Not much has been written here over the past few months. Not that work on the books hasn’t been done, in fact, much of the heavy lifting of writing as been going on – research.  But balancing other, very different projects, primarily Great Ape Diaries, has also taken time. One wouldn’t think seemingly disparate ideas like cycling and apes would connect, support, inspire one another, but writing is a curious thing.  Writing has no rules and is fueled by inspiration.

When marooned by too much information I escape in search of clarity on the saddle of my bike – a lovely vintage Ferrari red steel Cinelli – it invites pedaling for the joy of riding my bike “just felt like a little kid with his first bike”

Today I read this from a CyclingNews interview with Fabian Cancellara:

What’s more, a powerful force has returned – one he missed in the furore of Leopard Trek’s first season. Cancellara leans in and says: “I was on the bike the other day. There was blue sky and I just felt like a little kid with his first bike. I didn’t really have that last year. This year I don’t have high expectations, I just have high goals. That’s my motivation and for this I’m giving everything.”

Part of doing anything, besides that paycheck driven survival work that so many are imprisoned, is feeling passionately inspired to do it.

Finding the whispers that wake us and motivate us is a mystery, no one know what they are, or we would turn them on with the flip of a switch, and then the magic would be lost.

More magic soon.

Perhaps Madiot might be excused in his assessment after making it while awash in disappointment.  His young rider Jeremy Roy had ridden spectacularly for over a hundred kilometers en route to victory in Lourdes.  But the 13th Stage of the Tour was destined to be unlucky, forever just off his wheel was a man under a rainbow.  ”I was lucky to catch the break but unlucky at the moment of the conclusion.”  Roy would say after the race.  Unfortunately that conclusion was 2 kilometers short of the finish line as a storming Thor Hushovd, after cresting the Col d’Aubisque 1:29 down on Roy, descended spectacularly to close the gap first to second on the road David Moncoutié and then set about 23 kms of rabbit chasing.  Thor, after wearing and defending a jersey of yellow the open week of the Tour and enjoying one of the finest single rider Tours in recent year, would say in stage victory, “To win alone with the rainbow jersey after passing the Col d’Aubisque is extraordinary.”  Not just a win, a win in a jersey.

Like country flags and banners that line the roadsides of the Tour, like hand-painted signs and road surface scribbles, like the orange apparel of every description worn by the Basque faithful, yes, they are temporary, but they indeed define a moment–regardless how fleeting–when we stand apart, proudly.

“Jerseys are only temporary”?  One has to wonder if another Tour Frenchman might disagree.  Raymond Poulidor raced the Tour de France on 14 occasions.  He finished on the final podium in Paris a remarkable six-time, three times second, three times third, including the last at the ripe age of 40 years.  All these years later Poulidor must surely wonder what if?  What if?  What if I had only worn that jersey but one day, only temporarily.  In fact he wondered so much so that he wrote about glory without it in Gloire sans le Maillot Jaune.

Maybe it is perspective that is temporary and we must alter it to find what truly counts.

Tomorrow the sun will edge up over the sharp peaks of the Pyrenees and shine warm banners of summer sun on the start line of the 14th stage as the riders assemble in ancient town of Saint-Gaudens; a town with over twenty centuries of perspective on the comings and goings of men.  At that line there will be five riders abreast, each honored, each in a jersey.  Jeremy Roy will be one of them for the first time.  The red Skoda of Director Prudhomme will then roll out and the 175 will head back into the mountains for a classically arduous day of climbing col after categorized col, a half-dozen en route to Plateau-de-Beille.  Only Jeremy Roy knows if he can once again find the energy and sacrifice of the Aubisque and the Tourmalet before it to hold on to the polka dot jersey.  That moment at the start will be temporary, but perspective will etch it in his memory for life.

