Terrifying tortoises and other tall tales

Claire and I have just retired to our bedroom after carrying out our all important tortoise duties. As we have learned, the tortoises here are from Madagascar and they are hot weather creatures. The last few days have seen a cool change of weather and almost non-stop rain. The funny thing is that our housemum, when quizzed about the weather in this part of the world many weeks ago, said that it does rain in Provence and that the rains start on 15 September. It was an odd bit of forecasting specifity Claire and I thought but indeed, come 15 September, the warm days and blue skies of which had been our only climatic experience to date were taken over by sheets of grey and endless rain…weird.

Anyhow, back to the tortoises. The problem is that they are not good with the cold and wet and anything below 12 degrees can be harmful to your average Madagascerian tortoise. So tonight, Claire and I were in charge of bringing the two tortoises inside to sleep alongside us and the three cats….talk about a menagerie! I was in charge of picking up the big tortoise, which by my estimation weighs in at about 25-30kg. He was sleeping at the time but soon woke up after being clumisly manhandled by me. It was a weird experience, and rather nervewracking. Sure, slow moving tortoises are hardly the most dangerous animals on the planet but still, who really knows what they are capable of…? I was worried. Well it turns out, they are not capable of much in terms of dangerous activity or activity of any sort. So tonight, they are both now sound asleep in a childs plastic boat – the type you could use for a sandpit. Sleep well tortoises.

Going from tortoises to my race performance at last week’s ‘Bosses du 13′ is perhaps not an ideal link. Though slowly but surely, the tortoise does win in the end. However, this day was not to be my tortoise day. I have bored Monsiers Lampard and Wu with blow by blow details of my race day effort so I will spare you a km by km commentary. The short story is that with about 30k to go I opened Paul Sherwen’s metaphorical ‘suitcase of courage’ and made a break from the lead peleton whilst traversing a 5k climb. I did get away from the lead group and was soloing it out in front. I was turning myself ‘inside out’ to again borrow a phrase from Paul Sherwen (apologies to the non-cycling fans reading this) as I knew there would be an angry peleton of 30 cyclists trying to chase down this Aussie interloper.

It was going well and I knew I had a decent lead. I started having visions of Claire and I sipping victorious champaigne and eating caviar on the fine beaches of Cassis but then it all fell apart. I took a wrong turn. And worst of all, I did not know I had taken a wrong turn until about 5ks later. Needless to say, my day was done. I rolled on home and told my war stories to Claire, who in her love and care for me was perhaps more distraught than I was. Thanks Claire.

It was a great experience though. To race on real mountain roads with long climbs and terrifying descents was exciting. And after the race I felt proud to be an Australian. To be able to come over here and mix it up with cyclists from the home of cycling on their home turf is something that to me felt like a very Australian thing to do. Taking a wrong turn while in the race lead is also probably very Australian but hey….thems the breaks as we might say or ce’st la vie as the french might say. I will race again on 150k course in the Alps in a couple of weeks time.

Til next time, Ciao.