I am at another bike race. Last night I ate well. A bowl full of fish; so many species that I lost count. And all the while this black and white photo gazed down at me from the wall. In 1962, a huge whale had been beached here. The inhabitants cut it up and took it home. Italy is many things.
Earlier on that day, I had dragged my suitcase along damp and breezy Zaventem roads, trying to pick my way through the maze of hazardous slip roads leading to the airport from the vastly unpleasant apartment I had booked for a few hours sleep after Paris Roubaix. It sold itself to me as some kind of executive party pad for Jeff Bezos and his mates, within easy access of the airport. In reality it was an impossible-to-locate, quite run down converted office block flat on the ground floor that smelt of sewage and had a wobbly lock. Never mind, I thought, as I dodged an onrushing bus. I’ll soon be soaring above it all, and heading for Italy.
Don’t get me wrong. My two successive weekends at Flanders and Roubaix were rich fare, culminating for me in the sensory overload of the Arenberg, where I witnessed Tadej Pogačar flash by on the cobbles.
“Thadeus!” I had yelled at him, picking up on the literal translation of his name posted by some very well-informed correspondent on this site, “Thadeus Flatbread!”
I ended my two days of chasing cobbles completely exhausted, and the dispiriting trudge to the airport kind of flattened my spirit entirely, to the point where misanthropy had started to seep into my attitude, which is not something I am overly familiar with. Perhaps it was the fact that the terminal at Brussels airport was full of happy holidaying families, and that I was instead making my lonely way to another bike race. Anyway, I knew that a long day of travelling lay ahead.
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