A Safe European Tour

Fausto Coppi and Gino Bartali chase each other in the Italian Alps.

It's over, and there's a little hole in my life. The Giro d'Italia, Tour de France and the Tour de France Femmes have ended. I subscribe to a service that provides coverage of the three grand tours, the biggest professional cycling races – the Giro d'Italia, the Tour de France and the Vuelta a España – which are each 21 stages over three weeks and often cover over 3000 KM, and a handful of minor tours, which are usually a week long, such as the Tour de Suisse or the Critérium du Dauphiné, and a smattering of classics and monuments such as Paris-Roubaix or Milan-San Remo, which are gruelling one day races.

I will admit I don't understand why someone would watch golf, but this admission comes with the realization that watching cycling races is very similar. It can be slow without anything much happening except the commentators commentating. They may note the history of a castle, monument, or manor house that has come into view from the aerial camera. They may discuss what's good to eat in this or that part of France. This may lead to a discussion about what the cyclists eat before the stage, during the stage, and after the stage. What is that odd red drink they guzzle after the stage? (Cherry juice, apparently appropriate for race recovery but not after training rides). It takes a complex Jenga stack of technology, including five to seven motorcycles, three helicopters, a small airplane, and at least two satellite dishes to capture and broadcast the race. Over the three weeks in the summer, you can watch the mesmerizing colours of the peloton snake and pulsate through some beautiful European scenery and forget you have a job or anything else worth doing. You don't need a passport or a visa. You don't need local currency or do any conversions or figure out train schedules. You sit and watch while Europe washes over you.

In a piece from The Guardian, Tanya Aldred said it best:
"I’ve always enjoyed becoming a temporary expert on the gradients of obscure Alpine hills, the timbre of the cobbles and the tribes of razor-faced, skinny-legged domestiques set the task of dragging their team leaders into position, ready to pounce.

And I love the coverage – part travelogue, part Eurovision, part technical micro-detail. I love the plane trees, lines stretching and shading the peloton, eyes on the prize. I love the villages, the tricolours, the spectators and their insane cheek-by-jowl roars of encouragement…"

From films I've seen, for the French, the Tour and its broadcast are as much a part of summer as buzzing cicadas or short, hot thunderstorms, and not just on television but also on the radio. It's not only part of the look of summer but also the sound of it. It's become that for me too. I'm not even sure why I'm so captivated by watching a group of cyclists wind and wend their way through foreign countries. Is it like "slow TV" of a sort? Is it meditative? Yes. It is meditative. Strangely, I watch it and only crave a bike ride of my own through some hilly, pastoral countryside where a coffee shop, patisserie, or ice cream vendor would appear when needed most.

It is a little like a virtual bike-packing trip. The only serious bike-packing trip I did was over a decade ago with a friend. He led us across New York state, where we passed through small towns, carried ourselves up hills, threw ourselves down them, glided past electrically lit crosses, abandoned farmhouses, rusted farm equipment, park kiosks, and gas stations. One thing we never passed but always stopped at were the numerous seasonally operated ice cream stands, where a soft serve cone or milkshake was cheap and rejuvenating.

Is it nostalgia then that draws me to these bike races? Is it escapism over mountains and down into valleys? Is it a desire to simply be outside and slip through greenery, and blossom-scented air where the only sounds are buzzing insects, croaking toads, and birds calling out to us? There really isn't anything like the feeling of the late afternoon sun when the shadows are long and the light is shifting. You roll to your destination knowing you pedalled yourself 100 kilometres or more, powered by nothing other than a brownie, a cola, an ice cream, and your own two legs. There is nothing like that shower at the end of the ride, the well-earned feast, and that feeling of easing yourself into bed knowing you didn't do much, yet you did more than you ever thought you could.