"Did I get it right, Lance?"
Lance Armstrong has proven himself the victor for the unprecedented seventh straight time in what is considered by some the most difficult event in the world’s most excruciating sport.
I may never go through such a test, I can never understand what he has overcome and who can match words to the scope of his triumph?
But maybe a twenty-year old foreign exchange student touched a corner of the adventure riding a broken bike through a dark, cold morning.
Far from the carbon fiber and glamour of the professionals, I was riding through the Mooswald forest west of Freiburg, Germany, a little after 2 a.m. on three hours of sleep trying to make it to the French border at the Rhine River and back before class started at 9 a.m.
It was the tail end of winter in northern Europe. It was so cold. I’d busted a tire the night before and hadn’t been able to fix it. So for more than 40 kilometers every turn of my front wheel, as I rode over the empty inner tube’s air valve, was a jolt through my body via the seat, which was cracked in half. And the brakes were shot. And the handlebars were coming off, gears didn’t work and the light flickered dimly as I rode thought the darkness on Freddy.
I loved that bike.
Merdingen, Guedlingen, Hochstetten… I rode through one village after another and finally reached Breisach on the Rhine just before sunrise. As the sun was coming up I rode out onto the bridge linking Germany and France and drank a beer for soldier who told me to have one for him while I was abroad.
The morning was damp and the railroad tracks were wet as I rode back to Freiburg. If you followed the Tour de France this year, you saw them ride through some of my old haunts on the German frontier. And you saw what can happen when a bicycle wheel slips on a train track. The bike stops. The rider doesn’t. I can vouch first hand.
I was lying by the side of the road when a man stopped his car, came up and asked if I was alright. He’d seen my fall. It was apparently so violent he thought I’d been hit by a truck. It felt for a moment like something had gone through my knee. I was a bit cut up but otherwise fine.
Continuing on I rode out the east side of Umkirch on a nice two lane road. Then suddenly there were four lanes of fast traffic. Honking at me. Looking at maps now, I think I’d fumbled onto the Autobahn system on a broken down bicycle. I found a trail through the woods and used it.
I got back to Freiburg with just enough time for a shower before class. I washed off the mud and the blood and saddled up again for the ride to the university. At some point a classmate asked why I looked so tired.
It was hard. It hurt. I bled, and I would go on to bleed a lot more on Freddy from Luxembourg to Austria, Switzerland to Lichtenstein. My legs weren’t used to the strain. Sometimes at night they would cramp up, waking me in silent screams. For months.
But I remember as I rode up out of Opfingen into the vineyards, pedaling out of the woods alone, the night sky opened above me dripping with stars from one horizon to the other, from the lights of Freiburg in the east, laid out beneath the cathedral’s spire, draped across the hills and valleys of the Black Forest – to France.
And somehow that memory has outlasted the trauma and agony and made it all worth while.
Did I get it right, Lance?
I may never go through such a test, I can never understand what he has overcome and who can match words to the scope of his triumph?
But maybe a twenty-year old foreign exchange student touched a corner of the adventure riding a broken bike through a dark, cold morning.
Far from the carbon fiber and glamour of the professionals, I was riding through the Mooswald forest west of Freiburg, Germany, a little after 2 a.m. on three hours of sleep trying to make it to the French border at the Rhine River and back before class started at 9 a.m.
It was the tail end of winter in northern Europe. It was so cold. I’d busted a tire the night before and hadn’t been able to fix it. So for more than 40 kilometers every turn of my front wheel, as I rode over the empty inner tube’s air valve, was a jolt through my body via the seat, which was cracked in half. And the brakes were shot. And the handlebars were coming off, gears didn’t work and the light flickered dimly as I rode thought the darkness on Freddy.
I loved that bike.
Merdingen, Guedlingen, Hochstetten… I rode through one village after another and finally reached Breisach on the Rhine just before sunrise. As the sun was coming up I rode out onto the bridge linking Germany and France and drank a beer for soldier who told me to have one for him while I was abroad.
The morning was damp and the railroad tracks were wet as I rode back to Freiburg. If you followed the Tour de France this year, you saw them ride through some of my old haunts on the German frontier. And you saw what can happen when a bicycle wheel slips on a train track. The bike stops. The rider doesn’t. I can vouch first hand.
I was lying by the side of the road when a man stopped his car, came up and asked if I was alright. He’d seen my fall. It was apparently so violent he thought I’d been hit by a truck. It felt for a moment like something had gone through my knee. I was a bit cut up but otherwise fine.
Continuing on I rode out the east side of Umkirch on a nice two lane road. Then suddenly there were four lanes of fast traffic. Honking at me. Looking at maps now, I think I’d fumbled onto the Autobahn system on a broken down bicycle. I found a trail through the woods and used it.
I got back to Freiburg with just enough time for a shower before class. I washed off the mud and the blood and saddled up again for the ride to the university. At some point a classmate asked why I looked so tired.
It was hard. It hurt. I bled, and I would go on to bleed a lot more on Freddy from Luxembourg to Austria, Switzerland to Lichtenstein. My legs weren’t used to the strain. Sometimes at night they would cramp up, waking me in silent screams. For months.
But I remember as I rode up out of Opfingen into the vineyards, pedaling out of the woods alone, the night sky opened above me dripping with stars from one horizon to the other, from the lights of Freiburg in the east, laid out beneath the cathedral’s spire, draped across the hills and valleys of the Black Forest – to France.
And somehow that memory has outlasted the trauma and agony and made it all worth while.
Did I get it right, Lance?
posted by John Derrick | 7:37 AM
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