Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

If you are keeping score at home

One rat, collapsed lung, condition up and down.

One rat, broken leg, recovering after a night at the emergency vet (in Fairfax).

One rat, ulcerated tumor, put to sleep this evening.

One girl, unusually weepy, in need of vacation.

One vacation, starts Saturday.

I still have a boatload to do to get ready to skip town. Of course I'm taking my laptop, if the salt air doesn't crust up the keys maybe I'll check in.

On this day

in 1991, I got married.

By this day in 1999 I was divorced. I don't remember that date...in July, mid-month.

I wish I could forget the 27th. I know it represents nothing special. It isn't like I have open wounds from the marriage...I spoke to my ex just last night, ironing out details of his dogsitting for me while I'm on vacation.

We just got married too young, it didn't work out, we handled the split very maturely, we are still friends, it represents no huge character flaws, nor are we failures as people, it is just a thing that happened, and I wouldn't be who I am today without the experience.

Who I am today just burst into tears unloading the dishwasher.

I've been accused of having no sense of humor

From One Happy Dog Speaks:

Update: Ted is a genius. Put the graphic in the extended entry and it won't fubar the columns! (Thanks, Ted. But I admit, "clean" is not the first thing that comes to mind when I think about your sense of humor.)

the Wit (52% dark, 17% spontaneous, 11% vulgar)

your humor style: CLEAN | COMPLEX | DARK You like things edgy, subtle, and smart. I guess that means you're probably an intellectual, but don't take that to mean you're pretentious. You realize 'dumb' can be witty--after all isn't that the Simpsons' philosophy?--but rudeness for its own sake, 'gross-out' humor and most other things found in a fraternity leave you totally flat. I guess you just have a more cerebral approach than most. You have the perfect mindset for a joke writer or staff writer. Your sense of humor takes the most effort to appreciate, but it's also the best, in my opinion. Also, you probably loved the Office. If you don't know what I'm talking about, check it out here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/theoffice/. PEOPLE LIKE YOU: Jon Stewart - Woody Allen - Ricky Gervais

85% darker than the average 36-year-old blog-reading female, huh?

I've never seen The Office, but I work in An Office, and it would turn anyone's sense of humor to the dark side.

People get so cranky when the weather is hot

Teaser on the radio news: When will the heat end?

Me, yelling at the car radio: September!

It's summertime, for Pete's sake. It's supposed to be hot.

It doesn't bother me, but of course, I don't work outside. I work under the vent of a super-industrial-sub-zero air conditioner. I go outside every hour or so to thaw out.

If I go to the grocery store, or a restaurant, or God forbid the movies, I'll change into long pants (and maybe grab a long-sleeved shirt, just in case). I freeze in most commercial AC.

I'm a throwback. I'd be perfectly happy with windows that open, fans, shade porches, and seersucker to get me through the summer.

May I propose a toast?

To Lance Armstrong, of course.

To Ivan Basso and Jan Ullrich. There's a difference between coming in second (or third) and losing.

To King of the Mountains Mickael Rasmussen. Hopefully that time trial is already a distant memory.

To Yaroslav Popovych, the top young rider. And nobody offically keeps track of old guys, but cheers to Laurent Brochard, age 37.

To the top sprinter, Thor Hushovd.

To Iker Flores, the Lanterne Rouge. Someone has to finish last, and doesn't that beat not finishing?

To the top team, T-Mobile. (Anybody see a touch of irony in this?)

To the nine Americans: Lance Armstrong (1st, Discovery), Levi Leipheimer (6th, Gerolsteiner), Floyd Landis (9th, Phonak), George Hincapie (14th, Discovery), Bobby Julich (17th, CSC), Chris Horner (33rd, Saunier Duval), and Dave Zabriskie (withdrew, CSC). Only one of these guys has announced his retirement; hopefully cycling's popularity here in the U.S. will continue to grow, both in participation and fan support.

Pass the champagne.

