerned as I had heard on Lance Armstrong’s podcast that the peloton planned to protest yesterday’s perilous stage, which meant they’d be well behind schedule.  If the peloton had decided on a slowdown, the stage might not finish until six. The riders had reason to be upset being forced to ride very narrow roads at the end of the stage when the racing is heating to a feverish pitch, but their protest comes much too late.  All the teams preview the stages weeks before The Race, so they knew what awaited them.  The time to protest was weeks ago.

Perilous, semi-suicidal stretches are nothing new to The Tour.  I well remember a truly dastardly descent on a narrow, twisty road through a forest that I came upon when I was pre-riding The Tour route in 2012.  It amazed me that the riders could descend such a road at full speed.  

I expected great carnage.  And there was, except that it preceded the descent when every rider and his mother was riding pell mell, knowing what was ahead, wanting to be near the front when the descent began.  There was a high speed crash dwarfing any of this year’s crashes that wiped out quite a few riders.  It became known as the “Massacre at Metz.”  One can Google “Tour de France Massacre at Metz” to see footage of it and read all the gory details. 

The Garmin team took a big hit.  Cavendish was among those who went down.  He was infuriated that Sky’s directeur sportif  Sean Yates didn’t instruct any of his Sky teammates to wait for him and draft him back to the peloton so he could contend for the sprint.  That was the year Wiggins won The Tour and Yates was entirely focused on that and wanted all of the riders looking after Wiggins in the final miles of the stage.  

There is no disputing that there are stretches in every stage that are danger zones.  The riders are fully informed, before the stage and then reminded during the stage by their directors via constant radio contact.  Risk is a factor that can’t be eliminated.  Riders must be highly vigilant at all times.

It was 5:10 when I entered a bar by the train station and had to ask to have its television turned on, as everyone was sitting outside.  It took a couple minutes for the bartender to find The Tour station.  And shockingly it was showing commercials, which usually only come at the conclusion of the stage.  Maybe the peloton was going so slow, the station was filling time with early commercials.  But when it returned to the coverage Thomas Voeckler was interviewing Pogacar.  The protest evidently had been minimal not effecting the finish time.

The stage was over and I had to find out on line that Cavendish delivered a stupendous win.  Like Van der Poel’s it came a stage late, but was equally storybook, thrilling the entire cycling world.  He hadn’t won a stage in five years and was thought to have been washed up, having missed his team selection for The Tour the past three years.  He was just a last-minute addition to his Belgian team.  He’d somewhat returned to form and his supporters, including George Hincapie, were predicting a stage win for him. Many were rooting for it,  but few expected it.   I greatly regretted missing his trademark explosion of emotion after this win, knowing it would have been off the charts.  

Florence and Rachid were wary of having anyone enter their apartment in these times, so I found a campground and they came to visit me.  The nearest campground was actually on the route the peloton would be following out of Tours, so my day wasn’t without a few miles  of The Tour route. It began with my second dose of plane trees for the day, these gussied up for the peloton.

With the Loire a popular cycling route, the campground had a cycling theme with worn out bikes propped here and there.  

Florence and Rachid joined me not long after I’d set up my tent.  We’ve been great comrades for twenty-five years going back to the days when Florence and I romped about Chicago’s Loop as bicycle messengers.  That’s as irrevocable a bond as Tour de France teammates. It’d been two years since we’d last visited.  We could have talked all night, but had to curtail it a bit after eleven when I began to yawn uncontrollably.  

We feasted on a pack of madeleines Florence had brought, knowing my great affection for them, as we talked a mile-a-minute.  Florence has been working steadily after a month of lockdown a year ago and is happy to be within walking distance of her present place of employ.  And Rachid has immersed himself more fully than ever in his art, drawing extremely intricate constructions.  He’s more than ready for an exhibition once they become possible.  We said our good nights, looking forward to next year when Janina could well join us if the conditions become possible for a ride following the Loire, and we can all do some more riding together.

