On The Road
by: Bill Oetinger 3/1/2023
Interactive Tourism
The very first On The Road column I wrote for BikeCal—back in July of 1999—was called “Interactive Transportation.” I’ve just read it again after a long time away from it. It still says what it was supposed to say back then…still seems relevant. The take-away from that little essay was that cycling is a great way, an interactive way, to see the world…to be fully immersed in the world around us.
I’m revisiting that theme this month, in the midst of a wet winter that is both welcome and a little bit frustrating. We need the water and thank goodness our reservoirs and our Sierra snow pack are looking good, for first time in years. But we’re missing riding days, what with all the wet stuff out there. I’m a member in good standing of Patrick O’Grady’s cohort: “Old Guys Who Get Fat in Winter.” Gotta get in a few miles and shed a few pounds…Spring is pretty well here.
While I’m stuck at home a bit more than I would like, I am living my cycling life a bit vicariously. Watching the first races of the year, for instance, but also watching videos on YouTube of “touring” in far off, exotic locales…virtual touring. And not just ones that are expressly for cyclists. There is a vast inventory of walking videos around charming European villages, from the Cotswolds to Provence to Umbria. Once you click on one and watch it, YouTube will start feeding you a more-or-less endless stream of them. They’re kind of hard to resist, at least until you’ve seen enough of them and they all start to look alike.
The villages are ever so quaint. There’s very little on this side of the Atlantic to match up with those several-hundred year old towns…their cobbled lanes and stair-step alleys, the warm stone buildings with the colorful window trims and flower boxes full of geraniums. Piazzas and campos. All of it. But what takes the magic off these visits just a tiny bit for me: the tourists. The throngs of ambling, window-shopping, rubber-necking tourists, from every corner of Europe and beyond…anyone who can afford to travel to these Disneylands for grown-ups.
Many a village now seems to exist almost entirely to process its tourists; to extract some Euros from them—in shops and bistros and albergos—and then send them packing…”Thanks…bye! Next, please!” Nothing new about this. The best—most scenic—of the towns have been doing this dance for hundreds of years. But it doesn’t work for me, not the way I see it in the YouTube teasers.
Now wait…who am I to stand aloof from that crowd of lookie-loos with their selfie-sticks? Who am I to demean their adventures? After all, I’ve been there and done that myself, in more cute villages than I can count. To answer that is to circle back to my “interactive tourism” theme. I—or we (my cycling friends and I)—did not simply step down off a tour bus or down the gangplank of a monster cruise ship, ready for a few hours of conspicuous consumption in whatever town is now up on the itinerary. No, we rode to that town. We got there via pedal-power, perhaps over some epic col in the Alps or Haut-Provence or Emilia-Romagna. Or perhaps along some mellow canal path or idyllic valley meander, gliding along an avenue of ancient plane trees or past a hillside of lavendar.
So when we arrive at the next cute village, looking for a cafe where we can slake our thirst and shovel some calories into our somewhat vacant interiors, we will appreciate the world in ways the tourists climbing off the bus cannot. We will see the village in the larger context of the surrounding landscape. Our legs and lungs and hearts and minds will all be zinging with the buzz of a good work-out and at least some satisfaction in having ridden to this delightful spot employing only our own energy, fueled by the nice cuisine we enjoyed at last night’s hotel.
I know some folks will get a little testy when we cyclists act like we know things they don’t know. I’m sorry about that but quite often those are exactly the facts of the matter, at least in this context. We may not be better human beings. We may not be entitled to any greater portion of respect or cosmic brownie points for what we do. But I’m unapologetic in asserting that we are having more fun and feeling more alive in the moment—and in the memories we take home later—than the less active tourists.
Here’s hoping this unfolding new season will include some interactive tourism for you, perhaps not too far from home or maybe—if you can manage it—off in some scenic, far-away corner of the world.
Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net