In May 2011 Jens Voigt went down in a crash at the Tour of California, a broken bone, the scaphoid; a cashew-sized bone meshed among many in your wrist—found right at the crease in your wrist as your hands rest on the top of the handlebars.  Voigt wrote on his bicycling.com blog, “It’s only a very little bone inside the hand, and even though it was constantly causing me pain I was able to finish two stages of the Tour of California with it broken.”  The break in his wrist was his reward for the stage, exiting the race two stages later was his parting prize.  After a return to Germany and operation Voigt had little time to train before the Tour of Luxemburg, his new team Leopard Trek’s home base; a good showing was a priority for the new sponsors.  His thought on jumping back in the saddle while the scaphoid was still healing/broken: “So what happens? Well, I ride like 135 kilometers on the front doing tempo, that’s what happens. And then I just exploded! Oh, I was so wasted I couldn’t even hang in with the team cars on what was a very flat finish. I was just “groveling,” as my Australian teammate Stuart O’Grady likes to say, and I ended up losing like 11 minutes.”

Over the preceding four stages Voigt continued groveling up and over the lumpy topography of Luxemburg, groveling himself to each day’s finish line, groveling himself back into Tour shape.  In classic domestique fashion, classic Jens Voigt fashion, he finished.  Jens Voigt finished 101^ston final general classification, dead last, ten minutes behind the next to last finisher.  He was a full 35 minutes 08 seconds behind the overall winner, but he was proud.  Groveling had delivered him to a place at the dinner table of overall winner Linus Gerdemann, teammate Linus Gerdemann.

–Michael Barry

Trying to slip inside the peloton is nearly impossible.  Imagine trying to describe the feeling, view and emotion inside a school of 200 fish, or flock of migrating birds, or rushing herd of wildebeests on the Serengeti Plains.  The view from the roadside delivers part of the drama, but still, on many of the steepest cols, the riders will pedal past with such speed that even their pain is reduced to a blurred grimace.   Despite being the most watched live sporting event on Earth most of us watch from home, pub or café.  Perched before the TV, regardless of how widescreen and how HD it is, it doesn’t deliver the daily pain and grind the domestiques endure.

Unfortunately there are few writers inside the peloton.  We do hear from former pros who turn to commentating, and for a few years their word ring crisp and authentic until nostalgia begins tinting reflection terra-cotta, and the black, blue and red of suffering disappears.  One rare glimpse, looking out from in, comes from one of the most respected everyday blue-collar domestiques over the past decade, Michael Barry.  Barry has ridden as one of the key charges for U.S. Postal during the Armstrong years and for T-mobile/Columbia-Highroad.  Riding now for Team Sky in 2011 Barry was competing in arguably one of the most difficult Giro d’Italias raced since most of the roads of Italy have been paved.  After stage 11 he shared these thoughts about life in the peloton on his website.

“Midway through the Giro d’Italia the wear of the race is evident. In the peloton riders are coughing and spitting as their weakened immune systems fight to battle bacteria and viruses. Others are covered in bandages and tape from crashes and injuries. A week ago we were fresh, healthy and strong. Every second counted and riders battled incessantly to be at the front of the peloton. The mountains had yet to crush dreams and sap the fight. Now, as we near the end of the second week of racing the riders, with realism, know their place in the peloton.”

Read more of Michael Barry’s writings

Reflection

There were tiny black strips of cloth fluttering in the thirty-five kilometer an hour breeze as it curled over the left shoulder of the Liquigas riders at the front of the peloton.  The dark ribbon was small but in sharp contrast to the ripe green, blue and white of their racing kits.  Further back in the peloton the Leopard-Trek team was also wearing strips, but their’s were lost in a larger black stripe of grief—yesterday 26 years young Wouter Weylandt crashed and died.

Today’s Stage 4 of the 2011 Giro d’Italia was a 216 km rolling tribute of reflection and respect between Quarto dei Mille to Livorno.  Riders rolled along at a pace some might call pedestrian, but nothing was pedestrian about such a tribute.  No other sport commits themselves so wholly at such moments.  That’s what separates the grand sport of cycling from all others.

Death is final, perhaps why we find it so hard to comprehend.  Nothing else in our lives has such finality.  From all else we may be devastated, but we can and generally do recover.

Processing such finality gives life perspective.  All death draws reflection.  Tragedy however severs the senses; derailing reflection, suspending the hope of healing.

As the peloton pedaled along, generally assembled in their teams, riders could be seen talking, occasionally smiling, not out of disrespect, perhaps reflecting on happier moments they had known with Wouter Weylandt.  Reflection.  Six hours in the spring sunshine of Italy with your friends and peers, with those who share your work, your danger, and your passion.  Reflection.  This is the healing the senses require.  The healing in other sports, in other walks of life, we are denied.  Car crash, war, disaster, violence, whatever the tragedy we are immediately thrust back into life.  We have no day to roll through the countryside of our own life, with those who we share and understand life.  Reflect.

