The Pessimism and Occasional Optimism of Juvenile Adulthood

Working on three and a bit hours sleep at the time of writing, the cusp of delirium draws ever nearer, sitting on my shoulder, waiting to seize even a slightest act of surrender. I’m quite proud to have held it off for quite so long. My long weekend in Paris (acting as both a final reunion of flatmates and a celebration of the Tour de France) operated on a system of long days, late nights, and sleep being consistently demoted in favour of talking, walking or occasional doomscrolling. Adding to the creeping sense of madness is the nature of Paris itself. Years ago, cycling into Paris with Explorers, I wrote a crap blog entry, where I referenced how the traffic lights offer a greater ambience to the city than instruction to passing vehicles. In that regard, little has changed. Cities are places of purpose, action, intention. Desires are geographically concentrated for your convenience, activity is the currency of a city’s success. Arriving on Saturday lunchtime, having been awake for nea...

As ‘Le Grand Depart’ came to a conclusion on Sunday, Wout Van Aert’s frustration at a third consecutive second place was palpable. Though Van Aert’s ultimate quest for the green jersey will be helped by a lack of sprint stages such as these, neither the upcoming terrain nor his current ownership of the yellow jersey will yet console him. If he was feeling inaccurately self-deprecating, Wout could consider himself a Jack of all Trades against masters. But Fabio Jakobsen’s competitive spirit in the high mountains will be channelled into surviving time limits - his personal and sporting rival Dylan Groenewegen will only hope his toils at the Dauphiné weeks ago will spare him the worst of such stresses. Only Peter Sagan seems to pose a serious threat to the Belgian, and even that will rely on him besting the man who last year won stages on Mont Ventoux, the Arc de Triomphe, and the humble stopwatch. Van Aert is a man capable of consoling himself. Reliant on extrapolating conclusions from...