Somehow I forgot to post this here on Kimi’s actual birthday but I am pretty proud of it and all the compliments I got really did my self-esteem a world of good. So if you’re responsible for one of the 23,500(ish) views or you’re among the 172 people who liked it, I want to thank you, chances are we’d be good friends. And those 2 dislikes… I will find you. Just kidding. I guess đŸ™‚ Happy Belated Kimi Day!
After three weeks of amazing scenery (seriously, how great is Corsica?), brave attacks, numerous wheelies, inflatable guitars, a sea of passionate fans, green goatees, badly-parked buses, exhausted hugs, plenty of “wish you’d trip and get run over by a herd of elephants” intrusive spectators, tens of giant flags of countries not represented in the peloton, loyal and caring teammates, nice and sometimes quirky roadside Tour tributes, ridiculously polka-dotted garments, superb light/laser shows on the Champs-Elysees, unfounded “let’s fill the front page with something catchy” accusations, sequined jerseys, a couple of Richie Froome mix-ups, brilliant sunset shots around l’Arc de Triomphe, some unfortunate haircuts, a disappointing lack of fireworks, several bad English accents on Eurosport, a couple of cliche “lions in the bus/around the table/wearing helmets” photos, a lot of pretty flower bouquets that I always wonder who waters, one ‘Oh, no, not Eddie” moment and several “Oh, this guy is brilliant” ones, Paris came sooner than I hoped but with the perfect conclusion I had in mind all along.
Vive Le Tour! đŸ™‚
A couple of busy weeks went by so I finally took some days off and now that most transfers, resignations and doping scandals have calmed down a bit, I’m starting to feel the cycling off-season blues. Sure, I still have some F1 races with an exciting championship fight and the occasional snooker tournament left to keep my withdrawal symptoms to a minimum. But I can’t just put my peloton fondness on hold until January, so I started to do what I do best when I try to relax and that’s drawing, of course.
After I spent half of Vuelta making a little something to remind me of that magnificent race and of one of my favourite riders, the lovely Chris Froome (which I’ll also post soon enough), I just figured I could do a couple more to decorate my room and remind me of other people I’m rather fond of. The first obvious stop was another Team Sky pretty face, this time one with the loveliest Norwegian name I ever heard, a playful smile and a figure that could easily win him a bib shorts pageant. He seems too cute to be true…umm, too good to be true I mean… and did I mention his skills on a bike? đŸ™‚ Oh well, enough rambling and here’s the drawing…
Once upon a time there was this girl who had a delightful imagination. She was well-behaved and rather quiet, but only because the world in her head was much more alluring than what she saw around her. She never broke the rules. She was charming and never scared, not even of her idealistic thoughts. She was friendly with children because they were the only ones that found it natural to understand her whimsical nature. She collected bubblegum stickers, but only the pretty and colourful ones. She kept them in the lacy jewelry box her grandmother gave her. She loved it, but she didn’t like wearing shiny rings, not even delicate bracelets, she didn’t feel like she needed to impress anyone. She didn’t need it truly, she always made an impression with her winding ruby hair, perfectly fitted pastel dresses and lips as soft as a dragonfly’s wings.
She went to sleep at night hypnothised by the shadows on her on ceiling, thinking about how much better it would be if life were a perfect tale. She couldn’t remember the moment she closed her eyes but as soon as she did, an iridescent sky was spreading above her. She got up from the perfectly groomed grass, knocking over a porcelain tea cup that was sitting precariously close to the edge of a metal garden table with rusty paint. The white surface turned for an instant into a deep purple, just before it pourred off the table and onto her delicate sundress. She felt a passing scent of berries before she realized the lilac stain will prove rather difficult to take out from the silky fabric. She must be dreaming, surely, and this must be barely a footnote in a big dramatic chapter.
She looked up and noticed the winding street, the symetric houses painted in pure pastel colours and the personalized mailboxes that told a perfect story about their owners. It seemed like one of those places with pampered flowering hedges that you’re not allowed to touch, where you can leave the kids’ bicycle in the front yard without any worries and where dogs are too blissful to bark away at squirrels. That must be true enough, it’s a dream after all, isn’t it?
While she passed the freshly painted little white fences she thought these were the kind of people that were always respectul, that helped their neighbours fix their porch, that did their laundry on time and never fought over what cereal to buy or whose family to visit for Christmas. Oh, Christmas, just imagine the sprinkly lights covering every inch of those cozy welcoming walls. As she admired an adorable square house next to a dusty yellow dog house, she noticed a tremendous hot air ballon in the boldest, most hypnotising of colours. She barely noticed that the playground around it was as deserted as the rest of that tiny town. Surely this is meant to lead to the plot of this chapter, right?
She climbed into it without fear, she knew it couldn’t crash anyway. The colossal puffy ballon lifted softly and slowly until she could see how peaceful and perfect everything was from above. Terribly peaceful. While the playful wind made her dress rustle slighly, it became more and more obvious to her that there was genuinely no one down there; she had imagined those perfect strangers around her but there were no friends to throw her birthday parties and then forget the cake, and no family to remind her of that Easter when she ruined her fancy dress by chasing a baby possum or the summer she gave up her favourite doll for a postcard depicting a fairytale cottage lost in colourful wild flowers and a freshly painted little white fence.
Maybe that purple stain wasn’t as bad as she thought.
Once upon a time there was this girl who always said the right thing. She collected buttons and postcards. She always lost her umbrellas. She loved flowers and always wanted a bicycle with a little basket  to carry them around town on Sundays. She never bought one. She wore dresses only on weekends and only read books with a happy-ending. She never believed in fairytales but never lost hope. She went to the market every Saturday morning, unless it was raining and she had lost her umbrella.
One Saturday, as the traders hastily packed what was left of their apples and carrot crates, the rain started pouring like an angry mountain cascade. If only she hadn’t forgotten her red dotted umbrella in the clockmaker’s workshop last week. She could run to the post office across the street to seek for shelter. She did. It was closed and the gentle bunch of lillies of the valley got half-wet in her hand. She sat on the stairs, hanging over her precious flowers and watching drops falling down from the tips of her brown hair. There was no noise, no cars passing by, no thunder. In the happy-ending novels there could only be two similar scenarios: one where they stand alone and heartbroken in pouring rain on a moonlit night or one where two silly lovers dance in the rain like they could never catch a cold and water never gets into their eyes. This third one proved much less poetic.
She could hear a slight rustling sound coming from the street and a brown and yellow shadow fighting with the rain. It stopped suddenly and moved towards her. The tall blue-eyed shadow opened a purple umbrella and sat next to her on the wet steps. The yellow shadow had two big wheels but no flower basket. She never needed another one anyway.
The Wednesday Society 