Stage Three

 

I was intently downloading the four cycling podcasts I’m keeping up with that give daily reports on The Tour as I sat outside the closed tourist office in Vitre, taking advantage of its WiFi.  I’d arrived before noon and it didn’t open until two.  I would have liked to have done some charging too, but was at least happy that it’s WiFi didn’t require a password.  After several minutes I glanced up and not thirty feet from me a Tour course marker had appeared on a light pole in front of me, always a glorious site. 

The course crew had diligently gotten an early start, as Vitre was less than twenty-five miles from the stage finish in Fougères.  I was surprised the flashing lights on their bright yellow vans hadn’t alerted me to their presence.  I would have made a quick dash for a photo.

That may have been a disappointment and the lack of electricity, but I could be very happy that I was able to purchase a train ticket from the nearby station for my return to Paris from Libourne, north of Bordeaux, where The Tour’s second time trial will be conducted on the penultimate day of The Race.  

I was nervous about getting a ticket for me and my bike, as I’d been unable to at the Montparnesse station in Paris, largely because I was dealing with a new, inexperienced agent.  I feared perhaps all the trains had been booked up by Tour followers wanting to get to Paris for the final stage.  My train departs a little before five, before the TT will have concluded, but it gets me into Paris by eight, enough time to ride out to the start of the final stage on the outskirts of the city and find a place to camp along the route.

I was just sorry I didn’t have time to linger at the train station to do some charging, as I was getting low enough I was rationing my podcast listening.  I needed to supplement what my generator hub was providing, as my solar panels weren’t making much of a contribution.  

The hardest rain yet of the trip hit as I was cutting twenty-five miles over to Laval, the arrival city for the Stage Five time trial.  I hadn’t expected rain and had put on my last pair of dry socks to start the day after camping near some bee hives in a heavy dew.

Signs in the center of the large city of Laval pointed to a Fan Park, where the eighteen mile time trial would conclude.  A large crew was busy erecting tents and other structures behind a long fence around a vast park.  There was a large screen televising the day’s stage.  It was a little too far away to make out much, so it didn’t alter my plans of finding a bar.  

But first I cycled two miles north along the Mayenne River to Chargé, where the time trial would start beside its cathedral.  The only structure erected there so far for the stage two days away was a small stage. An older French couple  in matching outfits riding a tandem had also come by to check it out.  They were snacking on a sectioned chocolate bar and broke off a couple pieces for me. After I took one the lady pushed another towards me. 

Rather than intruding upon a trendy bar in the heart of the city, I took my chances on finding a small neighborhood bar on the outskirts.  I found exactly what I was looking for.  The Race was even on the television, even though no one was at the three table bar except the white-haired lady bartender.  She was enough of a Tour enthusiast to have the map of this year’s route taped to a wall.

The peloton was assiduously chasing down a breakaway with twenty kilometers to go on this sprint stage.  All was fine until nine kilometers to go when race favorite Roglic inexplicably took a tumble as he rode along on the outside of the peloton.  He was back riding quickly with torn pants and jersey and several teammates to help.  But they had a minute to make up on a fast-charging peloton, which they never did.  

Not long afterwards the other race favorite and fellow Slovenian, Pogacar went down with several others.  And that wasn’t the end of this disheartening stretch, as 150 meters from the finish, two of the other high profile riders in The Race, Ewan and Sagan, went down, making for a thoroughly demoralizing end to the stage.  I was lucky to miss Geraint Thomas, another of the favorites, falling and dislocating his shoulder earlier in the stage.  He had it snapped back in place and caught back up.  

There were hopes that today would be the third straight storybook finish with 36-year Mark Cavendish, who’d missed the last couple Tours, winning the stage, but he was nowhere to be seen.  Instead it was won by Tim Merliner, teammate of the man in Yellow, Van der Poel, who was part of his lead out train, lending the incongruous site of the Yellow Jersey in the lead closing in on the finish of a sprint stage. 

