Houilles, France

I have penetrated deep enough into France over five hundred miles from Paris to have entered its belt vineyards.  It also includes patches of corn and sunflowers.  

I have not entirely left my pals, the large, round bales of hay, but they are a lot less frequent than they had been.

I have been blessed with a slight tailwind from the north, providing a bit of a push,  but more importantly dropping the temperature ten degrees into the low 80s.  The peloton will be happy that such temperatures are in the forecast for at least the next week. I still welcome whatever shade I may come upon and truly celebrate the arcades of plane trees that go back to Napoleonic times planted for the benefit of his marching troops.  This canopy of trees makes a considerable difference, almost as if I have slipped into an air-conditioned room.

I thought I might start seeing team cars and maybe even some of the caravan vehicles headed to the start, less than three days away, but none yet.  Cyclists have begun to appear in increasing numbers, some in clusters of cyclists and some in pairs, some even bedecked with panniers.  

I was passed halfway up a long climb by a knot of lycraed cyclists riding at a steady clip, not strung out but in tight formation, two and three abreast.  It was quite a contrast to what I experience back home when cycling with others.  When our club rides come to one of the rare climbs on our suburban outings, it becomes a test of who can ride up the fastest and everyone becomes strung out.  Poor Deb, who is not a climber, but is otherwise a strong rider, always lags behind unless I happen to be near the back and can accompany her.  In France she would never be left behind on her own.  When I see groups of cyclists over here the sense of fraternity invariably prevails.  It is the country of Liberté, Equalité and Fraternité.  Rare is it that others push harder than whatever everyone else can maintain.  They wish to stick together.   

I first witnessed this French comradeship in Vietnam when I saw a group of a dozen French riders on a tour riding in a close knit pack, amicably chatting.  If they had been Americans they would have been spread out for a mile or more with the stronger riders wishing to prove it.

Before I reached the grapes and sunflowers I passed through Limoges, the Ville Arrivée for stage eight.  This will be the sixteenth time it has hosted The Tour.  The peloton will be sprinting into the heart of the city, finishing in a small park just a block from the tourist office and several blocks from the train station.  There was no indicator of the finish line there as there had been in Moulins but the city was packed with billboards, large and small, promoting its status as a Ville Étape.

Coincidentally, Limoges was mentioned on an ESPN podcast I had been listening to about Frederic Weiss, a seven foot tall Frenchman who was the first round pick of the New York Knicks in 1999.  He was being remembered as the number one pick in the NBA draft last week was another seven foot tall Frenchman, the highly touted Victor Wembayama, who is considered the best prospect to enter the NBA since LeBron James.  Weiss is from Limoges and still lives there.  He never played in the NBA, preferring to remain in Europe, where he is now a popular basketball commentator.   

I’m surprisingly getting a dose of French as I  listen to podcasts I’ve downloaded  here, as they include commercials relevant to the region. The technology is such that the internet knows where one is and inserts local commercials, even the baseball podcast I listen and many of the cycling podcasts.  The French tend to talk fast, so listening to them at one-and-a-half speed is quite comical and disconcerting, almost enough to make one’s brain explode, as Janina says of speeded up podcasts.  This insertion of French commercials is a recent trend, as I was not subjected to them two years ago.  I have noticed it, as well, when traveling about the U.S., but they aren’t as startling as these.

On day six of these travels Yahoo finally realized I was sending emails from France and found that suspicious, forcing myself to authenticate myself.  I had to have a code sent to my phone, which is a landline back in Chicago.  Fortunately I could still FaceTime, so enlisted the help of Janina to convey the code when it was phoned in.  I had to wait until mid-afternoon, what with the time difference.  Janina wouldn’t have appreciated being woken at two a.m. when I first realized I had lost access to my email at nine in the morning.  On a more positive note I have discovered that most supermarkets now offer Wi-Fi, so I don’t have to seek out MacDonalds or tourist offices, which aren’t as common as supermarkets.  

I’m a day from crossing into Spain.  Nine of my previous seventeen Tours de France have started outside of France, though none in Spain.  This will be just the second time Spain has had the honor of the Grand Départ and that in 1992 in Saint Sebastián, which will be the stage two Ville Arrivée this year.  

Foreign starts have become a tradition after the first in 1954 with Amsterdam.  They are generally a year or two apart, but of late they have been coming back-to-back, including this year after last year’s Départ in Copenhagen.  It’s actually the third time it’s happened, and all during my tenure.  The first time it happened was in 2010 from Rotterdam after starting the previous year in Monaco.  Then in 2014 and 2015 it 
was Leeds in the UK and Utrecht in Holland. 

Next year will be the first time it has had three consecutive foreign starts,  as Italy for the first time will be hosting the Grand Départ in Florence.  Italy will become the eleventh country to have had the honor.  Holland has had the most with six, followed by Belgium with five and Germany with four.  Three countries are at two—England, Spain and Luxembourg.  Four countries have had a solitary Départ—Ireland, Switzerland, Denmark and Monaco. There have been twenty-five foreign starts in the seventy years since the first in 1954.  One can find a year-by-year list of all the Grand Départs beginning with the first in 1903 outside of Paris at Wikipedia, so significant is this event.  Back in the era of the Concord jet there was talk of staring The Tour in Quebec or the US, but that never materialized.