Home Again

By the time you read this, I'll be on my way home or already there.  Back to my "normal" life!

If you don't hear from me for a day or two, it's probably because Marlee wouldn't let go of me.  I guess I can't blame her if she's upset:  After all, I spent a week away, a couple of days home, and more than a week away again.  So far, I've been home for only three days in 2019!

Will the rest of the year be a journey?  For the world, it might be an arduous one, to say the least. It might be for me, too, but I hope that it will be as interesting and fun as it's been so far!

Because They Are Able

The Place de la Concorde is one of the world's most impressive public squares.  The first time I saw it, however, I tried to imagine it "covered with blood," as more than one writer of the time described it, as members of the French nobility and royal family were guillotined.

I have seen other beautiful places with terrible histories.  Sometimes their histories make their beauty all the more wonderful, in much the way lilacs are (and smell even better) because they bud and bloom at the end of winter.  

(Last week, I clipped some that were growing in a lot near the RFK Memorial Bridge.  They're some of the latest I recall picking or buying, and their scent was all the more intoxicating because it seemed our winter simply would not end.)

All of this brings me to Elliot Lake, Ontario.  It's in the northern part of the Canadian province, above Lake Huron.  I've never been there, but the photos I've seen are enticing.  I hear that people go there for outdoor sports--or to retire.

Not so long ago, however, it was known as the "uranium capital of the world."  Just about any kind of mining is dangerous to the miners and the place being mined:  All you have to do is look at parts of West Virginia and Southeastern Colorado to know that.  The Elliott Lake area is no exception.  Though it doesn't seem to have suffered the environmental devastation some mining areas incurred, plenty of miners and other workers were injured, disabled or even killed while doing their jobs--not to mention those who got sick from uranium poisoning.  

Well, today some cyclists are going to set off from Elliot Lake and ride 170 kilometers to two other former mining centers in Ontario:  Massey and Sudbury.  What's interesting about this ride is that some of the cyclists were themselves injured or made ill on their jobs.  Friends and family members will ride with them, in part to support injured workers, but also to protest the cuts in benefits paid to such workers.

France Wins--Or, At Least, Survives

La France Survit!  La France Survit!

That's more or less what my French friends and I have been exclaiming to each other.  Yes, France survives!  Emanuel Macron won the presidential election over Donald Trump-in-a-dress-who-speaks-French.

It's really appropriate that his victory came the day before V-E (Victory In Europe) Day.  More than one commentator has said that Macron's ascent is not just a victory for France, but for all of Europe.

I am inclined to agree, though I admit I'm far from being an expert on such things.  I am just happy that enough people didn't fall for the nonsense about making their country "great" again or "bringing back" jobs that were lost to automation rather than outsourcing.

For now, I am willing to take victory wherever I can find it--and celebrate.  Vincenzo Nibali has the right idea:

Un Coq Citroen Repair Station

When I was living in France, I did a few things--some of them entirely laughable, in retrospect--to make myself feel as if I had "gone native", if you will.

I didn't wear a beret: I soon discovered that, even then (more than three decades ago) only very old men and clochards wore them--or, at least, the kind they sell to tourists. Some farmers, particularly in the central and southwestern parts of the country, still wore the Basque-style beret, which has a larger diameter "crown" than the berets artists and wannabes perched on their crania when they smoked and sipped away their nights in cafes and bars.

Ironically, I wore berets after I returned to the US.  And I continued a few other habits as a way of asserting my Frenchness, or at least my French influences, in the face of the yahoo-ism of the Reagan and Bush I administrations.

While in France, I purchased and wore a few things that were all but unknown in the US at the time.  One was a wool French (Breton) fisherman's sweater.  It was the genuine article, knit from heavy dark navy wool with cream-colored horizontal stripes and buttons on the left shoulder.  Other Gallic accoutrements I acquired and wore included a sweatsuit, bike jersey and shoes from a company called Le Coq Sportif.

Now you can see the tricolore rooster everywhere.  But in those days, you pretty much had to be in France, or perhaps a neighboring country, (Remember:  There was no Amazon or eBay!)  in order to see, let alone wear, that quintessentially French emblem.

