From South of France, My Tour de France

I had fun, in the last few weeks, following the Tour de France, the world's most popular bicycle race.

For the first part of the Tour I was living in a hotel and had the full privileges of the electronic world.  Every afternoon I would turn on the TV, open an internet ticker, and follow the live Boulder Report blog.

Burundi is, more or less, due south of France, and so I got to watch the race, for the first time, in its original time zone.  No need to wake at 6 a.m. for a bleary-eyed pedal over to the house of a friend who had cable.

I also got to watch in French, the language in which God intended Le Tour to be appreciated.  Of course, I understood squat.  J'etudie francais these days, I study French, since Burundi is solidly Francophone.  But the TV commentary was way beyond me.  I refreshed the live blog often to get the scoop in English.

For the crucial last week of the race, however, I was living in a temporary house: no TV, no internet.  I missed the Tour, and I didn't miss it.  There's good and bad to having most of your afternoon taken up watching a bunch of men in skin-tight shorts bob back and forth on bicycles so well-engineered you can lift them with a finger.

It got a little ironic, too, following the Tour from Burundi.  First of all, there were no black Africans in the race, never have been (though at least one guy is trying to change that).  It's a very white, Western sport.  For diversity, a couple of Japanese and Colombians rode this year.

Second, these men are riding bicycles that cost more than the average Burundian will make in half a lifetime.  Here, even buying one of the typical single-speed bikes - about all that's available in Burundi - is unaffordable for many.  Here, most people walk.

In Burundi, bikes are for work, not for racing.  They're built heavy and solid, so you can do things like install an extra seat over the back wheel.  Then your bicycle becomes a taxi.  You can make a little change, enough for some lunch.

Photo: a bicycle taxi driver in Bujumbura.

I confess I was thinking of the Tour de France, however, when on a recent ride I found myself suddenly surrounded by three of these bicycle taxis.  The drivers were all chatting with each other, grinning, pumping their pedals hard to get in front of me.

The passengers, women in colorfully patterned wraps, smiled from the back seats.  "Jambo," they hollered in Swahili, hello.  Riding sidesaddle, they swayed easily back and forth as the men pedaled.

I popped up into my big gear ring to keep up with these six companions.  We made a perfect Burundian peleton, I thought.

Then, another rider joined us.  Leaning lightly forward, he crossed his arms casually atop his handlebars, as if he were sitting on a sofa drinking tea.  He cruised to the front of our convivial pack.  Then he attacked!

He opened up a gap.  Thankfully, since I'd been watching the Tour all week, I knew what to do.  I got on his back wheel.

We'd be a breakaway, I thought, hammering hard all day for glory, hoping the women riding sidesaddle back in the pack wouldn't make their pedaling men feel too bad about being left behind and whip them up to catch us just before the finish line.

But no, I was the only one racing for glory; soon I was riding by myself.  While I dreamt of fame, my breakaway companion just wanted to get to the next town.