There was an Aramis.

Aramis was one of the three musketeers and, according to Arturo Perez-Reverte, in his book, The Club Dumas, he was modeled on Henri d’Aramitz, “a squire and lay priest of the senechalship of Oloron.” That explains the crash-causing fancy dress I saw in Aramits during the early parts of l’Etape but it doesn’t explain the “Velo dans la tete” that graces the head of designer Nicole Bousquet in a front page photo in today’s special edition of the local paper, Hautes-Pyrenées. The whole issue is dedicated to the Tour and includes centenarians reminiscences of when men were men and they had to finish on the same bike and only they could make repairs to the bike. This is illustrated in the paper by a rendition of one of the early riders forging a new front fork on his own at a local blacksmith’s. He was required to do it himself according to the rules at the time and was actually penalized four minutes for having someone else pump the bellows.

The silly hat designed by Madame Bousquet is just one of many bicycle-related decorations that adorn barns, houses, bars, busses, traffic signs, whatever sits still long enough to be “themed.” I see all these things as we move eastward from Tarbes where I joined the Stephen Roche Tour de France group to join the Tour route as it moves through the Ariege region. The plan for the group is to watch the climb up the col de Pailheres on the Ax-le-Thermes stage.. The group is 32 hardy souls willing to follow the Tour, riding every day along the route and trying to catch a good spot to watch the peloton suffer up a giant hill. We’re accompanied by four riders, three from France and Geordie, an Australian, and supported by the organizer, Claude Escalon, once a Directeur Sportif of some renown for a Paris cycling club; a bus driver, and an “electric man” who will give us electro-stimulation if we so desire. Not sure I desire. If he can set the juice on ‘sleep’ I may hook up.

Roche was the 1987 winner of the Tour and a very bright light in his day. In that year he won the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia, and the world road racing championship. Quite a feat. A knee injury slowed him and eventually he retired, buying a hotel in the south of France and organizing cycling vacations on Mallorca. He’s gotten into a number of other enterprises and is now affiliated with Coeur de Lion, a cheese maker who sponsors the “Prix de Combativité” a daily prize given to the rider who shows the most spirit, usually by attacking early and getting caught a tragic three of four kilometers from the finish.

The group is half American with the balance split among English, French, Belgian, and an Irishman. There are men and women from their mid-thirties to perhaps 60 and the shapes don’t necessarily match the classic gaunt bike rider look.

We assembled at the Hotel le Concorde between Tarbes and Lourdes. This is a classic hotel—for Myrtle Beach. A three storey, concrete box, angled to the busy highway with a good side sporting a pool and a decent screen of trees. The other side, my side, looked out nicely on the local Renault dealership and the road that stayed busy all night. I wonder if I can doze on the ride today, you know, just let the bike roll.

I gave up my rental car at the Lourdes airport. Quite a place. Brand new and spotless and mostly people-less as well. Not a single office, bar, restaurant, newsstand, airline or rental car counter was attended. I saw one single person behind a desk who seemed to be the night watchperson. This at 6 in the evening.

I parked my rented Skoda, a Czech-made mini-station wagon (recommended) next to a little van that sported a Europcar tag and put the keys in a mailbox at the counter inside leaving a note in Franglish that said I was sorry to be late.. I looked a round for a taxi but there was only a single Mercedes station wagon parked at the corner. It had left-hand drive and that meant the driver, in chauffeur’s garb, was likely to speak English and might know what the taxi situation might be. When I walked up he seemed to recognize me and began to go on about the Bishop coming late and the group from America just landing. During this interval a plane did land and soon four busses drove up and began to load up the stream of chattering Americans who emerged from the once-empty terminal. They were followed by another stream of people in wheelchairs and folks needing assistance of some sort to get into the busses. This was a charter run by a group called Hosanna House bringing pilgrims to the shrine at Lourdes. Millions come to the grotto near Lourdes where Bernadette claims to have encountered the Virgin Mary early in the last century. Taking the water or just being in the place where this miracle occurred is supposed to have healing effects. The group moved out of the terminal and onto the busses and then disappeared in fairly good order, leaving me, once again, in a deserted airport. I’d managed to call a cab, but he came after al the activity. The experience was more or less religious in its strangeness. Today, I think I could use some of the water.

At the hotel we had a briefing session and the ride leaders passed out our commemorative jerseys, stocks of energy bars and gel, a “livre de route”—or ride guide with maps and emergency contact information, hotel descriptions, anything and everything that could help us with the next 10 days on the road. Geordie Probert, one of the primary organizers warned us that there’d be plenty of riding and not to get too exuberant when we headed off into the mountains. All this was conducted while we sipped a kir and nibbled on hors d’ouvres; very nice little salmon, cucumber, cheese and other mysteries on bread rounds. The dinner was a entrecote followed by a lot of pasta. The group was getting to know each other and that was made easier by a common past experience for most of having been to Mallorca for a Roche biking camp or holiday.

