Maps? I don't need no stinkin' maps

I decided to drag Small Boy off to see a stage of the Tour de Romandie today. (The Romandie is the French-speaking part of Switzerland.) I don't ride much anymore, but I'm a bit of a fanatic about watching cycling; if a race is within a few hundred kilometers of me, I try to see a stage. I've seen six stages of various Tours de France reaching back to the reign of Indurain; seven stages of various Tours de Suisse; three Tour de Romandie stages; a handful of day races back in the States; surely others I'm forgetting. I guess it could seem pretty boring but if the weather is nice (or even if it isn't) and you're in good company, it's a really good way to pass a day. You find a pretty stretch of road; stake out your spot in the sun or shade as you prefer; pull out the picnic, playing cards and books; and just hang until some professional cyclists go grinding (ascent), zipping (flat stretch) or blazing (descent) by. It is not, however, necessarily something an energetic Small Boy is going to stand for, so today was a bit of an experiment. After examining the route I decided to watch the race as it passed through the small town of Saint-Blaise. It seemed the perfect choice: I could get there either by train or car, the riders were expected to arrive there at a time that would allow Small Boy to nap on the way there, it's on the lake so if Small Boy decided waiting along the side of the road for 45 minutes just to see a peloton fly by at about 38 kilometers an hour was the most boring thing ever we could bail and head for the lake, and best of all it gave me the perfect opportunity to meet Jessica.

I drove; taking the train would have involved two transfers during what would ideally be Small Boy's nap whereas in the car he'd sleep the whole time for sure.* I headed off into new territory - it's not an area R and I visit often, and when we do he's generally doing the driving - with my faithful GPS to guide me. After leading me three-quarters of the way there, however, my faithful GPS decided to abandon me in the Romande countryside outside the small town of Ins without so much as a fare-thee-well. One minute she's** all like "leave the traffice circle at the third exit" and the next minute she's gone mute and my display panel reads "No Route." What, no route? There's a road, right? It keeps going, right? And off there in the distance there are...why, could those be more roads? So of course there is a route. It might be indirect and sub-optimal, but unless I'm about to drive off the edge of the world there is without a doubt a route. So route me.*** But she stubbornly refused. She didn't even tell me to "make a u-turn," which is invariably her advice when she thinks we're headed off into the wild. Nothing. Nada. Just silence. Fortunately I had also printed out a map and directions; unfortunately the directions I'd printed differed from the route my feckless GPS had selected and she'd abandoned me someplace I couldn't quite find on my other directions; fortunatley road signage in Switzerland is excellent- at every intersection of any import each direction is marked with signs telling you the names of the towns off in that direction; not just the big cities but little villages, too. So after driving around aimlessly some sophisticated orienteering I arrived someplace where my actual location on the planet Earth corresponded to something on the map I'd printed out.**** Just a few kilometers later I started seeing the police detail for the Tour de Romandie and I just followed the trail of flourescent green vested men into Saint-Blaise. And as I was pulling into a parking lot in Saint-Blaise, the GPS suddenly pipes up to inform me, "you have arrived at your destination!" I might have said "F--- you" "Thank you," I can't remember.

The stage went more or less as these things go: wait on the side of the road for a while, then try to recognize a single cyclist as the peloton passes by, then it's over. Afterwards Jessica and I went to her favorite local cafe where Small Boy behaved like a prince and let us have a conversation for forty-five minutes while he tried to recreate Carhenge and generally amused himself for far longer than I would have expected given the long car ride and then the sitting in the stroller on the side of the road and then the request for "restaurant behavior".***** And I'm not going to blog the conversation, because what's chatted over cappucino stays over cappucino and all that, but like I said at the beginning, if you're in good company a bike race a great way to pass a day.

* Strangely enough, he woke up about half-way there and didn't go back to sleep, but neither did he cry or even fuss.

** Our GPS has a female voice, so I refer to it as she.

*** When we lose contact with a satellite our display says "seeking satellite," so I don't think that was the problem. She just up and abandoned me.

**** We do also have an atlas in the car but I didn't feel like pulling over and unfolding it and breaking the Small Boy spell of good car behavior if I didn't have to.

***** Thanks, Small Boy for letting me pass such a pleasant afternoon with Jessica!