Climbing to the Mythic Cols on the Tour de Noise

We arrived in Beaudéan just as it was getting dark, which is pretty late at this latitude in July. Geordie the tour leader informed us that the town was ‘en fete’ and there might be some interesting things to see and do. Most every town of any size in France has a summer festival and usually this involves a small fair, some entertainment and a lot of drinking and dancing. Unfortunately, our hotel was on the main street that was used by the fete-ers to get to and from the drinking. After a very heavy dinner centered on local cuisine—pork, lardons (bacon bits that are half fat), and duck gizzards—and accompanied by some rather substantial red wine from the region, we found ourselves post-prandially stupefied and more or less locked into the hotel. The proprietor thought it best to keep the town party-goers from wondering in late at night seeking more drink after the festival gave out and seemingly hid the key. No matter, we were dead tired.

Our sleep was fitful at best and nonexistent when two sporty chaps decided to settle the issue of who was to leave their parking spot first by having a horn duel—something perhaps typical of this region. Trouble was this was all happening just below our windows I tried to settle it by ripping the toilet out of the floor and hurling it onto the guys who were leaning on their horns, at least that was my intention, but the thing was bolted down too tightly and the desk in the room seemed to flimsy for actual homicide. While I wandered the halls of the hotel in a naked state seeking appropriately heavy things to hurl from the window, they stopped. Luckily, none of the ladies in our group chose to do the same to the noise makers so I returned for a few hours kip.

The next morning we took another early ride out after a nice breakfast that included more ham, lardons and the now-usual mountain of bread. Our goal was a ride up and over the col d’Aspin, which would be part of the Tour the next day and then to go to the finish town, with an option for the stronger riders to go up the col de Peyresourde, also a climb in the next day’s killer stage. The Aspin climb was fine for me, 8 or so kilometers of rising road but nothing un-doable. I settled into a reasonable pace and made it over the top where we all assembled for pictures and to take in the atmosphere. At the top of this mountain pass there was nothing permanent but the hill was alive with people in campers and tents and just milling around getting ready for the next day’s stage of the Tour.

The ride down the hill into Loudenvielle le Lourdon was as wild a cycling thing as I have ever done. One doesn’t notice the passing traffic too much when you’re struggling uphill thinking only of whether your right calf or left thigh is about to seize. The big campers and trucks passing you on the road are also going relatively slowly and you have time to get out of their way or they move over enough to avoid you. But when you start to go downhill after conquering this “col mythique” and someone talks about how good a descender they are, and me being not at all gravity-challenged and far too competitive for my body’s sake, the whole character of the ride changes from Jekyll to Hyde. At first it’s not so bad as the road doesn’t show its tight bends right off and we get to speeds up to and over 70 kph; piece of cake. Then a Karrimor camper blows past me when I brake slightly for a turn, then several cars go past, really fast. In 100 meters they all slow down for a slowly descending rider and we, in turn pass the vehicles on their left. This game of speed up and pass and re-pass and diving in and out goes on for the 6 of the 8 kilometers downhill. One of the guys in the group, an otherwise mild mannered French fellow of 55 or so, is charging down and splits away from me at the front. He gets past three campers we have caught up with but I’m pushed back in the line by advancing traffic and at that point, I regain my senses and slow down to the plain old death defying speed of the vehicular traffic. Besides, I have no feeling in either of my hands as they have been gripped tightly on the bars and brake hoods.

The intensity of the atmosphere surrounding the ride rises as we near the Ville Arrivée (arrival village), Loudenvielle le Lourdon, which has been transformed into a cycling circus. The village spends most of its life as a mountain resort base and there’s a few shops, but certainly not enough for the thousands of people working for the Tour or coming to see the finish; but everything seems to work fine. There’s a huge crowd all round but no real wait at the little general store to get juice, a melon to snack on, and a beer or two. We’ve arrived three hours before the finish but the entertainment is in full swing with go-go dancers on the PMU stage. (PMU is the parimutuel betting company that sponsors the green jersey—the prize for the best sprinter over the course of the Tour). There are jugglers and musicians and on the course itself some guys riding old replica bicycles and wearing period clothes. It’s hard to think these original riders wore wool outfits and more or less long pants, carried spare tires over their shoulders, bought their own food and drink along the way and had a single gear to work with. A very bright rider in the 20s came up with the idea of putting a small gear for flat riding on one side of his rear wheel and a bigger gear for getting up hills on the other side. To change gears, you simply stop the bike, take off the rear wheel turn it around, replace it and off you go. Henri Desgrange, the founder of the Tour de France deplored this reliance on machine advantage and banned it for a while.

We’re “pique-nique”-ing at the 200 meter to the finish mark just where the cars are diverted off the road when the riders finish. The “boys” set up our tent and get out the box lunches and prepare to settle in for the show. The finish line is actually hard to see, obscured by the big portable VIP stands and the press and TV stands. People who come without credentials get to line the road from the 150 meter-to-go sign on off, seemingly into infinity, along the course.

I wander around looking into the back of the press area and spot the OLN tent and they are just getting ready to tape. I can see Bob Roll sitting on the set in the tent and manage a “hey Bob” shout. Surprisingly he waves back and motions me to come in. I go over to the gate but the invitation obviously did not sway the security person so I stay on my side of the fence. Bob’s got work to do anyway.

Just beyond the OLN tent is a marvelous example of someone’s Gallic notion of propriety. It is a portable pissoir, a big plastic thing with four urinals, all open to the outside and the whole affair is backed up to the surrounding fence. To avoid indiscrete exposure, the pissoir is shielded from the people inside the fence by a half-round of fence, but its completely open to the chain-link fence that keeps the public out. If you want to see Bob Roll pee, here’s your chance. Nah.

