A soigneur, from the French for “one who provides care” is the member of a cycling team that takes care of the rider and makes sure that he or she has everything the rider needs to keep riding. Need more water? The soigneur makes sure it is available. Need more food (on or off the bike)? That’s the soigneur’s job.
So soigneur begins to describe Toni’s job on this trip, but only scratches the surface.
When I first started thinking about this ride, I expected to sign up with a company that leads tours and provides support for groups of 30 or 40 riders. Those tours are great, especially with the cycling camaraderie they provide. But for this trip, I wanted to take my time, choose my route, and pause in a number of places to visit family or friends or just soak in a place. That didn’t fit with the tour company’s schedules. To my surprise and delight, Toni offered to accompany me on the trip and provide support, allowing me to plan just the trip I wanted. So to put it plainly, Toni allowed me to plan the trip of my dreams.
A ride across the country involves a lot of care and feeding — far more than a soigneur typically provides in a bicycle race, even a grand tour race of three weeks. A trip of over two months is not a trip, it’s a change of lifestyle. We were in a different place almost every night for over two months, and for most of that time we lived out of the RV. Almost all our breakfasts and lunches and a substantial proportion of our dinners were prepared in the RV. Toni prepared them all. And when (as was normally the case) I did not have the energy to clean up, that fell to her too.
When we originally bought the RV, Toni was apprehensive about driving a 25 foot long by 7.5 foot wide by 10.5 foot tall vehicle. Although it is small by RV standards, when it was parked in our driveway before the trip it looked huge and we started calling it the leviathan. There is no way to see out the back (except for a small back up camera with limited in range) and negotiating lane changes and some turns was a whole new experience.
But Toni quickly took to it and became the RV master. On the first day of the trip, she surprised Ellen and me by finding a narrow spot that she had backed into to wait for us. When I asked how she got into the spot, she just shrugged it off as no big deal. Occasionally she and/or I would miss a turn on the route. I only had to pick up my bicycle and point it in the other direction, but she had to pull a three-point turn, which she now excels at, no matter the road conditions.
And then there is the daily maintenance of the RV. As I headed off on my ride, she would batten all the hatches, unplug from water and electric, raise the leveling jacks, turn off the propane and turn on the battery power for the refrigerator, and often stop to empty the black water tank and fill the fresh water tank and otherwise make sure the vehicle was road worthy. When fluid levels got low, she found a place to buy them. When we had chips in the wind-shield, she found a repair place that did the work and allowed us to stay on schedule. There’s more, but you get the picture.
Toni’s most valuable contribution, though, was the daily dose of her extraordinary good nature and optimism — every morning, every evening, and throughout each day’s ride. As I mentioned in my post for the first day of the trip, no good plan survives contact with the enemy, and we were constantly improvising and problem solving around weather issues, route closures, bridges with low clearance, or a camping spot that didn’t measure up.
On a recent ride, I had made a substantial change to the route mid-ride to avoid a busy highway, only to come across a road closure a few miles into the revised route. We shared a quick curse about the situation, then put our heads together and promptly determined that I could ride through the closure (bikes can go lots of places an RV can’t) and found a way around for the RV.
People have asked me the best thing I saw along the trip, and it was often the site of the RV around the corner, with Toni giving me a thumbs up to ask if I had everything I needed. Even when I didn’t need anything, it was reassuring to know that she could provide anything I might need.
Most people who have reacted to our posts have picked up on this and congratulated both Toni and me for the accomplishment. But in case there’s any doubt, the success of this trip was Toni’s accomplishment every bit as much as it was mine. All I had to do was get up every morning and ride my bicycle, something I love to do, have been doing for years, and will keep doing in one form or another. But Toni’s daily life on the trip was quite a change from her usual lifestyle, and RV driver was certainly never at the top of her list of things to do. She picked up the task with gusto and enthusiasm, and I think she had almost as good a time as I did.
So congratulations Toni on your accomplishment and thank you from the bottom of my heart. The next dream we fulfill together is whatever you choose!
