Faith Talamantez/The Daily Nexus

Chancellor Henry T. Yang announces the reroute of the Tour de France to the UC Santa Barbara bike lanes and enrolls each student as a racer. The announcement, via email, which was left unread by the vast majority of the student populace as per usual, detailed the change of venue. It read, “I am writing to share with you all a momentous occasion and historical event. The organizers of Tour de France 2023 have moved the annual race to the bike lanes of our beautiful campus with all of our students entered automatically as contestants. Please be aware of traffic delays.” Upon looking further into said email, one problem immediately arose: It was scheduled for Oct. 2-10.

The Tour de Barbara began around 9 a.m. on Monday morning. For the first few hours, many students reported that they hadn’t noticed much of a change. While a handful noted that it seemed a bit more congested than usual, most blamed the general incompetence of so many people on the excessive number of new students. One particularly observant student mentioned that it was a tad odd that there were so many French exchange students this year and noted that they all seemed to have poor anger management skills, but the legs of Greek gods.

It was around the third day that people began really noticing things were off. Lecture halls were left half empty, even in the case of those with a waitlist that you’d be lucky to get off of by spring, and yet the bike lanes were so full that those walking seemed to be arriving to class faster. The same groups of people were seen over and over again in what looked to be almost the same formation and clearly had no intentions of stopping anywhere, including multiple students and your favorite professor who had no classes this quarter despite specifically swearing he would definitely teach at least one. According to one poor first-year student who barely escaped, there were 23 bikes piled up, completely blocking off the way from Campbell Hall back to the Chi-5 with only swarms of intimidating French men. 

After days on end of angry bicyclists making the bike lanes somehow even worse than they already were to ride on, a winner was finally announced. First-year student Anita Bath absolutely destroyed every single contestant in the race, much to the dismay of the professionals. 

In anger, a contestant stormed up to Bath and screamed, “HOW DID YOU MANAGE TO BEAT US ALL?”

Confused, and somewhat frightened, Bath said, “I couldn’t find Phelps Hall.”

Well, Gauchos, it was an amazing competition season, and we look forward to seeing you for next year’s race, which after the amazing drama of this year, will be permanently hosted during Week 2 of Fall Quarter.