Another thing that could mark you as a French person was driving a Citroen.  Renault was still selling cars in the US; so was Peugeot, but their motorized vehicles weren't nearly as ubiquitous as their bicycles.  For a long time, I resolved that if I were to buy a car or van, it would be a Citroen because, well, you couldn't get anything more French than a vehicle with a chevron badge.

Well, Le Coq Sportif and Chevron have joined forces. The occasion is the 70th anniversary of the Type H van.  If you watch old French films, you've seen those boxy mini-trucks driven by farmers and urban delivery couriers.  You still see them in France.

Since both companies have long associations with bicycle racing in France and other countries, it makes sense that their collaboration would produce this:

It's something else I saw for the first time in France:  a mobile bicycle workshop.  

Vive la France!  I just hope they don't elect their own version of Trump.

Collecting 200 Years Of Bikes

There are all sorts of great reasons to visit the Bourgogne region of France.  There are the food and wine, of course.  If you're interested in art, history or architecture, the place is a treasure-trove.  And the cycling is great.  I know:  three of my bike tours included excursions to the area.

Speaking of which:  In 2010, la Musee du Velo opened in the town of Tournus, which is also home to l'Eglise de Saint Philbert, one of the oldest and best surviving examples of Romanesque architecture.  Earlier, the Musee had been in nearby Cormatin, where it closed due to financial reasons in 2007.  

I saw the museum in its earlier location.  France is known for such monumental museums as the Louvre and Orsay, but small, quirky places like the Musee du Velo are found all over the country.  (If you're in Saumur, you simply must check out the Musee du Champignon. Really!)  

One of the things that makes the Musee du Velo so interesting is its collection.  It includes a version of the hobby-horse Karl van Drais created 200 years ago and is considered, by some, to be the first bicycle.  

Another fascinating artifact is this brake on an 1869 bike:

I hear someone's still trying to break that saddle in!

There are also a number of penny-farthing (high-wheel) machines and one of the first Tour de France bikes to use a derailleur in 1937, when such mechanisms were first permitted in the Tour.

I got a kick out of this 1938 triplet

with its drop bars in front and two moustache bars (No, Grant Petersen didn't invent them!) for the "stokers".  If you want to turn your kids into tandem riders, there is this:

If their legs tire out, let one of them ride this 1950 machine

which can be propelled by pumping the handlebars from side to side!

In addition to these and other bikes, the museum has a fantastic collection of Tour de France memorabilia, items from chinaware to match boxes with images of bicycles and cyclists, and what might be the most beautiful collection of bicycle bells in the world.

The museum's collection might be said to have begun with this:

which was used by a fellow named Michel Grezaud.  He was a butcher in the area during the 1950s who used that trike to make deliveries.

He is also the one who amassed the museum's collection and, with his wife Josette, founded the original museum.  Sadly, he did not live to see it in its new location.

The "Veldeev"

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you've probably noticed that I'm very much interested in history.  It was my minor as an undergraduate; it was my love of writing--and my desire to "become a writer"--that steered me into an English Literature major.  I don't regret that choice because--as you've probably noticed--I love literature, too.  

Sometimes I think another reason I didn't major in history and pursue further formal study in it was that I sensed, somehow, that I would have to learn it on my own.  I knew that even with the best of instructors, so much would be omitted or edited out.  Sometimes, I would learn, the instructors don't even know what was omitted or censored.

Now, of course, the same can be said for literature. The difference, though, is that literature or writing classes cannot, by definition, be all-inclusive.  There are simply too many writers, works, genres and other factors to consider. 

 Also, when we edit or omit a reading list for a literature course, it doesn't have the same consequences as it does with a history class. That is not to say there are no consequences:  As someone who earned her undergraduate degree at a time when "the canon" consisted entirely of DWMs--Dead White Males--I know, at least somewhat, what it's like to be left out of what's considered "culture" or "education".  

Still, my assigning Macbeth instead of Othello or Hamlet in an intro to literature class does not shortchange my students in the same way as, say, teaching students that Hawai'i became our 50th state the year before, ahem, Obama was born in it while failing to tell them something about the Islands' pre-American history.   Or mentioning the times we came to the aid of allies during times of war while failing to point out, say, the US occupation of Haiti (which I learned about from one of my students during my second year of teaching).

OK, so why am I talking about all of this on a bike blog?  Well, it relates to something in my cycling life.  

