Cycling the Vineyards in the South of France

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Outside Magazine October 2004

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A Jug of Wine (More Jugs of Wine) et Moi (cont.)


	Moveable Feasts: Left: fleurs; right: fromage (Elizabeth Zeschin)

LAST WINTER I WAS OFFERED a choice of writing assignments. I could fly to North Korea and try to elude my government-issued handlers in order to sneak off and report on outdoor recreations few Westerners have ever experienced, or I could join a sensuous high-end cycling trip in southern France with the Toronto, Canada-based outfitter Butterfield & Robinson, the crème de la crème of upscale guiding services. Duh.

As the 180-mile-an-hour bullet train from Paris raced south down the Rhône River toward Avignon, I stared at the blur and grew wistful thinking about the sweet months I misspent in that ancient maze of a city in 1971, as a college student who sort of attended classes in French history at the local école. The next morning I boarded a bus B&R had chartered for a 15-mile trip to the village of Boulbon, where our bicycles awaited. I sensed immediately that our guides, Jean-Louis Doss and Libby Dalrymple, both patient and amiable 35-year-old bilingual Canadians, were going to be excellent playmates. And the itinerary looked like a bike ride in heaven: seven days of petit déjeuner, lunch, and dinner interspersed with moderately demanding bike rides of 20 to 40 miles through the dreamscapes of the Côtes du Rhône.

I wondered about the other guests. Because my fellow cycling gourmets were shelling out $9,790 per couple for the week, plus thousands more for airfare, incidentals, and shopping sprees in a vastly overpriced country where a shot of espresso can set you back six dollars, I assumed in my convenient, knee-jerk bias that they'd be stuffy, reactionary, middle-aged bores.

When Jean-Louis introduced me to my bike, I saw that it had a name, Dalmatian Coast, painted on the frame, next to a tag with my name printed on it. In fact, everyone's bike was tagged and named. Testing out this tough hybrid road warrior, custom-manufactured for B&R by a British Columbia company called Rocky Mountain Bicycles, I adjusted the seat, shocked the shock absorbers, rang the bell, and fiddled with the buttons on the handlebars that quick-changed the transmission through its 27 gears. Then I sailed off on a shakedown cruise around the town square.

As I circled, I became the Dalmatian. Just as the Dalmatian was hoping that "Coast" was something he'd be doing a lot of over the coming days, he hit a curb and fell over.

The Dalmatian looked up to see a svelte blond landscape architect from California named Wonderful World and her husband, Working It Off, a regal, linebacker-size real estate investor, staring at him. In truth, the Dalmatian hadn't been on a bike in 15 years. And this pair had the majorly buffed legs of people who ride hard every day. Wonderful World wandered over to my crash-up as if bearing a warning not to drag down Group with any more of this monkey business. But instead, smiling, she offered the Dalmatian a tube of Vaseline skin ointment. Veteran bikers smear this stuff on their thighs and butt parts to prevent the heartbreak of chafing. She wore socks that read YOUR BIKE SUCKS.

"An American businessman with VD goes to a doctor in Shanghai," she told the Dalmatian, apropos of nothing. " ‘Must amputate,' the doctor says. The man goes to another doctor for a second opinion. Same advice. So he goes to a naturopath. 'Oh, these doctors!' the healer cries. 'All the time chop-chop. You wait a week. It fall off on its own.' "

So much for the Dalmatian's preconceptions. He examined Group again and saw that grown men and women who dress up in padded bike shorts, gaudy polyester shirts, little fingerless gloves, and silly helmets shaped like insect heads are probably not going to be rigid bluenoses. Besides, when you're on the road, sweating like Britney Spears at an all-you-can-eat, it's impossible to be imperious.

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