PBP 2019: It's bigger than you

Conversations quoted below were originally conducted in French; they're retold from memory here, and written in English.🗣🇫🇷

Many of the card-stamp areas at controls look about the same as the others: half a dozen tables set up, volunteer event staff sitting in pairs behind each table, lines of riders (short, long, or nonexistent, depending on the ebb and flow of the moment), probably a clock on the wall.

You present your ride booklet to the volunteers, who review it to ensure that everything is looking ok; they stamp the card with a stamp unique to that control and hand-write the current time next to the stamp.

Checking in at one of these stamp control rooms one afternoon on the return -- I don't recall which one, they generally blend together in my memory -- I thanked the volunteers who were processing my booklet:

"Thank you!"

"You're welcome."

This was quite perfunctory on both sides; indeed, the volunteer hadn't skipped a beat in his work to process the card when he'd made the obligatory reply.

While such an exchange is important (and certainly secondary in importance to saying "Bonjour" at the beginning of the interaction), it lacks depth and is quite forgettable. That's kind of a shame for what may feel like a thankless job, processing the cards of thousands of tired, cranky randonneurs.

I wanted to recognize their effort and commitment:

"But no -- without the volunteers, all of this is impossible."

The gentleman stopped processing my card and looked up at me  over his reading glasses. Looking straight into my eyes, he pronounced quite seriously:

 "We do it for the love of the sport."

Shazam! That was not expected. Wow. He just went next-level on me! And boy howdy, did it ever hit me. I could totally dig it.

Now, there was a lot going on here.

For starters, the subtext was completely "Look, son, we're not here for you, we're here for the sport, so don't think that you're at the center of any reason for us being here."

You know what? That's also a big part of what draws me to PBP. Sure, I get personal satisfaction from the challenge and the camaraderie and the food and the people and-and-and; I sincerely hope that most participants do.

But what if...What if nobody showed up to ride PBP? What then?

Sure, the event goes on if you plus or minus one, ten, a hundred...even one thousand riders. But what if interest just wanes? What if nobody cares? The tradition only has life if we all collectively participate.

There is a Star Trek character -- Benjamin Sisko -- who is passionately in love with baseball in a not-too-distant future where the game is all but forgotten.

Will PBP continue forever? Forever is an awfully long time.

Before it disappears, will interest in PBP wane? What will that look like?

That's hard to know, but I know what a healthy PBP tradition looks like, I think, and a big part of that is thousands of riders, volunteers, onlookers, and others doing thankless, behind-the-scenes work for the love of the sport.

Do you love the sport? Ride your bike! Volunteer! Tell your stories! PBP does not depend on any single one of us; it depends on all of us. Allez!

Star Trek character Benjamin Sisko, as played by Avery Brooks