Tour de France

Tour de France. Do you know what this is? If you don’t, you obviously have never experienced the insanity of cycling fans. I have enjoyed my time in Amsterdam and look back on it fondly. Liege has confusing streets, is a bit smelly in places, has excellent food, bad restaurant service, and I have had to use my French. But none of this matters. I spent the day doing paperwork while many of the other fans staying here wandered around the exhibition and the stage platforms they constructed. I’ve seen all this before, but never with this many fans. I have been in crowds at many stages in the Tour of California and USA Procycling Challenge in Colorado. I have even been sworn at when I was a course marshal by a farmer in Utah when I wouldn’t let him pass. But this is THE RACE. All the other races were big, but none was so big. There are people here from all over the world to cheer on their favorite cyclists. We are bunking with a Brazilian and an Australian. There are many Australians here, probably to cheer on last year’s winner Cadel Evans. It is so exhilarating to be around all these people who love this sport as much or more than I do. We wandered out to get waffles in Liege and as we were walking back, I was thinking of how much people can be brought together through their idiosyncrasies. It is not the general character of the people but the little similarities that  can bring people together. Maybe it makes us feel less alone in the world if we see how similar we are to at least one other person. We can’t be alone if someone shares this quirky trait with us. I am definitely not alone in my love of cycling, though I generally watch races at home alone because I don’t know many other people who actually watch cycling, and if they do, I am usually more into it than them. But here, people are here on their bikes, in their kits (one lady never took hers off in the three days we saw her), ready to fly their crazy flags.

Except not enough. After having been at the prologue for the Tour de France, I have to say that people in California showed more spirit. Whenever a Belgian or French rider came around there were cheers, but there seemed to be much less excitement than when I was standing in a crowd in Colorado last year. Those people were crazy. They shouted for everyone and kept cheering. I figure if a rider is in the Tour de France, and I am there, they deserve a loud banging on the barriers with my hand. Now I realize that this time trial was two and a half hours long with a new rider every minute or so, but still I wanted to keep cheering them. The way in which they mold their bodies to the skinny time trial bikes and maneuver it with the fastest speed possible, is beautiful.  It is not the same as the delicate stone work I just saw in Le Grande Place, Brussels which hundreds of years ago was carved out of this stone and still seems to be living. But a rider on a bike and ancient stone lace are both beautiful in their own ways. Our bodies and the way they work is like the Hallelujah Chorus sung in a cathedral. So many elements work together to create a structure that is so useful and in that uses it can be dedicated to, is beautiful. These men are expending more energy than it takes to run a marathon every day for two weeks to takes themselves over thousands of miles of road as quick as they can. What goal is more simple? It is an extreme, but our bodies are these works of art and we can feel how precious every movement is as we walk down the street, yawn and stretch our arms, and type thousands of words trying to convey a feeling.