soaking wet in 400 words

vignette series // tour de france // stage 1

It’s a waiting game.

Umbrellas open as the heavens dump themselves on us. My white shoes aren’t white anymore. There’s no mixed zone — we stand wherever, stupid like livestock. It is oddly silent. There are no announcers, hence no one knows what’s going on. When we pull out our phones to check the situation, we see our reflections in them as the raindrops congeal and spread over the glass until we have to wipe the glass on our shirt. Frustration. Typing in the passcode — the touch sensor is useless right now.

Everything is gray, a whole world in monochrome as it’s reflected back in buildings. There are some open windows where spectators look down on us, the rain dampening their hair but they don’t care either, because the first slender form glides across the line and past us, his tires parting the water collected on asphalt.

This is what they came here to see.

Earlier, some men committed one of the most persistent acts of human hubris: they thought they could outsmart the weather. Yesterday, they all colluded and plotted: who would go first, who would go last, based on when the rain would fall. However, the rain, born from the egalitarian indifference of earth, had other plans, and one by one, the race favorites rolled in soaked to the bone, and those designated by the organizers and teams as hlapci¹ all came in nice and dry at the end of the day. By the time they’ll roll across the finish, the washing machines in the undercarriage of the team busses will already be in the spin cycle with the clothes from the earlier unlucky souls.

When he pulls up, his shoulders heave. Mathieu Van der Poel.