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| Italian trio and Eric Walstad ~ Photo credit: Megan Arnold |
As a native English speaker, I'm fluent in what's probably the most-popular second language among PBP participants. This facilitates lots of little conversations, and even if the person with whom I'm speaking only speaks a little bit of English, we can usually make do.
I have also steadily worked on my French for decades, and can speak conversationally with native French speakers. This enables me to speak with French riders, control volunteers, and just about anyone else out and about along the course, whether involved in the event or not.
I find the language and communication scene to be one of the most-fun aspects of PBP. Each of the thousands and thousands of people involved in the event, from the many corners of the globe, comes with their own individual language background. Whether rider, rider support, volunteer, or onlooker, most have some relationship to cycling, and language is both a pathway and a barrier to connecting with these fellow participants of this grand event.
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A fun combination is meeting a rider who knows little or no English, but, like me, knows French as a second language. This means that each of us is at least a little out of our element, but we have this bridge between us.
I spent part of one afternoon riding with a rider sporting the flag of Portugal. He didn't speak any English, but he was living and working in Bourgogne (Burgundy, France). Bingo! We had a great time chatting in French about cycling, language, France, and all of the other bits of randomness we chat about to help the kilometers roll by.
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Other times connecting is more of a stretch. Wednesday afternoon on the return, I had been riding with Megan and Eric (back-home clubmates) for some time when we found ourselves riding together with an Italian trio. We were setting about the same pace, and we all fell in together.
We quite rapidly determined that, between our two groups, there was no linguistic common ground of any significance. That was kind of a bummer. I mean, we all "spoke" the unspoken language of cycling, and could ride together, but regular banter was out of the question.
Or -- nearly: I'll confess to having taken two years of Italian in high school. Whatever I had learned had become more than rusty, and mostly lost, aside from random words -- predominantly ones that have close relatives in French.
After some hours of riding together, our group of half a dozen approached the Mortagne-au-Perche control. The road kicked up for the final couple of blocks getting into town, so we were all groaning (good-naturedly) that the course demanded this last little effort from us before granting the opportunity to get off of the bike and recharge ourselves.
Now, controls are often places where groups break up: some riders may pop in & out, others may linger a while, and, in my case, I had reserved a room in town where I planned to sleep for at least part of the night. I figured I'd likely never see this Italian trio again, and I really wanted to exchange goodbye pleasantries.
This short little kicker of a hill had spread our group out right away, as hills can do. I found myself alongside one of the Italians. I offered her one of my SFR pins as we ground up the slope, and I dug deep into that rusty Italian vocabulary to try to express my appreciation for the afternoon of riding togther. It started out pretty easily enough: "Grazie" for "thanks," and I was able to add "Grazie per..." for something like "thanks for..." and then it got tricky for me.
She had understood so far, and was eagerly waiting for me to try to lob the next piece of poorly-spoken Italian over that language barrier to complete the thought. I came up with "tutti" for "all," and then, somehow, from the depths, I came up with "insieme" for "together," which word-for-word kind of translates as "Thanks for all together." Her face totally lit up, and, smiling, she replied with "Sì! Sì!" ("Yes! Yes!")
Connection made, spirits lifted, and those minor aches and pains of some 72 hours of being out on the course briefly forgotten.
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Sometimes it doesn't go so well, as one might expect. At one point on the return I came upon a pair of Russian riders. Their home country was revealed not only by their rider frame cards and spoken language, but by one rider's flaming-red kit that proudly broadcast his homeland. I had a go to see whether we had any language in common.
I asked (in French) if they spoke French; blank stares. I asked in English of they spoke English; they looked at each other, and at me, but no dice. I asked in Italian if they spoke Italian, and in German if they spoke German...and, as I recall, I even asked in super-super bad Spanish if they spoke Spanish. Zilch, nada, zéro.
The rider with the flamin' red Russian kit pointed to his kit, looked at me like I was an idiot, and said, in accented English, "Russian!"
Heh...yep, thanks, friend -- loud & clear! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Other times it does not go so well...in very surprising ways!
On the return, I came upon a solo Irish rider. We quickly exchanged pleasantries, thanks to our overlapping vocabulary, and a conversation began to evolve on a quiet road in the late afternoon.
Now, this rider was quite friendly and fairly chatty. He began talking to me about...wait, what was that? Hang on (I think to myself), I didn't quite catch the next bit, either.
I quickly realized that I was not able to track the thread of his conversation whatsoever: He had been speaking English, but I couldn't follow it!
While I was completely (and pleasantly!) bemused by how silly this was -- I mean, didn't we both speak English? -- I was also terribly concerned that I might be asked a reasonable question that depended upon having understood at least half of what he had been saying. I did my best to complement his monologue with "mmm-hmm's" and "yes's" where I thought they'd fit in, but set my mind to finding a way to make a graceful and natural separation and bid this kind gentleman farewell.
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I hope to return to PBP again, and I'm looking forward to more unexpected connections. For me, they're so valuable that they're worth the risk of all of the awkwardness involved. If you're similarly inclined to make connections with Randos and event participants from all over the world, I hope you can take a little inspiration from my experience and spend some time expanding your own language horizons before touching down in France in 2023. Vas-y, le monde t'attend!
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