During my first European bike tour, I passed through Paris before returning to it two months later.  During that first sojourn, I stayed in a hostel just outside the city.  There, I heard someone mention something about "Veldeev". 

A six-day race at the "Veldeev".  By Henri Cartier-Bresson

At first I thought that person was using some sort of slang they don't teach in American French classes.  Indeed it was: the expression was short for "Velodrome d'Hiver".  (The "h" is silent, and the "i" is pronounced like a long "e" in English.)  So I asked that person where I might find it.

"La rue Nelaton, pres de la Tour Eiffel.  La metro Bir-Hakim."

On the rue Nelaton, near the Eiffel Tower.  (She wasn't lying about that!)  And, as people in Paris often do, she gave me the nearest subway station:  Bir-Hakim.  But of course, I didn't take the Metro.  I could see the Tower, about seven or eight kilometers away, from the hostel, so I just pedaled in the direction of it. And, when I got there, a gendarme gave me a clear response to my "Ou est la rue Nelaton?" It must have been clear: At that time, I don't know whether my French or navigational skills were worse, but I still got to the site.

One problem, though:  there was no Velodrome there.  The young woman I met in the hostel, who was from Belgium, probably thought I was on some sort of Holocaust pilgrimage. Perhaps I was, subconsciously.

At one time, "Veldeev" was one of the world's most important bicycle racing tracks.  It had a glass ceiling (How would I have felt about that if I'd had more of a feminist consciousness at the time?) , making it one of the first such facilities capable of hosting events year-round:  hence the name. ("Hiver" means "winter".)  At that time, there was just a non-descript plaque on an even more non-descript building commemorating a non-cycling event that took place there.



I am referring to "La Rafle du Velodrome d'Hiver", or "The Velodrome d'Hiver roundup".  It had been scheduled for 14 July 1942, but apparently someone realized that it would be terrible public relations to hold such an event on Bastille Day.  So, it was postponed by two days, but that re-scheduling did not blunt the horror of what happened there.

For two terrible days, thousands of Parisian Jews were taken from their homes and workplaces and brought--in French buses driven by French drivers and guarded by French police officers, in an attempt to keep up the fiction that these workers, and therefore the nation, was not under the control of the Nazis--to the race track.

It was bad enough that there wasn't enough room for the internees to lie down.  But, as the name indicates, the track, with its glass ceiling, was intended for winter racing.  The captives were held there on some of the hottest days of what was one of the hottest summers in Paris history.  And the glass had been painted dark blue to avoid attracting the attention of bomber navigators.

 As if that weren't bad enough, exits and other facilities (including bathrooms)that could have provided ventilation--in their captors' eyes, a means of escape-- were sealed off.  So, people were getting sick from heat exhaustion, combined with the lack of sanitary facilities and food:  Only food brought by the Quakers and other groups, as well as a few doctors and nurses from the Red Cross, were allowed in.

After their confinement in a facility where motion--in the form of racing--had been celebrated, 13,152 people were herded--in some cases, more dead than alive--onto buses to the Pithiviers internment camp, about 100 km southeast of Paris, then packed into trains, mainly to Auschwitz.  Only 400 survived.

Even that first time I saw the "Veldeev" plaque, I couldn't photograph it or the site.  On subsequent visits, as I came to know more about the event, it became even less possible for me to make an image of it, or the memorial that was built to it on the nearby Quai de Grenelle:  any photo I could have taken would have seemed banal in comparison to the suffering that took place.

As for the Vel d'Hiv itself: Events, cycling and otherwise (There had been everything from circuses to boxing matches to theatre performances inside the track's oval.) were less frequent after the war, and it fell into disrepair.  During the last six-day race (featuring Jacques Anquetil and other top riders) held there, in November 1958, electrical cables hung from loops.  And, before that race, the roof had leaked when rain fell.

The following year, fire destroyed part of the "Vel" and the rest of it was razed.  There has not been a velodrome in Paris proper since then.  

What I Could Have Done, And What I Did

After you read what you're about to read, you might decide that you won't ever read this blog again.  I understand.

Here goes:  I was in Paris on the last day of the Tour de France.  And I wasn't among the throngs that lined the Champs Elysees for the finish.