There are celebrities about and one of them is the past Tour winner and our group sponsor, Stephen Roche. He comes by as he is going to be interviewed for France 2 television by a retired French rider who won a stage on Bastille day—a signal event for a French cyclist. The TV crew comes by and chats about what to do. Someone has the bright idea that this all should happen on the finishing straight with the group seeming to arrive just as Stephen is being interviewed about his work with cycling tour groups. In typical TV hurry up at the last minute style, we are told to put on our special commemorative jerseys, grab a bike and get to the finish area. This is to be done immediately given the pending arrival of the race, so we grab whatever bike is nearest and get on the course and are told to bunch up and ride toward the finish. Hey, I’m riding to the Arrivée banner I see on television, on a bicycle that doesn’t fit with pedals that don’t match my shoes, but I’m happy. We’re stopped short of the finish by 50 meters and the interview goes on. Just then a fellow dressed up in multi-colored clothing and a umbrella hat carrying a Basque flag steps into the shot and tries to make some point. The gendarmes hustle him away and we’re asked to go back up the road and do it all again. This is not easy to do when you’re on a strange bike and you really can’t keep your feet on the pedals, but we manage. All of this takes 7 minutes and then we’re hustled off the course and back to our picnic spot to wait for the finish.

The race gets dramatic; we listen to the race announcer over loudspeakers that line that last 15 kilometers of the course, the one nearest us is right by the tent. The announcer constantly sprinkles his commentary with plugs for the race sponsors and practically complete histories of each rider he mentions. Then the helicopters arrive and the riders shoot around the corner past us, with Simoni winning in a sprint and Lance coming in a trailing group. It’s apparent he’s had to struggle.

Folks in the group who stayed up on the Peyresourde to watch that climb and see Lance close up, say he looked green, others said he looked white as a sheet. Interestingly, he and Ullrich worked together to keep Vinokurov from getting away and at the end of the day, LA is still in yellow as Simoni beats a heavily favored Virenque at the finish. Richard Virenque, a French rider from the Cote d'Azur town of Hyeres, is cheered everywhere he goes and many hand-painted signs supporting him appear along the route, not a few held up by young girls who are obviously struck by the handsome French rider with the dubious past—he was banned for a year for taking drugs in the so-called "Festina Affair." The team sponsored by the Festina watch company was busted by the French police during the 1998 Tour and found to have been rather liberally using banned substances.

The race that follows each day's stage, the race to get out of town, has me chasing a US Postal team car which has, I think, LA in the back seat. I burn myself out catching up but the back side window is very dark and, if it is Lance, he has nothing on his mind but getting as much fluid out of the bottle stuck in his mouth. Off they zoom and I’m just left to recover a bit and descend very fast down to our rendezvous point along with speeding team cars and riders who’ve spent the day in the sun. Another fast race downhill, but the unwritten rule seems to be to get everyone home alive and there's a touch less madness on the road.

We get on the bus in our cycling gear and ride to Lourdes where we are to stay the next two nights. As we maneuver the big bus through the rather narrow streets of this city my eyes grow wider as the spectacle of its primary activity unfolds. This town, home to Bernadette’s grotto and her 15 encounters with the Virgin Mary in the 1850s, is packed with people. The place reputedly has more hotel rooms than Paris and they are all located seemingly within wheelchair distance of the grotto. The town probably has 40,000 year-round residents but millions upon millions of visitors, most seeking to draw on the purported healing powers of the place and its water. The streets are literally alive with people well into the night. The many, many, religious-themed shops are doing a roaring trade in illuminated Madonnas, crucifixes and rosary beads along with pictures of cuddly dogs on plates, glass snow domes, Notre Dame pencil and pen sets, and awkward reproductions of the photos taken of Bernadette later in her life (She died in the 20s and was later canonized in the 1960s after long struggle by her true believers to convince the Vatican that she really did see what she said she saw). All this is right next to brasseries and bars which are also packed with people drinking wine and beer and basically having a good old non-religious time. Some of these revelers are church types themselves and I see a few priests with their collars undone happily slurping down pints of ‘1664’ beer. There are gaggles of boy scouts, uniformed groups of young girls affiliated with some arm of the blessed virgin’s secular realm, clouts of nuns, priests and, of course, the halt and lame—all mill through the streets along the river that runs through the town center cheek-by-cowl with the cycling set and other holiday makers more intent on the summery weather than salvation. Perhaps attracted by the Tour there are also a few ladies of the night dressed seductively. I turn to Ben, the Irish veterinarian who is riding with our group and opine that “It’s good to see some whores in a holy place.”

We have late night drinks with Roche himself; he’s wearing his “Prix de Combativité” marked polo shirt. He works the Tour for the Coeur de Lion cheese company which sponsors a prize for the rider who attacks the most in any stage. Roche accurately predicted the next day’s result having talked to people close to Lance who told him LA was getting stronger, having really blown himself out in the time trial.

I approached the former Maillot Jaune to say hello, and I reminded him of our first encounter when, on the roads of Mallorca at his cycling camp, I was in a bit of trouble pedaling hard to keep up with a fast group. At that moment he passed me and as he passed he looked over and said, “You ride like a duck. Go see Claude.” This actually was a good thing because my riding position was all wrong and later that evening Claude Escalon was able to get me fitted properly. Claude is one of the organizers of the tour group and a whiz with cycling technique. He was a directeur sportif for the likes of Paul Sherwin and Robert Millar when they first came to France. His knowledge and his cycling acquaintances have opened several doors for us into the hidden parts of the Tour and would do so over and again as we rolled on through France.

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