Welcome back ! Can't believe it has been more than a week since I wrote my last entry -- a few days away from home and routines are easily disrupted. Today summer has taken a little holiday; for the greater good of all. The weather is crisp and clear, after 24 hours of steady rain, and even though there are clouds in the sky, there is sun too, the humidity has dropped about 200% and there is a delightful breeze that lightens everything up.
Watched a little of the Tour de France yesterday since I knew that they were going to go up, down, and up again on the pass called Tourmelet in the Pyrenees mountains, about 120 km almost directly south of here. The Tour de France is a strange phenomenon, from a cultural point of view; if you only watch it on tv it is a sports event ( for better or for worse as far as drugs and scandals go) with a huge bevy of cyclists all crammed together on what seem like terribly narrow , windy roads, often being bothered by the by-standers who can't seem to help themselves from putting out a hand, a foot or an arm to touch their heroes or root the guys on. But, if you have had the experience of being a 'live" spectator, you discover that you are in fact, part of the show, and that the riders, as important as they might seem to be for sponsors and the television audience, are only a very minute part of the entertainment.
In fact, the Tour de France is one big advertisement for the products of the sponsors. My first (but not last) Tour experience was up in the Pyrenees, on a plateau that is, in the winter, a favorite place for cross-country skiing. I had been at a friend's country house for a few days and found out that the Tour would pass nearby ( this is about seven or eight years ago) and wanting very much to see 'our' boy, Lance go by, I decided to go and wait for the cyclists to come around a curve on the mountainside. My friends said to make sure I got there a couple of hours early which seemed very strange to me, as I couldn't imagine that there would be THAT many people in that exact spot, but dutifully, I took myself off well ahead of the time the riders were supposed to arrive, found myself a little cozy spot right on an uphill curve, very cleverly thinking that at least they wouldn't be going as fast as if they were on the downhill side, and settled down with a sun hat and a bottle of water to wait. More people arrived, families with children, grandparents, folding chairs, picnics, and even, horror of horrors, radios. After 45 minutes I realized that I was being surrounded, literally, by groups of people who seemed to be doing a strange dance, leaning over the road, stretching out their arms, and then pulling back. I felt a little out of sync with them, and wondered if there was some special archaic French ritual that was being re-enacted in front of me.
Rumblings overhead announced, to my great astonishment, a few helicoptors flying low, then about ten motorcycle cops came by, heading what seemed to be the president's cortege, and then, around the corner came a sight; a giant tire, (would say Michelin but in truth I dont remember what brand it was) rolling by on top of a flatbed truck, topped by three or four young girls who were throwing things, sometimes to the left, sometimes to the right. And low and behold, these folks who had been starting to crowd me out, performed their dance, leaning out, stretching as far as possible and when the objects thrown went beyond the road's edge, they all ran back, frantically, looking for the goods that had been jettisoned. After the giant tire, a huge pink pig came rumbling by, and more young maidens atop it, throwing out little objects, again once to the left, once to the right, and this time I figured I might as well join in and go for whatever it was, so I tried to pick up one only to have a chubby fingered ten year old grab it out from under me, and scream out to her parents, 'I got one, I got one'. Well.!! For the next hour, one float after another came rumbling by, sometimes throwing out candy, sometimes cookies, sometimes (ah, the pig!!) little itsy, bitsy sausages, sometimes fans in the shape of a hand, or little suncaps, keychains, or bottle openers, all of which have the Tour de France insignia, and all of which were little samplings and reminders of the great beneficence of the sponsors of the bike tour. The caravans, as they are called in French, took over one hour to pass, intermingled with motorcycles, police cars bullhorning their way through, tour employees passing out water bottles and making sure that the road stayed relatively free of interference, and load carnival music and voices barking out the names of each coming presentation.
Only after all the procession had passed, and a great void was created by the suddenly empty roads, did the crowd quiet down, move back ( counting out and bagging their booty all the way) and position itself to finally get a glimpse of the riders. Five minutes, ten, fifteen, complete silence, and then off in the distance, a humming noise began, getting louder and louder then whirling by; first the protection of the cavalcade of motorcycles, then the cars filled with newspeople, cameras, sound equipment, the cameramen hanging out the windows of the cars dangling their bodies as far out as possible to get the best shot, the vans for each team piled high with extra bikes, filled, one could imagine with emergency equipment, medicine and sustenance, and then, finally, finally, coming down from the skies in a quasi-biblical manner, the announcement, 'ladies and gentlemen, clear the way, the riders are about to approach'. Straining my neck, trying to peer out over the heads of the family who had poached the square meter of space just in front of me, I leaned a little and whoosh, there was a blur of yellow, red and blue that flashed passed my eyes, a movement almost too quick for my brain to focus on, and the riders were there and gone.

When I looked at my watch, a couple of minutes later, I realized it had indeed been over two hours that I was standing there. But I couldnt really say that I had seen the bikers or been able to wave at Armstrong, or any other racer for that matter. Everyone else was smiling and content, but I was left with the strangest feeling of having been had : all this for a bunch of stupid little souvenirs and junk to eat, but where was the race?

Truth be told, I have since seen the Tour de France four other times, and once even managed to be on the barricades in Paris when Armstrong came around with the other riders for the ritual seven times around the Seine before the final sprint into first place. Having been forewarned, I learned to enjoy the game of leaping for rewards, feeling somewhat like a monkey in a training session waiting for the prize for doing the right task - in this case, jumping up and down and applauding at the right moments, waving my arms and screaming like the rest of the public as the cavalcade goes by. But of course, if you really want to watch the riders, see the scenery, and get a sense of how difficult it is for them, or how accidented the landscape is, there is no point in going out in 95° heat, or 55° rain and fog to stand for two or three hours, all you have to do is put on the tv, sit down, and enjoy the view, which is what I did yesterday, as I watched the bikes descend the pass at over 90 km an hour, in a dense white fog, hoping that there would be no accidents to spoil the final sprint to the finish.
The French love to criticize and or make fun of Americans for their crass commercial attitude toward life - everything is about profit, everything is for the mighty dollar. I wonder really what they imagine they are doing as they participate so heartily and seriously in the big show called the tour de France. A final note; president Sarkozy, the much maligned man, was interviewed at the end of the day's run; he happens to be a fairly athletic guy and does a lot of bike-riding, but he wasn't there to congratulate the day's winner, he was there to shake hands with Lance Armstrong. When asked, more or less, by one of the French journalists, why he would want to shake hands with a man who is now considered by many not only to be a seven times winner, but a major league cheater in using undetected drugs,his answer was that he wanted to shake hands with a survivor - someone who had come back from almost dying to go on to accomplish an incredible physical feat, to triumph by will and determination. Now, I know that Armstrong is a good friend of "W's" so he ain't necessarily a good friend of mine, but I kind of liked what was said about him. Funny, we don't always know who the good guys always are,or what people will say, do we?