Why?, you ask. Well, for one thing I have a general aversion to being in crowds these days.  I have stood along the world's second-most famous thoroughfare (after Broadway in NYC) on two other occasions for the finish of the race.  I have also been on the side of the road, in other parts of France, where other stages of the Tour passed. I just don't get the same thrill about such things that I once did.

For another thing:  I hardly ever attend sporting events anymore.  It's not that I don't like sports:  I once wrote about them for a newspaper.  Rather, I am not crazy about the way many different sports, from baseball to basketball to bicycle racing, have devolved.  Too much is decided, I feel, by drugs and other kinds of technology, compared to events past.

Which brings me to my final point:  This Tour, like the past few, didn't have the storylines  of Tours past.  Even when everyone expected Eddy Mercx, Bernard Hinault or Miguel Indurain to win (as they usually did), they could generate more drama than any of the current riders.

Finally,  I just cannot bear to watch Chris Froome.  I don't have anything against him winning:  He's worked hard and, as far as anybody knows, hasn't used drugs.  But he is the most awkward-looking rider I've ever seen at the front of a major race.  As long as no one can prove he's cheated, I have no problem with his winning the Tour.  But that doesn't mean I have to watch him.

So, after filling myself up at the hotel's breakfast buffet, instead of going to the Tour, I got a (relatively) early start on a gorgeous morning and found myself pedaling streets that were all but deserted--even in places as popular with tourists (or heavily used by delivery drivers) as the Boulevard St. Michel, St. Germain des Pres and Trocadero.  I really felt--to borrow a cliche--that Paris belonged to me.

But, most important of all, I spent the afternoon and early evening with one of my friends, the man she married last year and a friend of theirs who was very friendly toward me.

As I mentioned in earlier posts, Michele and I had not seen each other in a number of years before I saw her last August, in this city.  She was just a few weeks away from marrying the man who is now her husband.  I saw her again in New York in May, with her husband Alec, near the end of their belated honeymoon trip.

An old Italian proverb says that a good meal can keep a person content for a week.  I tend to agree with that.  I'd say the same for a good bike ride or a few other things (some of which can't be mentioned on a PG-13 blog ;-) ).  And, as much as I love good food and writing, as well as cycling, i can't help but to think that nothing can keep me happy longer than a good time with an old friend.

Helene Dutrieu: She Did It Without A Corset!

For better or worse, everyone knows Lance Armstrong's name.  And, for a time, all Americans--whether or not they'd ever even touched a bicycle--knew about Greg LeMond, who won the Tour de France three times in the late 1980s.

And, of course, everyone who has even the slightest familiarity with bicycle racing has heard of a guy named Eddy Mercx.  For that matter, you don't have to be intimately connected to the sport to recognize names like Bernard Hinault, Fausto Coppi and Jacques Anquetil.

The fame of female cyclists, however, tends to be much more fleeting.  Most of what I know about them--including the ones I've written about on this blog--I learned by accident. 

Now I can add Helene Dutrieu to my list. Given her accomplishments, it's almost criminal that she's not better-known. 

She was born on 10 July 1877 in Tournai, Belgium--perhaps not coincidentally, the birthplace of Clovis I.  When she was a young girl, she moved with her family to Lille, in the north of France.  At age 14, she left school to earn a living.

I couldn't find any information about her first job(s).  But, at some point, her older brother Eugene inspired her to follow his career path:  bicycle racing.  In 1893, at age 16, she set the women's world record for distance cycled in one hour.  Three years later, she won the world women's track cycling championship and reprised her title the following year. 

Helene Dutrieu racing for the La Chaine Simpson team.

During that time, she won a twelve-day race in England and raced for the Simpson Lever Chain (La Chaine Simpson) team, immortalized in a Toulouse-Lautrec illustration.   In 1898,  she won the Grand Prix d'Europe.   Belgium's King Leopold II awarded her the le Croix d' St. Andre with diamonds in honor of her exploits as a cyclist.

Toulouse-Lautrec illustration of Constance Huret  in a pursuit race.

Her velocipedic virtuosity was matched by her daring:  She gained, perhaps, as much renown as a stunt cyclist, first on a bicycle and, later, on a motorcycle.  She created a stunt--a jump of about 15 meters on a bicycle--called "La Fleche Humaine" (the Human Arrow), which became her nickname.

