Le Grand Boucle

Last summer, I discovered professional cycling during the Tour de France. Oddly enough, it happened because of my crafting life, as opposed to my love of sports. I’d long been a casual participant in the Tour de Fleece, begun in 2006 by Star Athena, in which spinners spin their wheels and spindles while the cyclists spin their way along, but I’d never actually watched a second of the Tour. I barely remember even hearing about the Tour de France until all of the news was bad (at least as it was covered in the United States), and until the end of last summer, I was essentially a stranger to even riding a bike. But last year, I decided I would see what the fuss was about while I sat at my spinning wheel, and in the space of an hour, I fell in love.

A grand tour (as the big three three-week stage races—the Giro d’Italia, the Tour de France, and La Vuelta a España—are called) is a treasure trove of narratives well beyond the story of who wins. The whole endeavor is a song to suffering, 176 individual stories written with and on the body. Stages, too, are long; for four, five, even six hours, the riders ride, and the commentators talk. This is a sport with no commercial breaks within the actual action—no pauses of any kind—and it’s still possible to watch it without those commercial breaks, too, so each stage is a constant patter of rider biographies, technical explanations, and geographical and architectural highlights for the towns along the way. Every commentary crew features one or more former riders, and so they share personal stories about their own time in the peloton or about former teammates still on the road.

Maybe it’s because I’m new to all this or maybe it’s because I have never met a peculiar detail I didn’t want to know, but I find it all mesmerizing. It should be easy to zone out on; the commentators even encourage it, seldom raising their voices beyond the level of conversation. Bike races could be perfect company in the background, a coffee shop hum, especially since the beginnings and middles of many races manifest no change beyond kilometers clocked (which, if you remember, might be a four-hour stretch). Instead, I find myself hanging on every word, and it’s actually something of a problem, given that the Eurocentric race calendar start-times coincide with my creative hours. So I’m doing my level best to remember that replay exists, and banning myself from social media and the ProCyclingStats website for most of the day will not only help me avoid spoilers but also help me do the other things I want to do.

Except this morning. This morning, the Tour de France returns to the gnarly, terrifying cobblestones that give the Paris-Roubaix race its monikker “the Hell of the North.” I’m going to spin so much yarn with my heart absolutely in my throat. (Last year’s edition was held in the rain. Absolute mud-drenched chaos. However, the winner on that day, Sonny Colbrelli, was happier than any human being has ever been about anything else. Have a look.) In the afternoon I’ll work.

Perhaps this mania is the thrill of a hobby newly discovered, exacerbated by my own tendency toward obsessive enthusiasm and the way it complements my fiber arts escapades, but I think the way watching cycling mirrors the way I read and write is integral here. Everything takes a long time, and there’s so much to enjoy if I’m willing to pay attention. I am invited to see the world and the body in a way I had not considered before.

For anyone who might be wondering, the Giro della Donne is happening this week, too, and the Tour de France Femmes will start on July 24.

A recommendation: Kate Wagner’s derailleur Substack is one of my favorite reads. If you want storytelling from the cycling world, it’s a beautiful place to start.

An interlude: it’s been a horrific few weeks in America (Again? Again.) for reproductive rights, the LGBTQ community, indigenous peoples, the environment, and most everyone else who isn’t ghoulishly doing as much as possible to strip away vulnerable people’s rights and safety. If you’re feeling a little paralyzed by what to do, 5Calls is a helpful starting place for making your voice heard to your representatives (if you happen to be American). Or consider a donation to an organization that’s doing work you admire. Or find the people who are helping others in your community and find out what they need.

What I’m making: My first bouclé yarn, in honor of Le Grand Boucle, as the Tour de France is sometimes called since it makes a large loop, so to speak, around France and sometimes farther afield. (This year’s TdF started with three days in Denmark.) A bouclé is significantly outside of my spinning comfort zone, which runs toward making my yarn as consistently fine as possible and then plying it, like to like, into something smooth and even. A bouclé, however, is a squiggly celebration of multiple textures and a yarn of at least three components: a core yarn (cotton, in this case), a yarn to create the loops that comprise the trademark plush, bumpy texture of a bouclé, and a binding yarn (generally, thread or something fine) to fix the loops in place in the finished yarn. The loop-yarn in this case is made from a wool and silk and sparkle batt from Melanated Boho Bae.

What I’m reading: Nicole Dennis-Benn’s Patsy, which I have been meaning to read for ages, is proving to be marvelously rewarding. The emotional tensions are magnetic, and the choices presented to the characters are a compelling garden of rocks and hard places. I can’t wait to get further into it.

For anyone who remembers last the last installment, Shuggie Bain wrecked me. Beautifully executed, that novel. By the end of it, I felt like an empty bottle after it’s been thrown at a wall. (But in an admiring way.)

What I’m writing: Last week, at Barrelhouse’s Writer Camp, which was such an idyll and a joy, I dusted off a short story that I drafted ages ago in a deeply enjoyable One Story online class run by Hannah Tinti. That advice to let your work rest for a while—especially if you can let it rest long enough to half-forget it—before looking at it again is always good.