Before I left, the bartender presented me with a pen.  I thought it might be emblazoned with The  Tour logo, as she pointed out some tiny script on it, but it was commemorating some anniversary relating to Laval.  Still, it was a nice pen.

Shortly after I set out, the rain returned.  I had crashes on my mind and hoped the trend wouldn’t continue.  When after an hour the rain hadn’t relented, I checked my iPad for municipal campgrounds.  There was one five miles up the road.  It had warm, not hot, showers and no electrical outlets other than heavy-duty three-pronged ones for the camping cars.  But it had WiFi, so it was redeemed, and a grassy spot under a tree.

Stage Two



I broke camp to another murky day, nearly smothered by a thick, low-hanging mist.  There’d be no aerial footage of today’s stage if it remained like this.  But within an hour the mist cleared and for the first time in three days I saw a patch of blue in the sky.  Before I could stop and dig out my solar panels and put them atop the gear on the back of my bike, the clouds took over the sky once again. 

But by early afternoon the clouds began breaking up and blue began to predominate.  The temperature reached seventy for the first time since I arrived four days ago.  I could shed a layer and within a couple of hours I had dry feet on the bike for the first time in three days.  

Course markers weren’t an issue this day, as I only rode fifteen miles of Stage Three towards its end, well before the marker crew would reach it later in the day.  I left the stage at Josselin, where the helicopter cameras will greedily devour its castle overlooking a river the peloton will ride along.  This all so common picturesque French town was teeming with tourists walking its historic streets.  

I then had a forty-mile interlude off The Tour route, picking up the Stage Four route in Bain-de-Bretagne.  The town was ready for the tv cameras with a polka dot jersey pointing skyward in a roundabout. 

I didn’t come upon a town with a bar open on Sunday until a little after five in Loheac, ten miles before Bain-de-Bretagne.   I exalted when a saw a crowded outdoor cafe a couple blocks away, counting on it to have a television inside.  It did, but it wasn’t tuned to The Tour.  No one was watching it, so it was no issue for the bartender to put on The Race.  It was fifteen miles to the finish and the climactic two steep climbs of the Mur-de-Bretagne, “Mur” meaning “wall.”

After getting my first menthe à l’eau of these travels, I fetched my iPad and charger and sat down to enjoy the last half hour of the stage.  Before long two others had joined me.  Before the peloton reached the Mur it passed the bar where I’d been sitting 24 hours earlier watching Stage One.  The young Dutch tornado Matthieu Van der Pole exploded from the lead group on the first climb of the Mur, not intending to stay away, but to collect the eight second bonus for being the first.  

He was intent on overtaking Alaphilippe and gaining the Yellow Jersey and he’d need those bonus seconds to do it. He had had high hopes of winning the first stage and taking Yellow then in this his first Tour de France to honor his recently deceased grandfather Raymond Poulidor, who is adored by the French for being second to Anquetil multiple times and having never worn the Yellow Jersey in his long and storied career.  

This much beloved figure has been a long-time ambassador for The Tour, accompanying it for years up until his death.  I have seen him up close often enough, even once in his home town on the occasion when a street was named for him, that I feel as if I know him well.  Over the years people have often shouted Pou-Pou, his nickname, at me as I’ve ridden by.  We bear no resemblance, just being older, plus the French love uttering “Pou-Pou.” The Tour route has always abounded with signs reading “Merci Pou Pou.” 

Van der Poel had made gaining the Jersey such a strong objective, his team had a yellow bike ready for him, and he had already decided that he wouldn’t wear yellow shorts as many Yellow Jersey wearers do, but to stick with black.  He was greatly disappointed when he failed to win the first stage, as many had predicted he would, knowing how much he wanted it and how he has lately had his way on the bike with some shockingly dominant performances that has even taken the breath of Lance Armstrong.  

