I found this photo from one of the dealers that I source my movie-stars-on-bikes photos from. (See Hollywood Rides a Bike, the international bestseller!) It's stamped "Sep 19 1954," and someone (a newspaper photo editor?) has written, in rich script, in pencil, "Dolores with fellow group member in Switzerland."
I love this shot. I think it's Conde Nast Traveler that has that "Where are you?" feature where the magazine posts a photo and readers have to guess the locale.... If anyone recognizes this particular spot in the Swiss Alps, I'd love to know. Dolores and her fellow group member -- let's call him Harry -- are hardy cyclists, certainly. Their panniers are full, and their bikes aren't exactly lightweight, granny-geared touring machines. Harry's bike, in fact, looks like a Raleigh rod-brake model (you can see the trademark heron on the chain wheel) - a heavy-duty two-wheeler typically used for city streets and rough country routes. Mighty steep grades in this neck of the woods, to be sure, but I think he and Dolores are up to it.
If Dolores and Harry are still around, they'd be in their 80s now, I'd guess. I hope they don't mind that I've shared this photo -- they may still have old albums tucked away, and perhaps journals that they've kept, with other snapshots and daily entries to remember the miles they logged, the beer halls and cafes they stopped in, the inns they slept in.... Or maybe they camped out by a river, ringed by trees, at the bottom of one of these snowy peaks?
Dolores and Harry may have been strangers when they embarked on this tour, and perhaps they became fast friends (especially fast going down one of those alpine roads!), or they became lovers, or they had a huge fight about politics, or literature, and didn't talk together, or ride together, for the rest of the tour.
And what are they looking at? A long valley dotted with evergreens? Another jagged mass of mountain? Or two men in the town's plaza, just down the road, passing government secrets encripted on a folded note tucked inside a matchbook? That's it -- Dolores and Harry, cycling spies!
