A Good Idea at the Time

This past weekend while I was spinning for cowbells, the mountain bike world championships were held in Val di Sole, Italy. 4 time consecutive world champion Julien Absalon was going for 5, but didn’t make it happen. But his misfortune reminded me to dig some old photos out of the archives.

A little backstory: Back in the summer of 2005, I was touring around Europe a bit, and happened to be wandering around in Paris, and came across a bunch of expensive bikes lying around everywhere, as well as small crowds of spectators. Since I speak pretty much no French, it was difficult trying to figure out what was going on. After running into some Australian guys, I learned that it was part of a stage race. The course for the day was an individual time trial through the streets of Paris. Most of it was on cobbled streets with descents down stairs or ramps, and then climbing back up the short steep ramps between the stairs. It was pretty cool to watch the guys flying down stairs and whatsuch. The race ended at Sacre Coeur, the highest point in Paris.

This was back in the day when I had just purchased my first mountain bike a few months earlier (for riding on the pavement, of course.) I knew nothing about racing, barely knew what singletrack meant, and still thought xtr was impressive since a crank cost almost as much as my bike. But I had somehow managed to read or hear what the rainbow stripes meant. And so when I saw Absalon finishing the race all decked out with his rainbow stripes and shiny gold bike from winning the Olympics, I headed over to get a picture.

He was just hanging out at the finish, so I went up and motioned with the camera to get a picture. I said something to him in English and he just looked at me like I was a complete moron. Whatever, smile for the picture.