The picture was taken around the crisis point of the final stage of one of Stephen Cox's tours in the Waikato. If it had been taken five kilometres prior I would have been looking a little more like a hero, but timing is everything, and here I am pictured looking like a man about to whimper.
There are two things that mortify me in this picture:-
1. I'm having grave difficulty hanging onto the wheel of a man racing with a saddle bag. At the start of that stage, after 2 days and 4 previous stages, I bolted from the bunch like Homer Simpson after a free donut. I was quickly joined by another willing victim. The two of us worked steadily and got a lead of over two minutes on the bunch. Then I worked steadily at holding the back wheel of the other rider, then I worked steadily by myself watching the other rider ride off.
The bunch caught me on a climb at about the sixty kilometre mark, and I want backwards through them. This picture was taken shortly after as I hung on, unsuccessfully, to others who were also discarded from the race proper. After that I dribbled my way through the last thirty kilometres.
2. Who was I kidding? Did I ever think that I was going to pass myself off as the French National champion? I can barely pronounce "Oui" without making others wince. I sure as hell can't win a club race, let alone a centre champs, but here I was pretending I was Didier Rous. Plus Didier is kinda ferret like, I'm more bovine. A little fashion effort that was doomed to failure I think.
The Reader from Mt Rascel also did forward some other less kind photos that show me pretending I was riding for Telekom in an early addition of K2. To add insult to injury they also show me a little broken and pulling faces that would have won me a spot in the World Gurning Champs.
The net outcome of seeing these photos has once again reminded me that almost all the photos that show me cycling, have almost invariably shown a man broken or whimpering.
Where are the victorious ones? Or are they just in my mind?
I was in the midst of copying your work for commercial derivative poirposes, when the true horror of the photo struck me like a thoroughbred hoof to the groin. Then after wiping last night's dinner from chin, I reviewed again the photo: you in the French nat'l champ get up, riding a powder blue bike with a poofy French name, with your sunglasses under your helmet straps much like how Tristan, you say, rides with his jersey under his bib straps......and I realized that you nailed the metrosexual, ambiguously gay look you were going for. No one rides powder blue except in spring.
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