So coming through today, overcoming his eight second deficit to Alaphilippe, left him overcome with emotion.  I felt fortunate to witness his triumph and all his exhilaration in real time,and not have to read about it or watch a replay.  The cameras lingered on him as he lay collapsed on the ground and as Alaphilippe came by to give him a hug and Pogacar, last year’s winner, too.  It would be hard for anybody not to be happy with this result.  

After watching the riders for half an hour pound their pedals with such vigor I rode a little harder when I resumed riding.  But I didn’t want to ride too hard or too late, as I was well ahead of the peloton.  I’d be riding the Stage Five Time Trial the next afternoon, two days ahead of the peloton.  But it means that I can ride that eighty-five mile jump to the Stage Six start in Tours without any pressure.  Not only will I meet up with friends on that stage, but I will also at last meet up with the peloton and see what the caravan has to offer.

Stage One

 

When I emerged from a thick forest this morning on to a narrow side road that was so narrow I thought it might be a private driveway, I could see just up the road a man walking towards me with his two dogs in the drizzle.  I thought, “Uh oh, I hope I didn’t trespass on his property and how is he going to react.”  He didn’t reach for a phone to call the gendarmes. Instead he greeted me with a smile and “Bon courage.”  This was France after all, where the touring cyclist is a figure to respect if not envy.

It was the first of several ‘Bon courage’s” on the day, as when I began riding the Stage Two route to Mur de Bretagne thirty miles later, other cyclists riding a day head of the peloton and others along the road responded to me with that salutation and all the others—Bravo, Chapeau, Allez, Tres Bien.  A little girl even gave me a rare “cou-cou” (hi).  France is most certainly a touring cyclist’s paradise, especially on The Tour de France route when cycling consciousness is at peak level and cycling euphoria reigns.  There is no greater place to be riding one’s bike than in France in July on The Tour route.

Bike decorations had sprouted all along the route from the gargantuan—a potato head,

and the traditional over-sized bike, 

to the modest.

One community erected a selection of photos celebrating The Tour.

When I picked up the Stage Two route around 1:30, about an hour after the peloton had set out from Brest on Stage One, I was greatly looking forward to that moment when I would be greeted by a course marker.  I tried to contain my expectations, but it wasn’t easy.  I could see from a little ways away a bale of hay protecting a protruding object along the road and also some metal barriers to the side that would be placed in front of the road I was entering from, obvious indications that I had reached The Tour route, but there was no course marker to be seen, nor any just ahead.   It was a great  disappointment that the guys marking the course hadn’t reached this point yet, so I could be guided the final forty miles of the stage to Mur de Bretagne.  Usually they set out early in the morning a day ahead of the peloton marking the next day’s stage.  Evidently they got a late start.  That meant I might catch them in the act of erecting the markers, which I’ve only managed once in my previous seventeen Tours. That would be a worthy consolation.  

But when one hour passed and then another, I began to be concerned that The Tour might be going without markers this year, thinking that GPS devices and route apps are so common, that they are no longer necessary.  That would be a monumental travesty, even worse than the UCI banning riders from discarding water bottles.  Tour markers and water bottles are cycling’s two greatest souvenirs.  To do away with both in the same year would be devastating.  Twice without the markers to guide me I sent astray and lost a few minutes, adding to my aggravation. 

Finally, at 4:30, just a few miles from the stage finish the pair of brightly decorated vans with flashing lights carrying the crew that mounts the markers sped past me.  It was on a long straight stretch where they didn’t have to place any markers, so I was out of luck catching them in the act.  But it was still a thrill to see that first marker, albeit three hours after I had hoped to spot my first.  And it has a slightly different design this year, with The Tour logo in two corners, rather than just one. 

It was another cold, drizzly day with the temperature in the 50s, colder than the day before.  I had to add a sweater to my layers.  But that didn’t deter the hard men of Brittany from riding their bikes.  Even before I reached The Tour route I passed more than a few out getting their miles in and not a one was wearing a rain coat as I was.  It was more of a heavy mist, than a rain, with the road dry under trees, but I was still dripping wet and couldn’t imagine letting the rain soak through my garments. 

