the beautiful machine

After six days that set a record monthly rainfall for any month ever recorded—and it’s only the fourteenth—the sun shines on Bendigo in the afternoon, so after work I tog up and wheel the Cervélo out the front gate, planning to take a stroll out to Hartlands Eucy farm.

Flooding closes all roads west of Bendigo. I head north-east and the back road to Huntly seems fine until I hit a couple of wet patches; then water streams across the bitumen from a nearby creek-burst; then the road becomes the creek.

I turn around and straggle back into town via a circuitous route. Many roads are closed on Bendigo’s fringe. Many times I slow to less than walking pace to negotiate water five to ten centimetres deep. The brakes are useless for minutes after each dip.

It might be a couple of days before I can complete any of my usual loops. This evening’s 23kms @ 26.3kph is better than nothing.

By jumping out of the saddle and bunging on half a dozen gears you can sort of simulate climbing a hill on a backyard trainer or gym bike. But even on humid high-perspiration days, you can’t simulate flooding, although my backyard trainer came close this week.

Of course, nothing on Earth can simulate riding up the Col du Galibier. It is the point of the training I have stutteringly begun. Graeme Fife has ridden the Galibier and I’ve just read again his account in his book The beautiful machine. The blurb (not attributed) on the cover describes the book as “a Zen-like paean to the joy of cycling”.

Fife, who whacks you over the head with his prose and opinions, would be the first to fall about at this bullshit, although describing his ascent of the Galibier he approaches something that might loosely be described as Zen-like.

It’s 2,645 m and the French call it ‘a sacred monster’, except that sacré can also mean unholy. As Fife says, “The ambiguity is telling: the Galibier is, in the rank of myth and natural wonder, magnificent, sublime, but it can also be a pig.” The Galibier is the epic and heroic quintessence of the Tour, and to ride it, he thinks, might take you to the heart of the mystery of the great bike race.

He arrives in France in 1995 to ride the Alps at age 50. The bike has been his great love and primary transport since he was five. He’s ridden plenty of France before, the flat bits, usually chasing a fuck. Now he’s on an equally serious mission.

On the first day he bags l’Alpe d’Huez, “a hell of an initiation”. He surveys the map and writes, “From the map, the Col du Glandon presents little problem”. And on the second day the Glandon “decided to squash me till I whimpered then toss the bits into a drainage culvert”.

(This makes me feel so good: our Cycleworks tour will ride the Glandon twice: it is our doorstep.)

On the third day Fife rides the Galibier and his ascent deserves its own post.