Time Trial

16:50 - Rasmussen Stops To Fix Wheel...! Rasmussen - who is the only rider to have crashed on the course - has now been forced to stop to repair his bike. He’s stopped three times now. There are Colnagos lying in his wake as he tried to get his gear rolling again!

And since I copied that update, Rasmussen stopped and changed bikes again. I feel terrible for that guy...I admit I wanted Ullrich to pass him (and realistically, barring bad luck like Rasmussen is having, there's no reason to think Ullrich wouldn't beat him...Ullrich is still a very strong time trialist)...but you never want to see a guy beaten like that.

Holy shit, Rasmussen just crashed again. At this point, I'm now hoping he's not injured or ill or anything. He's had such a good race until today...

See, there's still drama to be had in this race.

Flitting around from here to there

Thanks for the good thoughts for our rat. He's hanging in there...the chest tap was not successful (in that he still has a collapsed lung), but he's on some powerful antibiotics, and he isn't any worse.

My mind has been all over the place this week, flitting around like a...a...a thing that flits around uselessly. I finished up my big July projects a little earlier than usual this year, and it is like my brain took the cue to go on vacation. Only problem is, we don't leave until next Saturday. I have a couple of meetings and two candidates to interview before that, so I need my brain back.

The pet sitter is coming tomorrow, so this afternoon I intended to clean the house up some. I don't want her to see the disaster area and report us to the ASPCA. Right now, the living room looks like the result of a collision between a hardware store and a sporting goods store...spare microwave, extra quarter-round molding, cartop bike rack, yoga mats, a drill, the bikes...oh, and books. It looks like the collision was caused by the Bookmobile. Hmm. That was not my best simile ever.

Anyway, it is a mess. And in the course of trying to clean up the mess, it struck me that my bike duffle is falling apart. There is nothing special about this bag, it's just a big gym bag I bought in 1985 that happens to be the perfect size for my helmet, shoes, gloves, and glasses; a towel; clean clothes; a bottle of Gatorade; and my Camelbak. Nothing else. If the bag were bigger, I'd cram too much in it. If it were smaller, it wouldn't work for this purpose. But it is disintegrating. I need a new bag.

So obviously I had to spend two hours on the Internet looking for one just like it, only to determine that there is no bag just like this. Not a surprise; it's 20 years old. But I really could use those two hours back.

Speaking of biking (Yes I was...sort of...ok, I said I'm flitting around today), I signed up for the Tour of Hope. The ten miles, not the fifty. I took my road bike out Sunday, and that was enough to remind me: I'm slow, I have tendonitis, and I'm afraid of cars. But the only thing that made me feel better about what I was viewing as a wimpy decision was the friend who pointed out "You don't need to prove anything to anybody."

Damn, that's right. Why can't I remember that?

I also had a couple of Tour-related thoughts. Not insightful ones; that's what Velonews is for. One of the thoughts was triggered by this Velonews analysis of T-Mobile's future, particularly

Despite the fact that Ullrich's best years have to be behind him, T-Mobile appears intent on building its future on him. It's a concession to German media and sponsor pressures...

..."Everyone wants Jan, Jan, Jan. Jan has to live with that and we have to live with that."

Ullrich is the face of cycling in Germany and nothing less than a Tour victory by him is accepted.

I wonder, if I lived in, say, Pinneberg, Germany, if I wouldn't be so sick of all-Jan, all-the-time, that I'd be rooting hard for Ivan Basso. (Or Michael Rasmussen, maybe.)

The other Tour thought occurred to me the other night watching the peloton glide through another sunflower field...why do they grow so many sunflowers in France, anyway? Are they a major exporter of sunflower oil? When I think of France, I think of wine, cheese, and bread, not seeds. What are they doing with all those flowers?

I started to look it up, but of course I got distracted by something else. I did find one amusing bit of trivia before getting sidetracked, though: sunflowers are native to the high plains of North America. All those flowers in the south of France have American ancestors.

Back later

One of my rats has a collapsed lung. He'll be getting his chest tapped Thursday.

It's a tiny thing in the big world, but a big thing in my tiny world.