Bernard Hinault, from the area, is an iconic figure.  His image is on permanent display on a building in Yfinnac, about ten miles before I reached  this year’s route.  

I stopped at a hypermarché there for the day’s provisions—a loaf of bread, 300 grams of pâté, a yogurt drink and a can of cassoulet.  The price on the stew had skyrocketed.  In years past an 850 gram can could be had for less than a euro.  In the two stores I’ve checked on it so far it is fifty cents more.  

As I was making a couple of pâté sandwiches in the privacy of a corner outside the store beside my bike, a young boy interrupted me with a “bonjour” and then placed a euro coin beside me as his father stood a few feet away with his shopping cart.  It is the first time in eighteen years of coming to France that anyone has given me money, which has become common back home.  I suspect his father took me for a pilgrim on the way to Compastello in Spain, a not uncommon undertaking.

With the hilly terrain I was getting nervous about making it to Mur de Bretagne by five before the end of the day’s stage to watch it on television.  I had to try three bars before I found one with a television. I could hear the announcer’s excited jabber and saw a cluster of men standing.  I ducked in quick, not even bringing in my iPad for some much needed charging, to see how much time remained in the stage.  The screen showed 4.5 kilometers to the finish.  I had cut it perilously close.  There was no break to be caught, just a pack of contenders coming up on a decisive climb to the finish.

All the chairs were taken in the small bar, so I joined the guys standing, most without masks, the first public space I’d been in here where faces weren’t covered.  In short order the French hero Julian Alaphilippe wearing the World Champion’s Jersey darted clear to the cheers of all.  They encouraged him to hold off the chasers with a chorus of “Allez’s.”  And they succeeded.  He’d be in Yellow tomorrow, as he has been in Tour’s past. It was more wonderful than ever to be in France fully experiencing The Tour.

There were quite a few groups riding the stage, including the group of women who have made it a tradition.  They and others had lead and following cars.  One group of men stopped at the top of a hill for a mass pipi rustique.

After the stage finish I headed to the next Ville Étape, Pontivy, just ten miles away.  But it wasn’t the Ville Départ for Stage Three, but rather the Ville Arrivée, meaning the peloton and those riding the course had a long transfer to Lorien.  Since I’m not committed to riding every mile of every stage, I could ride just a few miles of this stage and head over to Stage Four.  

I have to cut corners as there is a massive transfer of 85 miles from the Stage Five Time Trial to the Stage Six start in Tours.  Since I hope to visit Florence and Rachid in Tours as I manage most years, I have to get more than a day ahead of the peloton.  And I must start Stage Six the evening before as I’m meeting up with Yvon around the halfway point of the stage for our annual rendezvous  at The Tour, always a highlight.

Back in France

 

When Macron announced on June 9 that vaccinated Americans could come to France I gave a mighty cheer and began to check on air fares, hoping to make it over before June 26 when The Tour de France was set to start.  I was somewhere in Georgia at the time, but knew I could make it back to Chicago in time to get to France for when it mattered. But my thrill at this unexpected opening was deflated when I learned a vaccination wasn’t enough.  One also had to have a Covid test 48 hours before arrival in France.  

That complicated matters considerably, not knowing how precise that time frame was and what tests would be acceptable and how easy it would be to get quick test results. There wasn’t anything definitive on line, so the day after I returned from Washington D. C. ten days after Macron’s announcement and less than a week before The Tour start, I biked out to O’Hare to talk to passengers in line at Air France to see what they had done.  

I was delayed getting to the International Terminal and Air France's seven pm flight that I would be taking to Paris, as the route I take into the airport through the freight terminals had been blocked.  I had to circle around and defy the “no bikes” sign on 90 into the airport.  I only had to bike on the interstate for half a mile, so managed without being apprehended.  