The next day is not going to be one of the better days of our version of the Tour, we’re going to have to bus 3 hours to a place a long the route and then ride along the race course hopefully up the next to last climb of the stage which starts in Toulouse and ends in Ax-le-Thermes. We ride across the northern foothills of the Pyrénées until we get to the small town of Puivert. It features a ruined castle from the times of the Albigensian Heresy, known in these parts as the Cathar Legend. Basically, this was an extension of the Inquisition that sent Simon de Montfort into the area to rid the region of some more or less free-thinkers. We rode through the heart of Cathar land, also near Rennes le Chateau where the mystery written about in the recent best seller, The Da Vinci Code was once entombed. It was a bit familiar to me because Diana and I toured through the area when we stayed near Carcassone three years prior. We were ignorant of the mysteries of the Cathars and Jesus Christ’s supposed descendents at that time and it was just a very nice part of France. Now it holds mysteries for novel readers, to the delight of local chambers of commerce.

The route took us and the peloton of the Tour through some magnificent gorges cut through the hard rock of the Pyrénées. The effect is spectacular, and scary in a way as a narrow road threads its way along a fast moving river and we were carrying on at 32 kph in a tight peloton ourselves. The first-day adrenalin had kicked in and the better riders in the group were pushing along the uphill grade at a race pace. I hung on for an hour at that speed and then slowed for the last 15 minutes before I reached our picnic spot at the foot of the col de Pailhiers. This was a category one climb of eleven or so kilometers. Given the heat of the day, the smart money was on there being a break of 10 or so with no key people in it. It didn’t run out that way.

The plan was for folks to picnic at noon and then go on up the climb as far as we could. But we were stopped 500 meters down the road at a local bar and cross roads. The gendarmes are being a bit tighter than they have been in the past and few, if any riders are getting very far after they close the road. This is supposed to occur an hour in advance of the arrival of the publicity caravan that, itself, precedes the race by an hour or more. Given my spirited ride, I chose to just lie down in the dry grass for a bit and chat with the very nice, stout man in a straw hat who had come from Narbonne with his wife, her sisters and his son. He was a jolly sort and quite pleased to be in the company of the Stephan Roche group, Americans in general, and some neat bikes. His equally rubicund and pleasant son was having a great time checking out the bikes and grabbing the souvenirs that were thrown from the publicity caravan out of decorated trucks and vehicles done up in the shapes of teapots, satellites, bicycles and generally odd inexplicable shapes that must have depicted some product or other.

The arrival of the racers was anxiously awaited by most of us. The Frenchmen in the group sat, blasé, under the portable sun tent and read the newspaper; the Americans readied their digital cameras and video recorders, the Brits stood watching intently from some shady spot or other. The progress of the racers along their route is heralded by the hovering helicopters that carry the television cameras and the communications links. Then there’s a rush of red and black cars and motorcycles with photographers and television cameramen (including Laurent Jalabert, last year’s favorite French rider who seems to get more applause in his new role as a TV commentator than the peloton does). Inside this rush are 10 riders; a break did emerge, and it includes a US Postal rider, Rubiera and that means something’s up. Also in the break is Carlos Sastre, Tyler Hamilton’s teammate and the eventual winner of the stage. As the peloton passed three minutes or so later, it looked like there were many tired riders. It was apparent close up that the heat was getting to them. George Hincapie’s face was a picture of heat stress and Lance Armstrong wasn’t looking completely cool, himself.

When the trailing, much shorter retinue of trucks and vans passed, Pierre from Belgium and I took off with the goal of getting to Quillan to see the remainder of the race at a bar. As it was we raced into Axat, the first town we came to, and a local bar was full of folks watching the climb that was underway. It was getting clearer by the way the race was turning out that Armstrong was in trouble. Ullrich, Mayo and Vinokurov were able to stay with him and even attack him, which they did on the next climb. When they finished the initial ascent, we got back on our bikes and raced into Quillan at 45-50 kph. In the middle of that little riverside town was an open air big-screen TV and we stopped and watched the exciting last 6 kilometers that saw Ullrich gain time on Armstrong. We were then back on our bikes for the climb out of Quillan, five km at 7 percent or so which was tough given the lingering heat, but I made it not too far behind the lead group. At least I kept one of the Belgians in sight. A fast downhill for 11 kilometers and we were back in the bus headed to Beaudéan near Bagneres de Bigorre for a late dinner.

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