Tour de France

As usual this time of year, I'm following the Tour de France on television. My TV set captures it for me, and I later watch some of it (the programs can be five hours long). One reason to tune in is the French scenery. I see the back roads of Europe, two lanes swinging through forests and mountains. Much of the race is shot by the French from helicopters with views down of ancient forts and castles. Storks soar by, beneath the cameras.

The race winds though many small towns. I'm impressed by how many buildings (infrastructure) our species has accumulated over the last thousand years. The layout of the small towns is interesting. We are used to towns being laid out in grids, more or less. But in these ancient French towns, viewed from above, the old buildings seem to point in random directions, just piled next to each other, clustered without regard to streets or sidewalks, if they exist.  It's as if the towns were accumulated before humans developed a sense of edges and neatness.