The delay left just one last passenger checking in.  She said she had gotten her test at Walgreens.  But then a ticket agent told me one didn’t need a Covid test, just proof of vaccination.  That was too good to be true as the on-line information hadn’t been updated. I didn’t believe it until I called the French Consulate in Chicago first thing Monday morning and was told that on June 17, Macron had backed off on the need for a Covid test.  I immediately went on line and booked a flight for Wednesday.

I had a harrowing moment Tuesday night as I was boxing my bike and couldn’t get the seat post out.  It had been over a year since I had needed to lower it to fit into a box when returning from Brazil.  I’d have time to take it to a bike shop the next morning, but there was the danger it would remain stuck.  I took matters into my own hands, removing the wheels and the seat, and then lowered the upside down bike into a vise, clamping it on the head of the seat post.  And that worked, allowing me a peaceful night of sleep.

Checking in at a bustling O’Hare the next day the ticket agent gave my passport and vaccination card a quick look and that was that. Though everyone in the airport was wearing a mask everyone boarding the Air France flight was issued a fully-approved surgical mask to wear, even though they were removed during the two meals we were served.  During the flight all passengers had to fill out a form giving their seat number and contact information in case there was a Covid outbreak on the flight, but the flight attendants weren’t so diligent in collecting them as they overlooked me.

The Charles de Gaulle airport was much quieter than O’Hare.  There were only two customs officials stamping passports, and no line.  And they weren’t verifying vaccination, leaving it in the hands of the airlines.  There were so few flights to unload, that my bike box for the first time ever was waiting for me and my duffle was on the carousel going around.  

Though the airport was quiet, the road into Paris was as thronged with traffic as ever.  It was very familiar. as I had ridden it many times, both in and out of the city.  Once I reached the city proper, cyclists began turning up and most on their own bikes, in contrast to how it was when the rental bikes were first introduced to the city, and they predominated.  I saw a few rentals, but they were greatly outnumbered.

 It was a hectic 23-miles to the Montparnesse train station that serves the western half of the country.  I knew all the trains were booked to Brest, over 300 miles away, where The Tour would be starting in less than two days, but I hoped to find another to Quimper or Rennes or LeMans or Fougères or some other city out that way.  Those too were all booked, but the agent helping me found one to Granville, about 150 miles from Brest leaving in three hours.  I was happy at that point to get anything and not have to endure a couple more hours of the bedlam of Parisien traffic to get out of the city to find a place to camp.  I took advantage of my wait to seek out an Orange telecommunications office to reup my French SIM card.

My 7:30 train wouldn’t arrive in Granville until an hour before midnight.  My GPS revealed several campgrounds in this coastal city sparing me of having to search out something of my own devising in the dark.  I had to nervously await my train, as my ticket did not have a bike authorization on it, even though the computer the agent and I used to purchase my ticket gave me a bike option.  Ordinarily tickets confirm that one is bringing a bike.  The agent was surprised, but confirmed with someone else that I’d be okay.  

When I got on to the car of the train I was assigned to there was no designated places for bikes, so I had to leave it by the door.  I was greatly relieved when the train started up fifteen minutes later and no conductor came by demanding to know whose bike it was.  But at each stop I had to be ready to rush to my bike and move it if the door it was up against was the one that opened at that station.  It was about half and half.

I got a little more sleep in on top of the three or four hours I got on the flight.  When it was still light at ten p.m. I thought there might still be some left when we arrived at Granville at eleven.  I noticed the last stop twenty minutes before Granville was in a city that was the same distance from Avranches, fifteen miles south of it that I’d have to pass through before heading west to Brittany.  If I got off there I’d have a better chance of some light.  It worked out perfectly.  I had just enough light to find a field to camp in within two miles of the train station.

I wouldn’t make it to Brest in time for the start, but I was less than one hundred miles from the Stage Two route.  I’d be there by Saturday and  could start riding it while the peloton was fighting it out on Stage One.  All was well with the world.  Even the day-long drizzle the following day, typical of the region, couldn’t deter my unexpected good fortune to be back in France.

