Size XXL – too big for anyone on the Observant team. But we felt the orange-and-green cycling jersey did a decent job of brightening up the wall of our editor-in-chief’s office slash meeting room. It had hung there since September 2005, the month Observant celebrated its 25th anniversary by tackling Alpe d‘Huez. A large group of 82 staff members and students, plus four supporters, boarded a coach for a long weekend of cycling in France.
Everyone received a specially designed jersey in their own size to mark the occasion. At the foot of the iconic mountain, on Saturday 3 September at exactly 9.30 am, it was once again stressed that this was not a race. The motto was simple: to reach the top is to win. Not everyone took that entirely to heart. The young men and women from the student cycling club Dutch Mountains, as well as a few former amateur racers, went flat out from the start. They gave it their all, as did the less experienced cyclists who, cheered on by board members of the Mustangh Foundation (the chosen charity for this fundraising ride, still raising money today for a hospital in Ghana), conquered all 21 hairpin bends. Everyone made it to the top; the atmosphere and sense of camaraderie were great.
Back in Maastricht, one jersey was left over. For twenty years, it served as a wall decoration. Last June, after our spring cleaning, it finally ended up in the pile of old junk.