ON THE AVENUES: Vive le beercyclist!

ON THE AVENUES: Vive le beercyclist!

By ROGER BAYLOR
Local Columnist

In a perfect and thus unattainable world, Bank Street Brewhouse’s opening hours would be precisely synchronized with European clocks and Tour de France starts, allowing me to begin most of my July mornings with espresso, baguettes, gnarly goat cheese and beer.

Unfortunately, the crowd would be small, so as in years past, I’ve asked bar staff to be aware of the race schedule for afternoon replays and highlights. We’ll show what we can, when we can. I’ve seen brief snippets of Le Tour in person on two occasions, in 2001 and 2004. Oddly, both glimpses came not in France, but in Belgium.

The first time was in Lo, a very small town, and the second in Liege, a very large city. Rural or cosmopolitan, the vibrations were identical, and verily, it’s a thrill to be in proximity of the festive atmosphere surrounding the Tour, watching people of all ages gather to view what can be the most fleeting of sporting seconds.

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But first, an obligatory word from the Tour’s sponsors: The mechanized entourage preceding the cyclists’ arrival, equal parts dromedary and circus sideshow. Support vans for the various teams roll through at intervals, and there is no mistaking which corporation pays their freight.

Dozens of vehicles in all shapes and sizes belonging to various subsidiary sponsors dart past, leaving mounds of advertising paraphernalia strewn in their wake. When this colorful parade is over, there is a pause before sirens blast, bells toll, policemen noisily clear the street, and the actual cyclists finally make their appearances.

Consider the timing it requires to plan and execute this procession just ahead of the moving mass of cyclists!

Literally, riding on flat ground, the peloton can go past so incredibly quickly that if you yawn, you’ll miss it. Enterprising spectators then rush back to their cars (or bikes) to take pursuit, and perhaps choose another vantage point further down the road.

But in Lo, it struck me that residents of villages not graced with the Tour’s presence for many decades take a far more leisurely opportunity to make a day of it, first introducing their children and grandchildren to the event’s history, and then watching the pedal-by before returning to their homes for cocktail hour and the evening news.

---Although I’ve done little in 2011 to merit the description, I consider myself a casual, commuting bicyclist. My riding resumed in the late 1990’s after a long hiatus, beginning with a mountain bike for short jaunts only, then graduating to a hybrid – a heavier frame and wider tires.

Only the bicycle’s original frame itself hasn’t been replaced numerous times with replacement components, and I remain atop it today. It has traveled with me to Europe on at least four occasions for the pursuit of beercycling, or the discriminating art of doing just enough riding to justify the beers (and meals) that come afterward.

It is inexcusable hedonism at its finest, though not without informative sightseeing, hearty exercise and enriching camaraderie. If you can bike past a Belgian frites stand without stopping, you’re a better – and thinner – man than I.

In beercycling, one experiences the cityscape and countryside, just not at speeds customarily traveled by Tour de France riders. I weigh twice as much (or more) than most of them, and they climb mountains at the Pyrenees at the same rate I traverse the neutral terrain of Flanders. Their support teams are not at my disposal, although in the early days of the race, riders were compelled to carry everything they needed to make necessary repairs.

And, much as now, the Tour de France’s cyclists used to seek the assistance of performance enhancing substances. A poster on the wall at the Public House shows 1920’s era Tour participants on break, seated on the steps of a café, with admiring children clustered behind them watching intently as they hoisted big mugs of beer.

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Last year, confined stateside, I read “Tour de France: The History, The Legend, The Riders.” It is the revised 2009 edition by Graeme Fife.

Fife, an English amateur cyclist, provides a workably chronological, if sometimes meandering, account of the race’s century-long history, as well as gritty descriptions of his own two-wheeled gonzo ascents of the particularly gruesome climbs expected of riders each year in the Alps and Pyrenees.

These climbs provide instruction as to why drugs of all conceivable types have always been taboo, as well as (arguably) indispensable elements of the Tour. Before the fame and riches, there came a race designed by its founder to be a superlative, supreme test in the annals of human endurance, something otherwise found only within the pages of a US Marine Corps training manual.

In fact, early Tour routes were calculated, lengthened, augmented and toughened according to their prime mover’s earnest (warped?) desire for the “perfect” Tour as one so abominably difficult that only a single rider would survive each year to approach the stand and claim victory.

Perhaps this is why I feel about the Tour de France much as I do about American baseball: Some sportsmen may well be cheating dopers, and I’ll waste no time defending their actions, preferring to gaze benignly past the ephemeral, toward the timeless and true essence of the sport itself, this being what matters the most to me.

Accordingly, my personal Tour de France moment was in 2006 in the Czech Republic. In one grueling day, my compatriot Kevin Richards and I rode roughly 125 late summer kilometers through ceaselessly hilly, gorgeous Bohemian countryside, fully laden with panniers, stopping exhausted just before dusk at a three-word, multi-syllabic town, renting a room, showering, and finally dining on beer, wine, duck, beef and more beer. These are the drugs of choice for the discerning beercyclist.

Vive la France! … and, long live Ceska Republika, too.