I love summer

Tonight's dinner:

Pasta with pesto from the basil in my back yard, zucchini from my mom's garden, and tomato from a local farm.

Even better, the farm has blue- and blackberries. The blackberries were so sweet they almost didn't make it home to be dessert.

(This might look familiar, as I found out when I tried to upload the picture and saw the "berryshortcake.jpg already exists" message. Same farm. Same idea. I do need a new tablecloth, though.)

Hungry yet? Head over to One Happy Dog Speaks for this week's...make that last week's...Carnival of Recipes.

Wimping out

I wrote this yesterday afternoon:

Every day I've been seeing the banner ad on Velonews for the Tour of Hope, a cross-country bike ride of cancer survivors that raises money for cancer research. It ends in D.C., and locally it includes a one-day ride here. I've never been involved (this is the third year), but Victor went to the closing ceremony the first year.

It isn't lack of interst that's kept me away. In 2003 it was the same day as the Alzheimer's Association Memory Walk I do with my sister (her father-in-law has Alzheimer's); last year it fell on the same day as the Baltimore Race for the Cure, which I walk in memory of a good friend's sister.

I'm not sure why I clicked on the banner ad today, but I did, and I checked the date. This year it's the weekend between the Race for the Cure and the Memory Walk.

There are two options for the local ride, 10 and 50 miles.

Ten miles isn't much of a bike ride. Even now I could go out and do 10 miles with no preparation (I mean right now, this minute, in the rain.) Fifty miles, that I'd need to train for. And even then, reading the fine print, I'm not so sure. Actually, the print isn't fine...it spells it out quite clearly and quite often. You must be able to ride 50 miles in under 3hrs. 45 min. (or maintain an average speed of 14 MPH).

Last time I was riding regularly, back when I was in shape, I think I averaged about 12 mph. Yep, I'm damn slow. The last couple of rides I've done, on the new mountain bike on the dead flat canal, I think I've been closer to 10.

I'm not sure if I've ridden 50 miles since I had my knee surgery. I am sure I could, if I got ready...I'm just not sure if I can get into a 14 mph pace. I keep going back and forth: I have a road bike now, that might be faster. I'm older now, I might be slower. I still have tendonitis. The people riding across the country had cancer. It'd mean riding again. It'd mean training on roads with traffic.

When I wrote the post about riders abandoning the Tour, I mentioned being sagged on my only century attempt. I'd forgotten, until I read my old journal, how much pain I'd been in that day (I wrote about how I'd unclipped my foot from my left pedal because the pain on the upstroke was so bad it was easier to let my leg hang and do the work with the right...I did that for five miles). I'd forgotten how humiliated I was to be pulled off the route and put on a bus. Riding again has appeal. That does not.

Now, I could just write a check to the Lance Armstrong Foundation. Because the thing about these cause-related events is, it is about the cause. Gotta remember that. Not about me going on a bike ride or for a walk. So at the end of the day it wouldn't matter if I sat home eating potato chips, or rode an easy 10 miles, or if I put in the training effort and took a stab at 50.

And I wouldn't consider it if I wasn't in support of the Lance Armstrong Foundation. Armstrong might not be my favorite rider in the peloton, but I admire very much the committment he's made to people battling cancer. I'll do what I can for the LAF.

I admit it: I'm scared to try this ride. I really don't know if I can ever reach a point where I can maintain 14 mph for 50 miles.

I know this area. The only thing around here that is flat is the canal and tracks around football fields. I used to do a regular 50-mile ride near the point where the 50- and 10-mile Tour of Hope rides meet, and it took me a good six hours every Sunday.

I had myself almost convinced to register for the 50 miles, to be bold.

Then I went to yoga last night. Yoga. And yoga class kicked my ass.

I'm thinking it will be the 10-miler.

Happy to help

To the Google searcher who arrived here looking for "Vinokourov+color+T-Mobile"...

I'm guessing you are wondering why T-Mobile rider Alexander Vinokourov isn't wearing the same pink magenta uniform as the rest of the team. Why does he get to look so much tougher in pale aquamarine and yellow?

