Armstrong …
This surname will remind us just jazz, the moon landing … and a fraud facilitated by those who closed their eyes …
I left Langres with the idea that justice triumphs, sure late, but it has won … cycling has lost … probably the gold book of the tour will be retouched … some seconds of those long seven years have themselves run up against disqualifications … some were allowed doping others no … this I was thinking in the first kilometers …
I was thinking about Pantani who found him in front of him when he came back, what must have passed through his head thinking ‘why to him ye and to me no’ … surely we are in front of two different characters … it is enough to read ‘It’s not about the bike’ to realize it …
I started off under a few drops of rain, then it became quite cold until the afternoon, the rollercoaster of yesterday continued for another 110 kilometers … even though the stages where I did less than a 100 kilometers are really few, I always feel a certain satisfaction when I reach this distance, then there is the post 100 magic … the kilometers pass by faster … in the afternoon I am more relaxed I take more pictures and I enjoy the landscape more … usually the kilometers from the hundredth to the hundred and fiftieth pass much faster than the first fifty … I never was a lover of the morning … I always struggle to get up and early … in Africa I was forced because the dark came fast, but here I can pedal until nine and I immediately readapt …
At the end of Saint Bezier I crossed a cycling path which bordering the Canal entre Champagne et Bourgogne goes to Vitry le Francois … 26 km the cycling path and 25 the normal road … I take the path … they will be the only flat 26 km of today … so flat, with many sluice gates that it is almost impossible to understand which way water runs … I like pedaling along the canals, it relaxes me, the fishermen greet me, I greet back and keep an eye to the colorful fishing floats … but nobody caught anything as I was passing by … I imagine myself in thirty years with the fishing stick, a cigar, grandchildren making a mess with the thread and reel … but the real reason why I passed through here is that I hope to see a boat pass through one of the many sluice gates … I saw one from the top but I was not in a good position to stop and it was cold so I went ahead … the sluice gates are many and preceded by red traffic lights … when I arrive at the gate of Hallignicourt I am satisfied! … a barge at least 20 meters long waits patiently that the gates open … when the boat enters the sluice gates, made out of two almost watertight
gates it is a few meters under the canal’s level where it has to proceed into … when the boat is between the two gates the behind gate closes … the crew, two couples around fifty years old, tie the barge to the berth, the water starts entering from the gate which marks off the sluice gate from the canal where the barge will continue onto … as the water enters the boat goes up … when the level of the water in the sluice gate is the same of the canal … slowly the gates are opened next to the prow and the barge can finally proceed … the passage takes at least 20 minutes … with all the sluice gates there are … I do not think that these boats travel long distances … these navigable canals have a certain charm … here water is exploited well … all around there are cultivated fields … even many states in Africa are rich in water but we are really far from efficient usage …
We are a bit over 300 kilometers from Dunkerque, I have three days available, France has revealed itself tougher than foreseen, I am suffering a bit, but I already know that from next week I will miss all of this!
Langres N 47° 86.683’ E 5° 33.429’ – Chalons en Champagne N 48° 95.668’ E 4° 36.307’ 186 km