Watching the images of the peloton shift between helicopter views of colorful kits streaming through sinuous country curves and near shots of faces and grieving from moto cameramen the day of reflecting was healing, the pain was pedaling away.  Never gone, just not cutting.  Reflection was offering perspective.

What happened today on the country roads of Italy hasn’t happened for more than a decade.  Remarkably, thankfully, such processions are rare in such a dangerous sport; 1995’s Tour de France the last.  There, also on a descent, a young Fabio Casartelli, on a young Team Motorola, fatally crashed.  The following day on Stage 16 the peloton pedaled in reflection.

Today as the peloton passed near Pisa crowds lined the road, their applause were as though a grand procession of life was rolling passed their eyes.  Even the famous tower now seemed tilted, bowed for a reason.  The RAI cameraman isolated a second-story balcony railing where the Italian flag hung large and proud, the Giro is more than a century of Italian pride.  No mere bicycle race.  Alongside the Italian flag was hung a smaller flag—a tricolor of black, yellow and red: determination, generosity, and strength and bravery.  On this day the Belgian banner drew the eye.  It felt larger than life.

Nearing Livorno from overhead the heavenly view read “Ciao Wouter”, painted in large white block letters on the narrow street.  Everyday Italians stood un silenzioso in respect, holding small placards echoing in the same, “Ciao Wouter”.  Shortly after the route tilted up through the terracotta walled streets of Montenero and began what would have been the final climb of the day; in single file every day riders, in kits of their own choosing, stood silent, each holding Weylandt’s number 108 printed in clean black on a white page.

After six hours, as expected, the eight teammates of Weylandt’s on Leopard-Trek assembled and spread across the road, and then one more, Garmin’s Tyler Farrar, Wouter Weylandt’s close friend, “more like brothers” Tyler said they were, was asked to join.  We can only guess at the grieving behind those glasses, the tears streaming down his cheeks our only hint.

Only cycling does this.  Rolling reflection.

Rest In Peace Wouter Weylandt, while the rest of us reflect on how grand it was to be you.

That became evident yesterday when working on research and setting up rider interviews for two new books I’m writing - Le Domestiques: The Dog Soldiers of July and Chasing the Lanterne Rouge; I opened up a new post on Gerry’s Daily Ride and wrote, Ride vs Write.  It was clear I wanted something more from the bike, from my connection to cycling.

The writings here will often times be excerpts from the work I am doing on the two books.  Parts of interviews with riders present and past that don’t have a home in those future pages.  More often than not posts here will be my need to clear the cerebellum to prevent thinker’s-block and stave off writer’s-block.

Like Gerry’s Daily Ride, Le Velo, Le Tour is a journey for me.  The previous blog was an outlet for my thoughts as I tried to get more deeply into riding my bike, being part of the bike community in Portland and eventually racing locally.  This blog is a similar start line for cycling journalism.  Here too I am chasing giants–most notable Samuel Abt, David Walsh, Dan Coyle, Robin Magowan and most recently Guy Wilson-Roberts, whose blog writings–Le Grimpeur–I admire greatly.  In fact, in a recent post he quoted from an interview for the Paris Review on the art of fiction, with Ernest Hemingway:

“Trying to write something of permanent value is a full-time job even though only a few hours a day are spent on the actual writing. A writer can be compared to a well. There are as many kinds of wells as there are writers. The important thing is to have good water in the well, and it is better to take a regular amount out than to pump the well dry and wait for it to refill.”

That quote adhered. The initial line might explain much of the change, “Trying to write something of permanent value is a full-time job even though only a few hours a day are spent on the actual writing.”  I’m chasing legends, I hope to be a good domestique, right now I’m just a neo-pro.  I need to focus those few precious hours on something that will hopefully have permanent value.  With my obligations to other writings and photography those few hours are essential.

I’ll be leaving Gerry’s Daily Ride up because there are a few ramblings there, and photos, worth reading and seeing, but this is the new residence of my writing on cycling, especially the cyclists, culture and history of Le Tour de France.