André had spent the last ten years working underground, yet he had only just turned 24. His face, skin hardened and cracked from a cocktail of sweat, coal dust and intense labour, gave him the appearance of a man decades older. He had grown up quickly, but had aged even more rapidly in the physical sense. Wearing a bandanna fashioned from a handkerchief to conceal his premature hair loss, the other miners would often tease him, nicknaming him ‘the pirate’.
He needed a way out, an escape from the darkness that enveloped him day and night. His only friend in the mines, Rémy, had mentioned that a colleague drove the service vehicle for some of the bicycle races held in the region; André had a driver’s licence, and figured this could be his ticket to a new life. Rémy had other ideas.
He would always comment on André’s legs, a foible that didn’t sit well with André and made him uncomfortable around the other miners. Rémy would laughingly call him “Bouvin, Bouvin!”, a reference to the champion 6 Day rider who hailed from the next town over and would often be seen training on the undulating roads, rare for this country but more common around these parts. Typically, anyone spotted riding a bicycle would get the “Bouvin” call from Rémy, joker that he was.
Rémy was resolute in his defiance; André wasn’t cut out for driving a service vehicle. No, he should be racing the bicycle, Remy insisted. He had witnessed André ride the 20 miles each way, every day to the pit on his crude one-speed bike, rusted and squeaking and tyres nearly flat. He would get André a better bike from Bouvin’s uncle, and enter him in the criterium raced in the centre of town as part of the cheese festival held every two weeks. Reluctantly, André agreed on the proviso that he be able to wear his Sunday best leather loafers, carry a flambéd rabbit in his jersey pocket, and that any cheese won would be split 60/40 between them. Rémy came through on all counts, and the rest is history.*
*Historical facts may not be historically accurate, or factual. Clarification welcomed.
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Those guns are amazing! They're like the German Paris guns.
@Cyclops
Seriously! Michelangelo would be proud to have sculpted those in marble.
Is that whipped cream or silly string that's being applied to the cassette?
@Bespoke
Cheese Whiz - Rémy discovered that as it melted in the heat from André's BFG's it turned in to the perfect high speed lubricant. Rémy went on to invent WD40 and the trouser press.
Tragically André caught myxomatosis from the partially flambéd rabbit he carried with him that day - following a two year convalescence he joined the Foreign Legion to forget and subsequently forgot so well that he ended up with a new identity as a mad accordion player in a Peruvian bistro in Glasgow.
Some would think that the mechanic is applying chain lube. Little so those people know that Andre was putting out so much V that the chain was heating up and needed to be cooled down so that it wouldnt melt off the bike.
And all the local mademoiselle used to secretly call Remy, "Monsieur Doigts de Plaisance" (Eng. Mr Pleasure Fingers).
Check out the fat digits hanging on the car!
@RedRanger, @the Engine
That was neither lube nor coolant. It was a crude mixture of cheap Calvados, cocaine and morphine, applied in a futile attempt to put the chain out of the misery of having to channel more V than it could handle.
Brett, you are genius.
@Marcus
You too!
@Nate
Nice catch. Why it's called a "speedball."
@the Engine
I call bullshit! It's common knowledge that native Peruvian music is ill-suited to the accordion.
@PeakInTwoYears
In a later race, Remy unfortunately inhaled too much of his own evil brew. The subsequent lack of concentration caused him to be known thereafter as Monsieur Main-Gauche.