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Going down to an open grave, or how the bicycle generated its own language

Villagers cheer on Geoffrey Soupe during the 2020 Tour de France. Photograph: Anne-Christine Poujoulat / Getty.

Sometimes you are so calm watching TV. It’s summer; It’s horribly hot outside and you’re so cold at home, with your blinds down, your draft, your shameful underwear that can only be used in such a situation. So that, that stays medium amorous on the sofa, and he changes channels, and puts on one in which many guys on bikes appear, all with their colors, their legs depilator and his ridiculous tan, style “cut of choconata», and you think: ok, stop for a while, great, look what a beautiful landscape, look how they sweat and I don’t. He settles down, begins to listen, pays all the attention in the world, because doing things without paying all the attention in the world is doing them a little less.

And he doesn’t understand shit. But what language does this gentleman speak, why does he say strange things, like development, birds o goats. Oh, they screwed up my afternoon, I’m going to have a drink…

Yes, friend, that happens, that’s it. But here, in your favorite cultural magazine, we come to decrypt such impossible arcana for you. Everything is little for our readers, oh, how we appreciate our readers. So get on the wheel and discover this world of magnificent madmen, fire eaters and expression contortionists.

Of bikes and words

Paul Fournel is a SR Arverno (like the shield) that writes. Well, let’s see, say that he writes… Paul Fournel is one of the most important letter collectors in France, a guy with lots of awards and a member of both the College of Pataphysics and the Oulipo, two things of pure elite and designed for the most exquisite palates . It happens that Fournel, for who knows what reasons, is a crazy bike. Yes, yes, a real madman. And he has published a few works (there are a few works out of twenty) about cycling. He already sees, what a pile of words for something so naive.

The last one is titled Home Platoon (Seuil, 2022) and is a collection of short stories with wheels as the main element. One of them is “Babel”, and there Paul talks about that mysterious language called cyclist. Yes Tom Simpson had to learn cyclist when he got to the big group, what if Roche did the same. The grace of the story is that it is full of expressions that can only be understood (expressions that can only be used) in the field of the professional peloton, which allows Fournel to play with sonorities, misunderstandings, and hyperbole…

Playing with all that is true, on the other hand. There is that own language, there are those jokes and unique memories on the bike. Just like lawyers talk in lawyer (and often fat tostón, the lawyer) cyclists talk cyclistand all those who follow this blessed sport have been infected with the matter. John Bobett (the brother of Louison, who was worse on the bike and better with words) said that cycling had its own language, and only its components could understand it. Anyway, maybe not so much, but there is something of that.

Because here we have chatter in the form of phrases made to a ton. Some with their ironic point, others directly to a bad host, those from beyond with intrinsic tenderness (or I look for it, that everything can be). There are more of the first, because the creative spirit is driven, many times, by tons of anger. So, when you move very slowly, Snails climb on your decks, flies walk between the spokes, you walk less than the ice cream cart, you’re cooked, the guy with the mallet has visited you, you go with the hook o You have the air of a globetrotter. Maybe then you end up in the bus (“the group of those who only seek to enter within the control”), or you get off the men (“the bike”), or you can even put nut (“put demanding development”) and make one last effort.

maybe you go making the rubber, yes, but you can also be a domestic (“someone who helps their leader”), or the pitcher (“last relay before the sprint”), or you go up to grinder (“with a lot of cadence”), or you go no chain (“easy”) to the tack (“rise”) next. maybe you caught a fan (“a way of riding in a group against the wind”), or you went out carelessly into the starting (“acceleration”) of that beetle (“Colombian cyclist”) and now you are empty, or perhaps you pushed too hard in the false plain (“which is more false than plain”) and now you go losing feathers (“running out of strength”), and you just wait for the car to pick you up. broom car (“that closes the event and catches those who leave”). In these situations, the ideal is to hold on to the platoonwhich can also be packagehe Big groupthe casa, he homethe group.

Seriously, it’s always better to go on the group (although group It also refers to the last group of cyclists in a test… look, I don’t know).

bicycle language
Several cyclists arriving in Roubaix during the 2018 Tour de France. Photograph: Jeff Pachoud/Getty.

One moment, one expression

One good thing about invented languages ​​is that it is sometimes possible to trace the origins of this or that expression back to its inception. You see, the dream of any philologist. In short, it is not always satisfactory, because there are not a few occasions in which everything has been distorted in a very fat way, and your face remains like that, like a contestant on The roulette of the fortune that only lacks a little word. But here we come for the rigor, colleagues (also a bit to laugh, but rigor above all), so…

We even have illustrious protagonists. Albert Londonfor example, who is a pioneer in the rolls of the new journalism since long before Wolfe theorize on the matter. Well, it is to this London that we owe the expression strenuous of the route, a cliché so fat that I would be embarrassed to use it, but, anyway, what are we going to do? Except that, in addition, the whole thing around it looks false, it stinks, hey. Yes, yes, as you hear.

