Then comes the quiet, the day off.  Enough groceries in the house, laundry, tidying to do.

And the quiet, an opportunity to get down those loose thoughts not fully observed, and where do you start, where do you begin?

When the Tour de France came around, it took a while to wake to it, meaning I'd not been riding the bike, thinking even those good old days of rides down in Rock Creek Park when Beach Drive is closed to vehicle traffic, even the sports match of the Tour itself, childish and unimportant.  Ride the bike to work, eh?  No time go out on long joy rides.  Not even the rides close by, narrow roads in quiet neighborhoods with steep climbs.  Time to get serious, here at age 52, no time to 'mess around,' to 'fuck around,' to goof off, to do anything that does not immediately acknowledge and attempt to rectify the economic reality of personal situations...

The Tour was on, and the inspiration slowly built.  I got to go to work, and then I got to get ready for the big trip, I said to myself, as I watched the noon rerun of the Tour's opening Time Trial stage in Dusseldorf, where a significant rain was making roads and particularly the painted road indicators, cross walks, lane markings, slick and high up on the list of the dangers the Tour riders will face through 20 stages and more than two thousand miles.   Once a habit, to get home from work, put bike shorts on, get on the bike on the trainer, unwinding from a shift, getting in a workout, building up a good lather.  The time lost getting ready for bed as soon as manageable, worth the time getting back in shape.   Yes, it's an old story, something from some form of adolescent childhood's end, where you are trying to find a moral compass that reflects you and your awesomely true parents, kind of like King Arthur, kind of like, by extension, Wyeth paintings, of father, son, and grandson, Lord of the Rings, and along comes this long race through historical France, passing all major rivers, all major towns and regions (at least by the general idea of it), applauding those storied towns that are at crossroads.  The French people, regional as their cheeses, and more, characters linked to this landscape of natural human coexistence with nature...  France is not all Paris.  There are a lot of very small towns...


And so, I'd been doing my yoga sometimes, and then not sometimes.  The red Saeco Mario Cipollini era Cannondale Caad5 road bike I'd ordered with Campagnolo Chorus had stood in the living room on that bike stand trainer with the roller bar and the radiator heat release attachment to it that got quite hot if you'd gotten a decent workout in.  And then, finally, I got on it, and started pedaling some, even if it was just after a shift and I was relaxing drinking a bottle of chilled Beaujolais.

And then, even better, I brought out the '98 Bianchi Velocé celeste green/blue bike, the last year of the lugged frame, and with the automatic easy finger 'ergo shifter' not working on the right end of the handlebar, the chain set in the rear cluster's smallest cog, unable to shift, plotting to find a down tube shifter mechanism like I always wanted, to go classic, old school bad boy back in the day Tour, I put that bike on the stand and found again what made me fall in love with a bike that was, to my budget, an ungodly sum of $1,100 back then in 1999 or 2000.  Back when I was making about, I don't know, $28,000 yearly starting out trying to be a grown man.

Riding her, the Bianchi, the direct line back to the bikes of Coppi...


When the legs are good, when the blood gets aerated, if you will, the head is good, the attitude is good, the burdens a lot easier, a lot.  Positivity comes in.



Back as a high school kid, and earlier growing up, there was no problem getting exercise.  I had a used Peugeot UO8, blue, not in the best working order, but fun.  As soon as the winter receded from the roads, I was out there.  And before, I'd been a distance runner out on those country roads, cross-country skiing in the winter, making trail through the woods through powder snow.  I knew how to handle my body, I made the time to go riding, and things went along well.

Is that the animal has a hard time focussing, a condition of Attention Deficit Disorder, ADHD, or whatever you could call it...  There are any number of shades of it, and we all have it, to varying extents at varying times.  Even just in our daily ups and downs.  Some of the work situations we face really do have ups and downs, just in their nature, just in the reaction you must have to them,

A commercial for Specialized, was it?, has set up an ad campaign.  A kid tells us, having a hard time grasping a concept his teachers give him, riding the bike, here at night with headlights with a group of buddies, lets him catch up with the world that speeds by him when he cannot get his rides in.

Seems like a weird connection to make.  You're in your fifties, and you still need that forty five minute ride, else you unravel into paranoia, anxiety, all that stuff...  I mean, not that bad at all, just that the ride turns all that might be negative into the positive, a lesson for us all to know and comprehend and remember and practice.

And here is the day off, and it's hard to focus, to clean the apartment.  And again, I feel that need for quiet, to catch up with a world that has sped by me yet again.  It's kind of pathetic, no?

I am sorry I'm that way.  I have had a hard time focussing.  This is true.  The world has come as a jumble, with lots and lots of thoughts uncaptured, uncultured, un recorded.  And so I needed the monkish life, and in the physical load of tending bar, which itself was at least some form of load-bearing exercise, a physical challenge, much more organically satisfying to me than sitting in an office being poked by the clerk's ringing phone line, the computer screen...  I needed to ride, I needed long rides.


And that was what I wanted to do, when I began at  the Old Gaul.


So why is there a Tour de France?  Why do i find it so captivating?

Why does one find himself in some subtle form of anguish there on the first day off after a week of work, after all the efforts, physical and mental, all the people you had face time with many in some depth.  And along comes this little bird, here in summertime, when the days of light are longer, the old Tour, reborn afresh.

Blondin wondered out loud, why the feeling of wanting to chase the riders like the young boys he'd see by the side of the road as the Tour went by, wishing, as they did, to be one of them....

In the olden days it looked simpler than it does now.  The bikes and the outfits were basic...

That's what I saw with my becoming vintage 98 Bianchi Velocé on the trainer stand catching the modern coverage on NBC Sports.  Unfortunately I'd thrown out a lot of VCR tapes, patiently recorded, helicopter aerial view of the long road up the Galibier pass, too many to mention...

I rolled, and thought, realizing I that I might as well ride, as I can realize I have little idea what I'm doing now of any importance, significance, or value, other than showing up to work, as I suppose many a Tour rider has to do over the years, leave the glorious road behind and go back to work pumping beer or whatever, and the footage whatever you can find is not bashful about showing us towns and work towns, and work places, the old Bourinage still with its mines and factory chimneys there in the distance, no need to hide anything

And who knows, somewhere within, off in that work place off the side of the road in the filmed distance, who knows, perhaps men would have remembered their grandfathers telling of a strange red-haired Dutchman who came to preach earnestly to them, wanting to go down in the mines with them, and like just like they did, and eat what they ate.  The organized Church, needing their business model, their high claim to high fundraising, would of course not liked this interloper, and banished him, shaming him.  And one day he would be a painter.  A painter of men and women, of meals, of rooms, of fields and fruit trees and olive trees, and ancient roads, drawn by the hot sleepy eyed women, and the light as well, of particular towns in the South of France...