If you've ever wondered what the deal is with that guy in the devil suit on the side of the road during the Tour de France:
Didi Senft is better known to cycling followers as the "Tour de France Devil". Since 1993, Didi has dressed in a red devil costume and followed the Tour de France around its entire course, hauling his huge bike around on a trailer.
I've never known quite what to make of him, but this is a bummer:
This year the Devil has been reporting from the Tour for a German regional TV station. Last night his car was broken into and all his camera equipment was stolen. Unfortunately, the thieves also took off with a cassette containing an unaired interview with Tour Director Jean-Marie Leblanc.
I wish I had time to do more reading up on odd Tour traditions. Instead...that database project I was bitching about last week? Well, I don't do it just for the heck of it, it's to fulfill some regulatory thing for some governmental thing. (It's boring and the details aren't important.) What's important (to me, that is) is the August 1 deadline, the fact that I've already been working on it for two weeks, and that today I found out that the regulatory body wants the data presented in a completely different way than I've done it for the past four years, so the work I did the last two weeks is useless.
The devil is in the details.
Posted by Nic at July 7, 2004 05:50 PM