I felt fully anointed when my eye happened to notice a small street in Avranches named  for Jacques Anquetil, the French racer who was the first to win The Tour five times.  I had to glance upwards to spot it on the side of a house.  Rarely am I gazing in such a direction, so I must have felt his vibe.

Washington D.C.

I capped these travels with five final Carnegies in the nation’s capital, giving me a grand total of forty-nine for this trip, including one I had previously visited.  I saved the grandiose former Main Library as the last after swinging by three branch libraries and the Carnegie on the campus of Howard University.  The finale was a very early Carnegie, the eleventh that he funded.  It’s opening in 1903 was of enough significance to Carnegie that he  attended its opening, something he rarely he did.  He was joined by the president at the time, Theodore Roosevelt. 

The anticipation of seeing the Library mounted after I met the engineer who saved it as I bicycled into the city from Maryland after camping in the backyard of Jesse and Jamie in Silver Spring. Getting together with Jesse, who I’ve known since he was a lad, was as exciting as meeting up with any Carnegie.  

We’d canoed the Boundary Waters when he was a teen.  I’d last seen Jesse a couple years ago when he was visiting his father Dwight in Bloomington while participating in a job fair for Indiana University’s business school, which he graduated from before going on to get a master’s from the University of Michigan in environmental studies.  Both he and his wife found jobs in DC nine years ago with environmental organizations.  Jesse’s, the World Resources Institute, is presently looking for a new CEO, as its leader, Dr. Andrew Seer, just left to head Jeff Bezos’ Earth Fund. Seer had been at the helm of WRI, founded in 1982, the same year as Jesse’s birth, for the past nine years, as long as Jesse’s been there. 

Jesse and Jamie are well-entrenched in DC, having bought a house several years ago.  Their second son was born three months ago. Their home is ideally located near the Sligo Creek Bicycle Trail into the city, and six miles north of the first Carnegie Branch Library on my itinerary.  The trail was a most pleasant slice of thick woods in the torrent of the metropolis.

After a mile on the trail, I came to a fork that had me puzzled.  A bushy-haired older guy on a bike paused to see if I needed help.  “Follow me,” he said.  “I’m going the direction your are.”  After several minutes of conversation I mentioned I was seeking out Carnegie Libraries.  He blurted, “I saved the Main Library.  I was constructing the Convention Center across the street from it.  The library had been closed down for ten years and its basement was flooded.  I asked if we could set up our architectural offices there.  I brought in a diver who unplugged the drains, making the building functional once again.”

He said he had retired a little over a year ago and had been getting out on his bike for ten miles or so every day since.  He’s up to 4,000 miles and is forty pounds lighter.  A few blocks before I left the trail for the Takoma Park Branch Library, we came to the intersection where he lived. We chatted a few minutes longer as he told me about living in Rome for several years and the deluxe racing bike he had there.  Before we parted he said if there was anything he could do for me while I was in town to let him know.

The Washington street numbering system is a little tricky, so I feared I had the wrong address for the Takoma Park Library, but I continued down Cedar Street and the numbers suddenly changed at a bend in the road and a few blocks away there was the library on the corner in a residential neighborhood.  

The still functioning library was closed for the just declared national holiday Juneteenth.  I could old peer in to its dark-wooded interior, which appeared to retain its original ambiance.

 

It was four miles south to the Mount Pleasant Branch. It was one of the last Carnegie Libraries built in 1925, six years after Carnegie’s death, when his funding of libraries pretty much ended. Carnegie had promised DC more branches, so his foundation lived up to his promise. A homeless guy was taking advantage of it being closed as he laid sprawled at its entry.  A rental bike awaited use on the sidewalk out front.  

Getting to the the Southeast Branch took me past the fenced-in Capital, the only fencing I saw in my meanderings.  The fencing seems to suffice, as there was hardly a police officer and no military to be seen about the city.  There was hardly a tourist, though a group on matching bikes and helmets following a guide passed me in front of the Supreme Court.   The Southeast Branch was just off Pennsylvania Avenue.  It was another library that came after Carnegie’s death, dating to 1922.

