le tour!!!!

**jape** · 07-07-2010, 12:20 PM

How many of you are as mad as I am and watch le tour de france every year on TV? It is late night early hours of the morning here but I cannot stop myself. I used to ride a lot in Europe, these guys are just a phenomenon of fitness and skill. Yes, professional cycling is commercial, year round, but bloody hell, three weeks and whatever your discipline of cycling you have to go up (and down) bloody great mountains, across cobbles, sprint, time trial, all within a percentage of time. I find it amazing, inspiring and fascinating. Before I did my back in I used to cycle the whole four hour length of the broadcast on my exercise bike! Now I just sit on the couch with a sandwich and a drink and a cigar but I can still dream!

**euphonius** · 07-07-2010, 02:02 PM

Heartily agree, though watching the tour here in China is probably less satisfying for armchair expats than for you in Oz or elsewhere. First, the broadcast is not in realtime, but in excerpts that start after midnight, and of course the commentary is in Chinese. Perhaps there are some satellite channels carrying the tour in real time, but international satellite TV is still highly restricted. Here in Shanghai, you can get a dish and receiver for various services originating outside China, and buy a black-market "cracked" card to decode the signal. But the providers are always updating their encryption, so your card may last anywhere from a month to a half year. I did this for a while but almost never turned the TV on, so I've stopped. Now my only choice is CCTV, also known as the throat and tongue of the C*mmunist P*rty.

So I try to follow via latour.com and other websites, but it's not quite the same to see little stick-figure animations showing the status of riders in the peloton.

I still cycle daily in Shanghai, using the bicycle to go almost everywhere. I save the Jialing for forays out of town.

**moilami** · 07-07-2010, 09:35 PM

Oh come on give me a break. Runners and bicyclist are the most crazy people I know! I have never ever understood how they can run or drive the bicycle like they do, it is something totally unbeliavable, yet I respect them highly for being able to do so. Anyway, I don't want to watch them from TV, my head begins to hurt enough seeing them in real on the road where I don't have a choise to not see them.

**jape** · 07-07-2010, 10:19 PM

I admit to crazy, until I smashed my back I ran 10km daily and cycled for many years so I have done plenty of it Mikko, it is exhilarating to cycle freely through the countryside (or cities as JK does and beat the traffic), and truly once you get fit you don't feel it! In my next life I am going to be a tri-athlete and small plane pilot.

**milton** · 07-08-2010, 01:21 AM

I used to do a lot of cycling in and around New England. I had a racing bike, always helmeted and with cleats. After a brief spring break-in, we usually do a century over weekends in summer. New England is hilly but very scenic. Flat tire is the only annoying thing about the sport.
Paddling strenuously on a bike for over 45 minutes you surely reach a "runner's high" quickly without too much stress on your knees. It is highly addictive. On a motorbike, you get a sore back. :-)
A while ago almost purchased a folding bike. The scheme was to escape quickly out of Shanghai in a car with the folding bike in the trunk and bike around after reaching a scenic spot. Then I discovered a motorcycling/touring crowd in Shanghai and joined them. Only motorcycling ever since.

**jape** · 07-08-2010, 01:52 AM

Yeah, when I was a kid in the sixties, everyone boy or girl had a pushbike and we all rode them to school and everywhere. never thought of walking. Safer world. Thus we never had that adult fear of effort and stayed fit for years. We all built our own from parts at the dump or did paper rounds and so on to buy a good one later. I still remember fixing a folded piece of cardboard to the front fork with a clothes peg so it buzzed as I rode, placing ball bearings into grease, learning about derailleurs for the first time and the invention of bloody quick release wheel fittings your mates would kick surreptitiously as they went past in cross-country race, so you lost your wheel on the next bump ... aaah nostalgia. Nowdays my heart pumps wildly and my back goes into spasms before I get to the end of my bumpy 80 meter driveway and I turn round and go home.

I went around parts of France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Holland when I was 15/16 with a couple of mates, staying in Youth Hostels and so on for six weeks. an adventure on a very few bucks! A few hills made us walk and a few headwinds or rain made us stop for a rest. Met up with 16 year old girls on bikes too ... woohoo. No hurry, no cost almost. I think you could still do similar today in some parts but hey, most people wouldn't be able to do a kilometer without a heart attack these days, too unfit. And in most countries the roads are full of idiots.