In reading about her, I came away with the impression that she was, first and foremost, a performer.  In addition to her feats of athleticism and daring, she also gained renown as an actress, appearing on such stages as the Theatre des Capucines.  During that time--from 1903 to 1909-- she also was a stunt driver, first on motorcycles and, later, in automobiles.

Dutrieu in a Henry Farman-type two-seater, circa 1911.

That the public and press loved her didn't escape the notice of Clement-Bayard de Levallois, the company that sponsored her as a stunt and race car driver.  They were about to introduce their new aeroplane--the Santos-Dumont No. 19 Demoiselle.  Especially with a name like that ("Demoiselle", as you probably know, means "young lady"), who would be a better candidate to be its first pilot than Ms. Dutrieu.

In those days, flying was truly not for the faint of heart--or heavy of body.  Those machines didn't have much power and, thus, couldn't bring much weight aloft.  Naturally petite and trim--and fit from her years of cycling--Helene Dutrieu thus had advantages over nearly every other pilot candidate.  Though her first flight ended in a crash--not unusual in 1908-- she quickly developed a following that grew with the skills she developed as a pilot.  In fact, she was the first woman to fly an aircraft bearing a passenger, and would become the fourth woman (and first Belgian woman) in history to earn a flying license, which she would need to enter competitions.  La Fleche Humaine soon would be known as La Femme Epervier (the Lady Hawk).

One thing to remember was that in those days, in most of the world (including her native Belgium and France), women didn't have the right to vote, or many other rights.  And we were thought biologically incapable of doing many of the things we do today.  So, while the public loved seeing her fly, her sponsor was also capitalizing on a subtext of her exploits:  This plane is so easy to fly that a woman can do it!    

 

Gender norms in those days were more rigid, both literally and figuratively, in other ways.  So, while people were enthusiastic about Dutrieu's exploits, they expected her--as they would expect any other woman--to adhere to the standards of modesty of the time.  The biggest scandal about her, then, was not a result of  any of her daring feats, but in doing them--as the press discovered accidentally--without a corset! 

(Because she was so thin, I have no idea of how that terrifying fact was discovered!)

But that didn't seem to bother Pierre Lafitte.  He published Femina, one of France's most popular women's magazines.  An early aviation enthusiast, in 1910 he announced a prize for the longest flight--in both distance and time aloft--by a woman in an aeroplane.  Dutrieu flew 167 kilometers in 2.6 hours to win the title, which she defended the following year.  She would fly in the air-show circuit for another two years before retiring in 1913, after France awarded her the Legion d'honneur.



When Dutrieu won the Coup Femina in 1910, a woman named Marie Marvingt finished second, flying 42 kilometers in 53 minutes.  Interestingly, their careers turned in the same direction with the outbreak of World War I:  both became ambulance drivers!

So, like so many pioneers in the worlds of automobiles and aviation--and women's achievement--Helene Dutrieu started her revolution with revolutions--of her pedals.  Her journey ended in Paris on 26 June 1961, at the age of 83.

With An Old Friend, Again. At Least We Didn't Have To Wait As Long This Time!

Yesterday I had a long work day.  The end of the semester is near, so some students are in, or nearing, Full Panic Mode.  Some are just naturally nervous, while others simply procrastinated or skipped classes (not realizing just how many classes they'd skipped!) and now want to "save" their semesters.

So, I got to ride only for a short time after work on a sunny day that's the warmest we've had so far this year.  But I'm not complaining:  I had dinner and drinks with someone special.

Michele, one of my French friends, was in town with Alec--her new husband. She married him in September, not long after my trip to Paris in August.  Although I saw her then, I didn't get to see him.  He is charming and funny, just like all of those Frenchmen you've always heard about. 

Like Michele, he is recently retired, a few years earlier than most Americans.  (Gotta love the French system, huh?)  They actually met, they explained, when they were 18 years old and in Spain.  After returning to France, they went to school, took jobs, married and had kids by other people, and did all of those other things one does for about half of one's life.  And they got divorced. After being out of touch for 35 years, Michele said, he called her one day out of the blue.  But they didn't start dating until a number of years later.  Now they are ready to spend their lives traveling and enjoying each other's company, they said.

And, needless to say, I enjoyed theirs.  We promised that we'd "reconnaitre bientot"--get together again, soon! 

