Outside Toulouse, France, I discovered the best artwork I've ever seen at a rest stop--leave it to the French to bring high culture to the highway. The piece, called, "Le Tour de France dans Les Pyrenees," consists of a sort of steel Mobius strip on which larger than life cyclists ride up and down the 'hills.'

It was completed by artist Jean-Bernard Metais in 1996. I love the fact that the base of the sculpture was surrounded by tile plaques quoting both sportsmen and intellectuals like Roland Barthes thoughts about "Le Tour." The philosopher Barthes was the inventor of semiotics. I remember reading his "Empire of Signs," when I was undergraduate school, a work that described the symbolism underlying many of the common objects and foods of Japan. Funny that he also wrote about a bike race.