French Revolutions

humiliation is complete. He is immediately
thrown out of the race, and as a taunting postscript the genuine sample he
subsequently provides passes the test.
    I’d been wondering about Pee-Pee and
Pollentier for some days, and wondered about them again as the D909 rose gently
between the wet, black, coal-face cliffs of the Gorge de l’Arondine. There was
no one about; the road was straight; the milk was going the way of all ingested
fluid and I thought: this’ll do.
    During my idle speculations on the
subject I’d always imagined the short-rucking would be the hard bit, but the
wrongheadedness of this assumption became quickly apparent. Pulling the shorts
up to get at the old budgie perch was one thing; getting them to stay there was
another. Wobbling lewdly about the rain-slick tarmac I realised the problem was
my continuing inability to remove both hands from the bars simultaneously. A
fearsome elastic tension is Lycra’s defining quality, and by assigning four
fingers of my right hand to keeping this at bay I was left with only a thumb —
rightly belittled as the least articulate of the major digits — for the
delicate and demanding directional operation. The ensuing scene is not one I am
ever likely to recall with enthusiasm. It started raining heavily as I wound
disconsolately past the copper-belfried church at la Giettaz, and if I say that
I greeted this downpour with muted joy you will have some idea of the extent to
which I had failed to master Charly Gaul’s initiative.
    It was a shame, really, because la
Giettaz seemed the most perfect example yet of an Alpine village: shockingly
precipitous outlook; proper wooden chalets; even a sanatorium where uniformed
nurses wheeled blanket-kneed pensioners up the mountains. A couple even had a
light-hearted race with me — well, light-hearted for them anyway. There wasn’t
room for more than one incontinent sporting legend on these hills.
    With my morale still damp and soiled,
I got in a spot of bother up the col d’Aravis. Paul Kimmage often comments how
form varies from mountain to mountain, how you can grovel up one then fly up
the next, and now I understood what he meant. The streams that had been
wallowing gently over boulders as smooth as elephants’ backs were now darting
violently between sharp rocks and vaulting over waterfalls, and as the hill
steepened I began to struggle, head bobbing, fingers fumbling at the gear
levers. ‘Allez! Allez!’ shouted two girls as they laboured past in a 2CV; two
whimpering ‘k’s later I was applauded sporadically over the muddy, misty col by
a family drinking something nice and warm outside the now-traditional summit
café. Distracted with exhaustion, I almost overcooked it on the descent,
flirting with a barbed-wire fence at incautious velocity, once more filling the
wet, green valley with bungee-jumper shrieks as the back wheel slipped in the
verge-side mud.
    Still, the main point was that I got
to la Clusaz twenty minutes ahead of schedule, which allowed me plenty of time
to decide that this was the sort of ritzy glühwein resort where Fergie
would come skiing, and to down two Ricards and a lager in the square by the
church. In consequence I was half asleep at the table when the family arrived,
and soon fully so as Birna drove west between mountains with the silhouettes of
crowned monarchs. I awoke as we arrived at what I instantly understood would be
the most expensive hotel I have ever paid for out of my own pocket, with a
lobby full of silver-haired Blake Carringtons in ironed leisurewear and
immaculate, deck-chair-strewn gardens running down to its own private stretch
of Lake Annecy’s crenellated, aristocratic shoreline.
    ‘It isn’t that bad,’ said Birna,
seeing my features sag into a very close approximation of the funereal
depression portrayed during the aftermath of that ill-fated excretory
experiment. And at fifty quid for the lot of us, it wasn’t. Remembering how
ludicrously cheap French hotels tended to be, it occurred to me that the
Beau-Site in Talloires showcased the best attributes of the surrounding
nations: Swiss service, Italian view, French prices.
    Ahead was the last day of mountains,
and if I did survive, I realised now it would only be by the skin of my teeth.
I hadn’t seen another bike for almost two days, or a single name daubed on the
tarmac, and at breakfast I found out why. ‘Is not so many vélo ’ere,’ said the
black-tied young waiter at breakfast. ‘Too many