L' Oeuvre de la course cycliste

This morning I finished Zola's L' Oeuvre (The Work, or The Masterpiece)...

The book follows a group of young, oh so tortured (and starving) artists in 1860s Paris.  The characters are amalgams of Zola's friends and acquaintances among the bohemian artist set of mid-century France- Cezanne, Monet, Renoir, Manet, etc.  Although worth reading and true to Zola's half-Romantic (ouch, my ideals!), half-documentary style, it is mostly interesting for the hindsight afforded a modern reader; the existential tortures these people suffered over their ideas, ideals, and desire to revolutionize the stodgy old Parisian art establishment are almost humorous when you consider what their agonies and harsh integrity sent into posterity- the stuff of hotel art, uninspired dorm rooms, and a never-ending line of safe, money-grubbing of museum exhibits (Philly Art Museum, I'm looking at you).  I'm not knocking Impressionism per se, but it is fascinating that what most people today consider pretty, nonthreatening art could once have had all of Paris up in arms!

Anyway, all of this is to say that in honor of Zola and the long-gone struggles of the artists he chronicled, I am posting my most Impressionistic photo.  This is from a 2005 bike race, the Eastern Championships (oh, I got my ass handed to me there), and it was actually taken with a film camera.  The blur is accidental, more representative of a lack of skill than any artistic intent.  But when I had the whole set digitized and they came back as egregious piles of pixellated grain (they must have seriously printed them snapshot size and then stuck them in someone's crappy desktop scanner.  or maybe someone's dog ate the data, who knows) this one actually seemed to have improved.  It became positively Impressionistic, and evocative of the chaos, speed and blurred beauty of a bike race.  No photoshoppery here except a quick Gaussian blur to smooth out the grain.