the french diver

During my holidays in the south of France, on our way to the rocky mountains of Galamus, I was sitting in the back of the car while my friend was driving. I was distracted looking at the rural landscapes that surrounded us. I saw a few cyclists along the way. For some reason, one of them, that was still ahead of us, gave me the impression that was wearing a scuba diving suit. As I was the foreigner I accepted it with no questions made. We all know that the French like to be a bit eccentric, I said to myself, who am I to judge? It’s just a diver riding a bike in the mountains after all. Anyway, as we passed him over I realized that the pipe-looking straw that was coming out from the bottle of water to his mouth, the blue t-shirt, and the black thights he was wearing trick me into believing that he was a scuba-diver.
Now, it is sometimes said that the French might be a bit special, but I didn’t want to fall into conventionalisms and be judgemental, and because of that I was willing to assume that wearing a 10kg scuba diving suit while riding a bike in the middle of the mountains was absolutely normal. Just because I didn’t want to fall into the stereotypical assumption that the French might be extravagant, I was forcing myself to accept that as normal. But when I saw that the cyclist wasn't wearing a scubadiving suit and that was just all on me, I realized how prejudiced I was being by trying not to (and that I was the eccentric one, no doubt). If I wouldn’t have had any stereotypical assumption over the French I wouldn’t try to excuse nor justify their eccentricity. Me trying to normalize something that was not normal was definitely proof that I felt into conventionalisms.

Anyway, the thing is that after all, I liked the idea of a man wearing a diver suit riding a bike in the middle of the mountain like if it was his daily bread, and I decided that it had to be French anyway. Sorry, I guess I can’t get rid of my prejudgements after all.

Work made with blender. Rendered in Evee

The guts of the project