The Col D'Izoard is on TV, the first time I'm able this Tour to get on my trainer stand with the Cannondale road bike.  The chain is in the big front chain ring and the smaller cogs on the rear cassette.  The first pedal strokes are slow.  It takes the body a while to warm up, but warm up it will, and it takes its own pace.  Ten minutes in, fluidity, and the pace, the cadence of pedal strokes, increases.  The body stretches out, comfortably on the bike, and the deep breaths come.  It's a good feeling being on a bike.  "This is the good part of me," one says to himself, and it helps to think you're back at it, working out.  I cannot remember the last ride I took that wasn't a mission to get to work or get home, just for exercise, like one use to taking the trouble to get up and down into Rock Creek Park.  Long Saturday rides out to Garrett Park, or further out into Potomac.  The countryside, quiet roads, a general store, the peace of the road, horse farms...  Those rides are better, obviously, when you've done a little leg training.  The muscles and bands of leg remember, all those rides taken as a younger fellow, and the feeling of a general cleansing that comes with the building perspiration feels very good.

The body is heavy, not much exercise while on a trip, a lot of driving, 1700 miles or so, too much dough, unavoidable on the road, and the belly area is not svelte as it used to be, and a far cry from that of the pros on the television, offering inspiration.  July, The Tour, comes as a kind of vacation, inspiring, quiet, scenic.  History, as the human mind can only remember, can only go back so far, such as is comparable to the enjoyment of a silent film, that's going back pretty far, and Le Tour in its history is almost simultaneous with that invention of the moving picture.  No wonder then, that it is the latest in the technology of filming so far advanced now, looks back on itself as an homage, both for the Tour and the ability of the captured moving image to tell a story, just by holding up a mirror to nature, capturing that oddest of moments, "now."

The Col D'Izoard is a strange and barren stage.  The riders pass through the steep gorges of the valley of the Guil in Queyras.  There are no spectators gripping on the sides of the road here, bare pines, glimpses of that moonscape that marks the Dolomitic mountain stretches further up on the slopes.   The roads have not changed since Fausto Coppi climbed as the legend he was.  Nature is silent here, and no caravans of spectators.  The road is paved, but here Louison Bobet, Gino Bartali, Coppi, the old gentleman of the classic Tour fought it out, riding like birds.  The old road bikes they rode, with their lugged frames, elegant, are super cool.

After a timed forty-five minute riding session, coinciding with the coverage and the post-race report, with a good lather rom head to toe, considerably wet, a hot shower, releasing the spine, and then some yoga.  Meditation pose feels good after the effort.  A headstand, plow, shoulder-stand, warrior.  I am tired from the week, and find myself lethargic and in some form of depressed mood.  I've been back to work for five straight nights, trouble falling asleep several nights.  Heat, throws the guts for a loop.  A series of naps follows as afternoon turns to evening turns to dusk turns to night and cooler air.  The body wishes to get back into running, or to get out for a nice walk without having to get somewhere, but the bike on the training stand is quite helpful.  And the aerobic exercise, the free movement, helps the mind in no small way.


The first sentences are slow, coming tentatively.  One is almost afraid of the keyboard, the lingering thoughts, those that come alone, but sparks of the brain which mean something and ought to be recorded.  Reluctant to face their charge, the reality of feelings, the sense of how things are a cause for a wish to start all over again somewhere else rather than holding the old bit in one's teeth and pulling vainly forward.  It takes 'til the beginning of deep night for the writer to get started.  Forget trying to line up a date, with going out, even with grocery shopping.  Momentum, time is what you need.  One thought gotten down will lead to another.  One stroke, then the next from the other side, like Tai Chi.  No wonder Ernie Hemingway liked boxing, the back and forth, a left then a right, the real thing, followed by a glimpse of the metaphorical quality, often self-reflective, inherent in the act of writing.

Yes, work as a barman takes it out of you.  The sleepy-eyed kid got out of there early, claiming a doctor's appointment the next day.  "Don't believe a word he says," a trusted coworker tells me about him, while I suspend my judgment for the kid's likability.  "Look at how he works."  The night is not so busy, but I end up in my element after the band finishes playing, the bar with three customers, the final orders and a dessert or two to worry over, blind as I am, upstairs, to  know what's happening in the kitchen, entertaining and being entertained by key elements of The Old Dying Gaul's jazz project, one a violinist, and K from our main attraction who plays the first Wednesday of every month.  And the good old regular whose visits are soothing at this end of the night.  I pulled the acoustic guitar out from the liquor room, and K obliges me in changing out the G string I broke, tuning up and breaking out into song, I'm Just a Bad Boy, as the musicians who played finished up with their packing.  Yeah, man.  Play those blues, alright.

In dreams I'm looking for a bottle of wine while at a quiet college reunion.  In dreams I am playing the guitar, getting a lesson.  In dreams there is a ten inch long cockroach that needs escorting out of the kitchen.  In between dreams I am haunted by being a bit of a bad student toward the end of my career as one.  There were times I got carried away with the party, beer, friends, and neglected getting up to meet a girl on the bus up to Williams for the hockey game, one jackass move after another, that year.  Alone on a hill, away from those friends who have proven themselves then and now.

The yoga feels good, very good.  I've returned to my little place  and its Buddhas after visiting the writer's mom.  She is a seven hour plus drive away.   She has far too much stuff ever to be moved, short of Moses and his staff.  And I have enough stuff on my own,  Lord knows, one can like their books, too much perhaps.


Academic types are of the most conservative cloth.  A consolation to me, the maverick spirit making me run my own way, for better or worse.

You have to feel comfortable on the bike.  You don't need to start out fast, you just need to know that you'll be in for the long run.  And that by each ride, be it home on the trainer, or out somewhere, and then maybe further, once inspired, and the traffic of cars tamed convincingly, you get more comfortable.  Your own work might never make the theater, but in the great tradition you will document a kind of a life until the end, through a lot of things, non of it necessary stellar, but a thread, a system of some health.  Don't start out too quickly, don't flame out writing some brilliant work exhausting yourself and setting yourself up for fame.  No, take it easy, do it slowly and steadily...  again and again.http://www.velominati.com/anatomy-of-a-photo/anatomy-of-a-photo-fausto-coppi/comment-page-2/


The Tour coming to end, it makes me a bit wistful.