The 2008 Tour de France lasted twenty-one days; the bikers rode cumulatively for eighty-seven hours, fifty two minutes and fifty two seconds (at least that was the winning time of Carlos Sastre as he crossed the line on the Champs Elysee on July 27th). Other less fortunate riders like Wim Vansevenat, the lanterne rouge, completed the Tour four hours behind the leader.
All told I dedicated close to eighty-seven hours, fifty two minutes and fifty-two seconds of my life to watching its progress. It is an annual ritual for me, one that my wife can’t understand but does not object to. “My husband has become a couch potato,” I hear her tell friends on the phone. Then nothing more. She is in it for the sprints. Dutifully I pause the hard drive and call her for the penultimate moments of the stage. Meanwhile I have sat in front of the television for three to four hours just to get to that point.
Versus (Channel 34) carried die Tour from its inception on July 5th to its completion twenty-one days later. The time honored British commentators Paul Sherwin and Phil Liggett were in fine fettle as usual and part of the annual attraction.
The concern I have is that there is no other televised event I watch with such blind dedication. In fact there is no television series running for thirteen weeks I am committed to. Actually my main source of news is The Daily Show with John Stewart, but cumulatively and allowing for the reruns shown when he is on vacation, my commitment to the Tour exceeds my dalliance with Stewart.
Aside from my curiosity about the race, its dynamics, the riders and its unpredictable evolution over twenty-one days an indisputable reward of my insistent television watching is that it permits me to vicariously meander over two thousand two hundred miles of France I have yet to see. My imagination wanders. I am sitting in a cafe sipping a cafe-au-lait in Chevreuse or lying on the perfectly cropped grass of le chateaus des dues de Bretagne hypnotized by the cumulus clouds hanging immobile in the summer air or I am awakening in my friend Jack’s house in Gallargues (see My friend Jack in Bonjour Paris) to see the Tour ride by twenty feet from bis front door.
Several years ago I drove to a tiny town in Provence to see the race pass through. The drive took an hour and one half; we waited another hour, carousing with the locals; and saw Lance Armstrong ride through in a sconce. The peloton was moving at twenty-six miles per hour. You do the math. But evanescent as the moment was.. . I saw it and that was what a mattered.
Despite my deep curiosity about the Tour, I will watch any cycling Versus deigns to show me (e.g. The Giro d’ltalia, The Tour de Suisse, Vuelta de Espana etc.) but nothing compares with the drama and history of the Tour de France. Spaced out in the Spring, Summer and Fall these other races tide me over until I plop myself down on the couch for three weeks in July with fresh nectarine in one hand and the TV remote in the other. I never have to watch commercials. Over the three weeks of the Tour I figure I added at least nine hours to my life. So literally and figuratively the Tour, for me, is about time.
Vive le Tour de France
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