Jakartass Home thoughts from abroad. Alien thoughts from home.

Photograph: Bryn Lennon/Getty Images
Stage winner Primoz Roglic descends the Col du Galibier.

As a lad, I had a bicycled with a Ridge frame and cow-horn handles bars which I rode up and down and through the gravel and sand pits on Blackheath.

In the early ’70s I used to cycle from my home in Stockwell, south London to the office of the homeless charity I co-coordinated in north London, navigating my way through the frightening chaos of the Elephant and Castle. This junction of roundabouts was more recently described, in 2011, by then London Mayor Boris Johnson, now the UK’s Foreign Secretary as being “perfectly negotiable – if you keep your wits about you.” Now there are segregated cycle lanes.

As Jakartass, in 2006 I wrote a tribute to a lovely modest man, John Preedy, a cyclist who made a very positive and significant contribution, to the world yet was wiped out on his way home.

Also, as Jakartass, I have long supported from my office chair the local lobby/activist group Bike To Work (FB page).

When I first subscribed to MNC for their satellite TV channels, I enjoyed coverage of the annual Tour de France on Eurosport. It wasn’t because I was a fan of the sport, but that the journey was through scenery long lost to my purview. Having once in my teens stood beside a road in the Massif Central as the riders whooshed past, I hadn’t ever viewed cycling as a spectator sport; TV changed my mind.

This isn’t a post about MNC’s ties to Trump, about pending corruption charges, lack of local environmental concern, or political shenanigans, all of which can be laid at the owner’s door. Nor is it to express my disapproval of MNC’s constant dropping of channels, such as Eurosport, which were originally written into the subscriber contract I signed.

No, it’s just to say that the image above captures the spirit of what I came to appreciate about the Tour.

Note: I’m out of town for the next three weekends with limited access to the net. But as I have pre-scheduled Images of the Week, please check them out.