Howard University was a few miles north of the Capital.  This all-black university will be receiving a lot of attention next basketball season, as it pulled off a monumental coup enticing one of the premier high school players in the country to come play.   I had to pass a barricade and a security guard to gain entrance to the campus, but he paid me no mind.  The Carnegie was well-identified and is now the dean’s office.  

The magnificent, sprawling Main Library is as eye-catching as any of the iconic buildings liberally sprinkled about the city.  The wide avenues and striking buildings seemed to have inspired the layout of Brasilia, which I visited a little over a year ago.  It was startling to see the Apple emblem on the Library.  It had taken possession of the lower half of the building two years ago, sharing the upper half with the Discovery History Center.  

The Apple greeter was a Carnegie aficionado.  He hadn’t seen the Howard University Carnegie and was delighted to see my photo, deftly using his fingers to zoom in to see the features under its roofline.  He recounted the history of his Carnegie and others he’d visited.

Before my DC incursion I visited one last Carnegie in Virginia the day before.  It was in Waynesboro and now served as the Army JROTC Center for Leadership  Development affiliated with the Fishburne Military School. It was an amiable smaller town library with no additions.   Below its roofline on all four of its sides were etched the names of authors—Homer, Chaucer, Dante, Virgil, Milton, Bacon, Longfellow, Bryant, Lowell, Poe and Lanier.  Shakespeare was the only one to have a side all to himself.

I passed through Charlottesville and the University of Virginia after Waynesboro, where I was able to drop in on another anchor of the Telluride Film Festival, Melissa, who has been in charge of Development, recruiting sponsors, for the last fourteen years, a full-time position of importance.  My shipping department is under her supervision, so she was able to fill me in on what to expect in a couple months.  She had worked out of the Home Office in Berkeley, but was able to return to her collegiate roots and much more affordable living a few years ago, and work from there.   Her young twins were off at camp.  She pointed out some tabs on the wall of her house where she hangs a movie screen in front of her slanted driveway and shows films for the local kids.  Its a big hit in the neighborhood.

It was a hundred miles from there to DC.  As the traffic intensified I was happy when bike paths started turning up along the highways, though they weren’t all in the best of shape. 

 A few miles before I crossed the Potomac into DC, I stopped at a Safeway for some final supplies.  When I came out, I discovered my sleeping bag had been liberated from my bike.  That would have been a monumental disaster if I had been planning on camping in a forest in a few hours.  

Jesse lent me a sleeping bag for my final night of camping.  It’s just the second time in  decades and tens of thousands of miles I have had something stolen from my bike while it sat outside a store or library.  The other was in San Francisco outside the Chinatown Carnegie Branch Library.  That thief made off with my tent and dayback.  I wished this one had taken my tent too, as it is riddled with ant holes and is due to be replaced. It was a bummer too to lose my silk sleeping bag liner.  I locked my bike near the entry to the store where an employee was sitting taking a smoke break, but she didn’t linger long enough.  I’m trying not to let the sour taste it left last long.  

DC’s Amtrak Station could be mistaken for a government building with its grand matching architecture and location right in the thick of them all.  It was teeming with people and short on personnel.  I had to wait an hour to get a bike box.  It was fortunate I had allowed lots of time and had skipped going to the nearby REI to replace my sleeping bag in case the air conditioning was cranked up too high on my overnight trip.  Instead I just stuffed a lot of extra clothes into my dayback along with what food I had left.  After a couple of long, hard days I was looking forward to a day of ease on the train.

As always, there is much to digest after my 2,736 mile ride through eight states and a district that hopes to become a state—all the libraries and campsites and friends visited, the many acts of kindness and generosity, the miles and miles of unraveling countryside and the ever cascading memories of trips past.  And I have to figure out when I return if I can make it to France in time for The Tour.