Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

Stage 1

Way to go, Dave Zabriskie, winner of Stage 1 and wearer of a certain yellow jersey.

I love seeing the kids win in the Tour, like Zabriskie, or Thomas Voeckler last year. When they are up on the podium smiling, they just radiate joy. (Check out photo 7 from the BBC.)

I'm guessing there's not much joy on the T-Mobile bus, though. Oy. I'm not rooting specifically for anybody this year (I have a feeling that my support is sort of like the kiss of death), but I have a soft spot for Jan Ullrich. I'm thinking that having Armstrong breeze past him like he did in the TT today may have been more painful than going headfirst through the back window of the team car yesterday. I'll be interested to see how it plays out in T-Mobile with Ullrich and Alexander Vinokourov (who was third in the TT, 53 seconds back to Jan's 1:08)...I still can't see how one team can race for two riders, and I'm not convinced that team management is behind Ullrich.