Oui Oui!

This year, the Tour de France coincided with my first few weeks of freedom after having quit work, so I naturally got sucked in to keeping late hours and watching the coverage on SBS, largely because I could. One of the guys I used to work with recently got back from a huge trip across Europe and before he left, we were constantly joking about him riding around on a bike in the French countryside, black beret perched on his noggin whilst tearing into a baguette sitting in a basket on the front of said bike. For sure, it wouldn't be the sort of cycling these guys on the tour get to do.

From the comfort of the couch though, the scenery is stunning, and such a far cry from what we have here at home. What is truly amazing is what these riders put themselves through which must really be at the pointy end of human endurance. Looking at the steepness of those hills, it's no wonder that cyclists generally have such great legs. And after having seen a criterion race and feeling the whoosh of cyclists speeding past, I now have a better understanding of how frightening it could be travelling at such a pace, and why the injuries can be so nasty. One of my former workmates in the U.S. is a keen cyclist himself and religiously follows the tour every year from the comfort of his Lazy Boy (his wife treats it with the sort of disdain reserved for Martin Crane's battered armchair in Frasier), and is actually hoping to be in France next year to see it in real life.

My dad is also an avid cyclist and similarly follows the tour every year. So over the years, I've come to learn that it's a sport largely dominated by Europeans, and that in order to even attempt to try cycling at that level, many people from outside Europe uproot themselves from their homes and families in order to train there. So even if I hadn't received a barrage of emails saying how fantastic Cadel Evans' win was, I did already have some idea of the enormity of this victory. Understandably, everyone jumped on the Cadel bandwagon after his win, and unsurprisingly, Paul (my former workmate in the States) was eager to see some pics of Cadel's ride through town upon his brief return to Melbourne after the tour was over. Pretty amazing to see just how big the turnout was, which you can get an idea of from the photos. Everyone wanted a squiz.