It’s July and sunflower season, so that means it’s Tour Time. That is, Le Tour de France, that grueling 3,000-kilometer bike race and tourist advert. Sure, there are two other grand tours: the Giro d’Italia in June and La Vuelta de Espana later in summer. But France is the big dance. I used to be an avid watcher of it, then stopped for a while due to a certain disgraced US rider who was based here in Austin, Texas. I began watching it again, and then stopped again. Mostly because of the huge time suck involved watching andn not knowng many of the new crop of riders. I kinda miss it, but I’m just trying to make sure I get on my own bike every day. The spectacle of the Tour is captivating and the stories are interesting. But what if we got curious and made our own stories more interesting? What if we could find fascination in our short rides to the store, or the commute to work, the weekend jaunts on the trail, and more?

My own little Tour de Dude is not nearly as exciting as seeing hometown rider (and actually neighbor when he’s not living in Girona) Lawson Craddock crank himself up the mountains and then show up in my Strava feed. Some days my ride is downright unremarkable, and often definitely very short and not hilly, due to me being a fat, old, tired dude. I get busy with life, dishes, doctors, laundry, errands, and such. But it is MY Tour. What I should be busy doing all day is trying to make money, and that’s not happening from my biking or bloggng. So I’m exploring that. Meanwhile,the Texas heat has been an extra big bummer, as it has been around the world. I wrote about that the other day. It’s hot as blazes, the dickens, hell, or all of the above.

We’re having a tiny “cold front” and it was in the low 90’s this past week. However, Monday, July 3 was likely the hottest day EVER recorded for the ENTIRE PLANET EARTH. It’s partially due to the El Niño weather pattern, but mostly human-caused by pollution. Bicycle tours, be they large and professional, or tiny and amateur, matter little when we realize that THE PLANET IS DYING IN FRONT OF OUR EYES. So, yeah, climate change is real, and bikes are a part of that, mostly on the positive side.

Sitting inside in the cool air conditioning while watching the pros gut it out on the telly is far more appealing than getting out there on our own. I’m not saying don’t watch the Tour if you enjoy it; you do you. But what if enough people bicycled instead of drove cars? Could we delay armageddon? And hey, who can go around with those Debbie Downer thoughts in their head all day, every day? Well, besides Greta Thunberg, the young climate activist who has steely resolve and ice in her veins, and not just from living in Sweden. Not this dude. She got arrested protesting again the other day and may do six months in jail. As we say in Texas, “Bless her little Swedish heart.” Actually, I applaud her efforts to cut through the red tape and speak truth to power.

She contradicts the narrative that we’re led to believe: we can’t do much about it. Climate change is an overwhelming subject. Despite its relatively few but vocal deniers and detractors, the facts of global warming, melting glaciers, rising sea levels, and extreme weather are documented science. It’s hard to know what to do about it on a personal level. Sure, we can reduce, resuse, and recycle (the latter having been revealed recently to be very oversold as most plastics aren’t being recycled). But it doesn’t seem to be enough.

It turns out that in fact, the Tour itself is a huge contributor to pollution. Consider the fleet of until now mostly gas-powered support vehicles for the Tour. There are team buses and cars, press vehicles, the huge promotional marketing caravan, the helicopters and motorbikes, plus all the fans traveling to it and following the races. And there are water bottles always beinng handed to the riders–so many water bottles. Sure, the Tour is doing things like switching electric vehicles. But those have to be plugged into the grid, and a whopping 70% of French power is nuclear. A good article about all this is “How sustainable is the Tour de France?” on Roleur.com by Edward Pickering.

Meanwhile, amateurs like us riding our bikes instead of driving cars can and do make a difference. Most car trips in America are under five miles, and many people could bike or bus that distance. But we also buy bikes and parts and kits and drive to charity rides and races and so on. We are part of the problem. Still, one can do what they can. The corporations produce non-recyclable plastics, they spew toxic waste from factories, and create pollution from manufacturing all manner of consumer goods, things that we need to live. There are no easy answers, and I don’t claim to have any.

All I know is that when I get out on my bike, I’m part of the solution to pollution. I’m interacting with my neighborhood, and sometimes neighbors. I’m buying things from local businesses, when I can, instead of having huge corporation send me something overnight and help make a space billionaire even richer. I’m getting my mail, or going to the grocerey store, or buying a lottery ticket that when I check the next day it invariably says “NOT A WINNER.” I’m starting to take that insult personally. But from my bike I also see nature, neighbors, birds, and more. I breathe air, I get my heart rate up, and maybe have some fun. Yeah, sometimes I also yell at distracted idiots in cars.

These little moments aren’t exceptional, or TV-worthy and being broadcast to a billion viewers like Le Tour is. And since I have biked every day for almost four years, they may seem a bit boring. Maybe some roads do get a bit familiar. But you know what? There’s always something new: the gelato store that replaced the Juiceland, the soon to open We Luv Video rising from the ashes of I Luv Video, the newly built sidewalk or protected bike lane that I did my small part for by advocating for the 2016 Mobility Bonds, a neighbor’s Siamese cat, a summer bloom of Pride of Barbados.

No, it’s not the vista of Alps or the Pyrenees or the wine country. Sometimes I go on a favorite, the Southern Walnut Creek trail, or on a longer ride around town. I like my little tours, giros, and vueltas. And like France, we have sunflowers, and that’s enough for me.

Forget France! Ride the Tour de YOU and fight climate change.

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