Another Long Lunch And Late Ride--And A Confession

Today I enjoyed another long lunch with another French friend I hadn't seen in a long time.  And I took another late bike ride.

I had seen Michele more recently than I'd seen Jay, but we agreed that it had been trope longue. Interestingly, my conversation with her--like my conversation with Jay--was not a sentimental repetition of temps perdus.  Rather, we picked up where we'd left off eight years ago, when she came to New York.

That is probably a good thing because, since we last met, the friend who brought us together--Janine--died.  Michele is nine years older than I am, as Janine was, so it's hard not to think of aging and mortality and other related topics.  That may be the reason why we didn't dwell on the past. 

She asked me the question she didn't ask when I told her, via e-mail, that I was coming to Paris.  I said, only half-jokingly, "Donald Trump sera le president."  She chuckled in the way one does when one could just as well sigh:  She knows that neither his election nor the prospect that it would drive someone like me out of my own country is out of the question.

Perhaps I shouldn't worry so much about The Donald going to Washington.  After all, he might make the White House look something like this:

I took that photo of the Versailles palace from about a kilometer up the road.  You can see all of that gold glitter from that far away. 

 

 

Yes, I rode there after Michele and I parted.  In this part of France, there's about half an hour more of light at the end of a summer day than there is In New York or other places at or near the 40th parallel.  All Paris museums are closed on Monday, as is the inside of the home of Le Roi Soleil. But the gardens around the palace were not and, having ridden there during two of my bike tours, I knew the trip would be pleasant.

 

 

 

I also had another motivation for taking the ride.  To tell you about it, I have to make a confession:  I am really a big magpie in a human body.  Why else am I drawn to glittery, shiny things and looking at my reflection in them?

 

 

 

Anyway, the gardens are interesting.  They're so formal that even this bird is all  dressed up. 

 

 

 

Maybe he's going to a party in Paris.

 

 

 

 

Can you beat that for a navigational aid?

  

 

 

 

It's A Great Ride, But It's Even Better If You Don't Crash

By now, you’ve probably heard about John Kerry’s bike crash near Geneva.

Monsieur Kerry

Without getting into politics (All right:  I’m with him on most issues!), I just want to wish him a thorough recovery.

I have long known about, in addition to his politics, his love of French culture.  However, I didn’t know that he brings his bicycle with him on his many trips as Secretary of State.  So now I like him even more.

Although I winced when I heard that he might have broken his leg, I found myself riding, vicariously, on the roads he might have been riding.  I was reliving a ride I took in that area.

If you’ve been there (or even if you’ve looked at a good map), you realize that Geneva is about as close as you can get to France without being in it.  OK, that might be a slight exaggeration.  But only a slight one.  It’s the pendant, if you will, in a necklace of towns that rings Lac Leman, the “official” name of what’s more commonly called Lac de Geneve, or Lake Geneva.

The lake washes up on French as well as Swiss shores to its south and west.  It’s really an inland freshwater sea: Imagine one of the Great Lakes set in the Alps.  I pedaled along a beautiful road within sight of the lake—and, of course, the mountains—from Lausanne to Geneva as part of a ride I took from Paris to Switzerland and back in 1997.  It seemed ironic to me that I was rolling along a flatter road in Switzerland than I was a day earlier, when I rode from Besancon into Pontarlier and crossed the border at Yverdon.   On the other hand, I didn’t have to pedal very far from the lake to do some pretty serious climbing.

That ride from Besancon (one of my favorite cities in France) to Geneva is one of the most beautiful, and most satisfying, I ever took.  It offered just about anything one could want:  arduous climbs and thrilling descents, straightaways on which you feel lighter than air even if you’re riding with full panniers and handlebar bag, beautiful natural scenery, picturesque towns, history and culture, friendly and helpful people (They understand cyclists!) and, of course, great food.

One day I will devote a post, maybe more, to that ride.  I still have to sort through my pictures and have them scanned. (Remember:  We were still using film back then!)  I will also need to look at the journal I kept and cull some of the more interesting, or at least relevant, passages.  That tour gave me so much material!

In a way, I feel bad for John Kerry that he got hurt in such a place:  I wouldn’t want anything to spoil the pleasures of it, even for my worst enemy.  On the other hand, I am sure he is being well cared-for and will be back on his bike sooner than he (or anyone) can say allez!