First of all… the translation. When Albert London covers for the daily The Little Parisian the 1924 Tour de France is a famous guy, a reporting star (before there were these things), mainly for his work in the Cayenne prison. Yes, yes, Devil’s Island, no less. So if London says that cyclists are forced, we must translate it as “forced”, and, in its context, everyone perfectly understood mimesis: the guys in the jersey and shorts are condemned to strenuous work that is impossible to avoid.

Only, let’s see, how to explain it. The expression has its origin in an interview that the brothers Pelissier (Charleswho was a majete, and Henri, who was a fat son of a bitch) they granted him in a certain canteen at the Coutances station. Both had withdrawn due to discrepancies with the organization and their tongues were loose. What if the Tour does not allow us to wear two jerseys and we have to endure the wet throughout the stage, what if he looks at my completely torn leather strap, what if I throw cocaine into my eyes to stay awake, what if we are worse than beasts of burden . London takes aim frantically, because he knows that it is journalistic gold, and then writes one of the most legendary chronicles in this blessed sport. One that is… well, untrue, it seems. Charles Pélissier said it years later. That that kid was nice, but, about bikes, just enough, so they took a bit of the hair out of him, so as to dramatize his claims more. How the hell were they going to put farlopa in the tear ducts, are you crazy? And he laughed. What does it matter, everything has remained a myth, and the myth is what counts.

about stop to eat an ice cream It also has its crumb because it is used when someone only climbs a climb and then waits for the peloton, but the historical base tells us about the seminal nut for all the nuts in this bike thing. Federico Martin Bahamontes, nothing less. That he made his debut on the Tour back in 1954, that soon began to stand out (“I didn’t know what the hills were like, so I concentrated on climbing as fast as possible”), that left an anecdote for history in the middle of the Massif Central when he arrived to the Col de Romeyère, park your bike on the prao and he approaches the ice cream man who was there selling cones: you give me two, vanilla, yes. You see, mythical. It happens that we don’t know very well how it happened either, because there was no TV, and Federico has told us a thousand different versions, in some he takes half a horse from everyone, in others he sprints with a Belgian and he breaks two radios, in the one from beyond it is an evil song that messes up his wheels, in another it is that he was afraid to go down alone, and sometimes he even says that the goal was very far away and that continuing was suicide. What happened is beyond doubt, because the “ice cream anecdote” is one of the most popular ever, but the details… Anyway.

I guess that’s how legends are made.

When we jump into civilian life

Sometimes our way of speaking has become so well known, so commonly used, that it jumps to life-not-on-the-saddle and falls into the public domain. I guess it’s the biggest hit a slang can hope for, sure, but it also makes me a little sad, like when that cute restaurant you met with your partner appears in a weekend supplement and you know, wow, you can keep going, but everything will have changed (albeit in a Lampedusian way).

You now see any group of freaks in single file (playing a conga, composing the dumbest performance in the universe, or waiting to pay for a pair of pants at the Primark) and you think about the multicolored snake. If you are a journalist specialized in bicycles (with a reading deficit and less future than Leticia Sabater in Hollywood), you can also put it in your chronicles, which, overall, will not be worse.

Or the runners-up… oh, the runners-up, what a game the runners-up have, because they have more story than the winner (almost always, listen, in this matter, the winner was Anquetil, and Anquetil wore a story for four Netflix series). We call the seconds poulidoresby Raymondwho always went below Jacques, and we can even modify it and say of someone that poulidoreaand who was the master and now he is limping because we say that he is poulidorizando. So to infinity, that words are free.

There is everything: go down into an open grave (Think about the concrete meaning of the expression, because it is quite shocking), tailgating, I cover your air maillot amarillo. We also need to be red lantern, which is used quite a bit across the board to point to the last of any classification. It is clear that it has cycling origins, but we cannot be very sure which one either. Some say that it is because the trains have a red light in their closing car, and that is applicable to whoever is closing the race. Others, that it is because before the last ones arrived so late that they could only look for accommodation in those hotels that have red lights on the door (ahem). Choose you. In one way or another, the expression became so popular that the Tour de France itself presented its last rider with a red lantern for the pleasure of the photographers (he only uploaded the matter in images, he did not have to carry it throughout the stage, we are not so cruel).

Do you want one last? about the bird. I have no idea where the thing comes from bird In French they say craving to that very specific hunger, so difficult to define for you and so easy to recognize when it arrives. Craving. Well, here, bird

They are crazy these romans. At least these Romans who go by bike.

bicycle language
The peloton between Mende and Valence during the 2015 Tour de France. Photograph: Jeff Pachoud/Getty.

2023-05-24 07:00:46
#open #grave #bicycle #generated #language

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