Nancy Brook | Cycling, Wine, and Men, A Midlife Tour de France
Published: March 29, 2011
Nancy Brook clearly isn’t afraid of challenges. After a string of break-ups (seven in seven years), the single mom and bank vice-president packs her wounded heart, a bicycle, a backpack and two suitcases to France for a 700-mile cycling tour, parts of which traces the Tour de France route.
Prior to the trip, back home in Billings, she’s been honing her college French and training with a Nazi bike coach. Riding a bike evokes the joy she felt as a child, pedaling “a purple banana-seat bike through Montana’s countryside … By rediscovering my love for cycling, I integrated long-forgotten pieces of myself that loved to explore and venture into the world.”
As her cycling skills grow, she begins to contemplate a trip to France. She finally enlists in a tour that takes cyclists from Bordeaux to the Alps, camping, drinking wine and sampling French cuisine enroute. In addition to riding 50-60 miles a day, participants will ascend two major mountains, including Mount Ventoux in Provence: “One of the hardest, hottest and windiest mountains that you can climb by bicycle.” It doesn’t help that she’s hungover from the previous night’s Bastille Day celebration when she ascends the peak. But ascend it she does, a feat she suspects will be “the most difficult physical challenge” she’ll ever encounter.
As Brook pedals through France, she’s recasting her life back home and arrives at last, like Dorothy returning from Oz, at the realization that “the beauty and adventure I sought were always at my doorstep. I only needed to open my eyes to see the treasure that was here all along.”
Brook has punctuated her memoir with tips and statistics about dating, bicycling, camping and museums.
“Nancy’s tour de France quickly becomes an engaging tour de life. Honest, reflective, with more than a little sauciness …” writes Allyn Calton, editor of Magic City Magazine.
The book was published in February 2011 by Morgan James Publishing, Garden City, N.Y., and sells for $16.95 softcover.
– Kristi Niemeyer
