The one hundredth Tour de France started Saturday,
June 29. Each summer for the past fifteen or so years, I anticipate the guilty
pleasure of sitting on the couch in a climate-controlled house—watching as the
Tour riders gut it out in a range of weather conditions on their epic journey
to Paris. The three-week, twenty-one-stage race packs in a surprising amount of
human drama as the ever-shifting alliances and tactics play themselves out
against the backdrop of long-standing rivalries.

The riders endure desperate ascents, thrilling and
terrifying descents, daring breakaways, heartbreaking crashes, injuries, and
sickness. They do this within reach of hundreds of thousands of fans who line
the course—mostly adoring, often drunk, and at times dangerously hapless. The
race finally ends on the cobblestones of Paris with a mad sprint for the final-stage
victory.

When the Tour riders cross the finish line in
mid-July, they will have covered 3,479
kilometers, averaging something like one
hundred miles per day for three weeks, much of it in the
mountains, with just two rest days. Their will to undergo the necessary
suffering, with or without doping, never ceases to amaze me. The glory of a Tour
rider’s triumph, however, is often eclipsed
by the shadow of doping. Although doping has possibly existed (in more
rudimentary forms) as long as racing itself, its modern pervasiveness is frustrating
and confounding. With darkness threatening to overshadow cycling’s most iconic
race, I return to a book that I love because it celebrates the bike as a thing
of beauty and a renewable source of joy.

The book is Frenchman Paul Fournel’s compact and understated
gem Need for the Bike, translated and introduced by Allan Stoekl and published
in 2003. Fournel has had a career in publishing and is a longtime member of the
Oulipo literary collective. His wonderful writing and his deep and abiding love
of the bike are both antidotes to despair. I cannot resist quoting from Fournel,
but you will soon understand why: 

Continue reading “The Marketeers Club: Need for the Bike”