(I shouldn't kid about that. Vino would look tough in anything. You could put him in a Paola Pezzo outfit and he'd still look like he could kick ass.)

The answer is that Vinokourov is the current national cycling champion of Kazakhstan, and national champions wear their national jersey for the season. (Unless he also wins the world championship...the rainbow jersey trumps a national jersey.)

Other national champions in this year's Tour include Gerrit Glomser (Austria--although he abandoned in stage 10), Robbie McEwen (Australia), Jaan Kirsipuu (Estonia--abandoned in stage 9), Pierrick Fedrigo (France), Leon van Bon (Netherlands--abandoned in stage 8), and Juan Manuel Garate (Spain). The current world champion, Oscar Freire of Rabobank, isn't in France (he had surgey in June).

Just to keep things colorful, road race championships and time trial championships aren't interchangable, jersey-wise...that's why Michael Rogers wore the ranbow jersey (well, it was more like a skinsuit) in the stage 1 time trial, but in the other stages he's in a regular Quickstep jersey.

Past winners can commemorate their accomplishments with stripes on their team jersey collar or cuffs...if you get a close look at Freddie Rodriguez, for example, there's a red, white, and blue stars and strips design around the hem of his sleeve. His Lotto teammate Axel Merckx has the Belgian black, gold and red strips on his, and Stuart O'Grady wears green and gold from his Australian championship. (This is what I do during the middle of flat stages...watch for Didi the devil, and play spot-the-stripes.)

Not making it

In many ways, the Tour de France is a war of attrition. It's not just the weak who don't make it through the entire 21 days...among the fallen already are David Zabriskie and Jens Voigt, wearers of the yellow jersey. Zabriskie abandoned, suffering from injuries in his crashes; Voigt, riding with a fever, finished stage 11 outside of the time zone and was thus eliminated. Tom Boonen was in the green jersey of the top sprinter, but a knee injury kept him from starting yesterday. Manuel Beltran, one of Lance Armstrong's mountain men, hit his head in a crash and was advised by the race doctor to proceed to the hospital.

Even Phil Liggett sounds like he ought to be home sipping tea, poor man.

I've heard Lance referred to as Superman. I think that applies to anyone who can finish the Tour.

The longest ride I've ever done was about 83 miles. That was in 1997, a miserable muggy day in North Carolina. (Eight years later, I still regret that I didn't push through to the century, though I think the friend with whom I was riding would have cut my brake cables if I'd tried to get back on the bike at the rest stop where I quit.) And maybe I've been in more pain that I was that day, but I'm not sure when. I think that is why I am in such awe of the pros: I know how it felt to ride a fraction of what they do, so I assume their suffering increases by the same factors as the mileage and the grades, but they keep going.

To the Bastille!

When I was in college, the professor I had for European History had written a book about the French Revolution, so he put a fair amount on emphasis on it. It confused the heck out of me, frankly, and after the final I gave up on trying to make sense of it. The one thing that always struck me was the renaming of the months and making the 10-day weeks, because that was just so...nuts.

Anyway, today is Bastille Day, Fête Nationale. Apparently it is a big deal to win the stage on Fête Nationale in you are a Frenchman, and today's winner, David Moncoutie, is.

From VeloNews, a list of French bastille Day winners since World War II:

2004 Richard Virenque (St. Flour)
2001 Laurent Jalabert (Colmar)
1997 Laurent Brochard (Val Louron)
1995 Laurent Jalabert (Mende)
1989 Vincent Barteau (Marseille)
1980 Mariano Martinez (Morzine)
1975 Bernard Thévenet (Serre Chevalier)
1971 Barnard Labourdette (Gourrette)
1970 Bernard Thévenet (La Mongie)
1969 Raymond Delisle (Luchon)
1968 Roger Pingeon (Albi)
1964 Jacques Anquetil (Paris)
1961 Jacques Anquetil (Perigueux)
1957 Jean Bourlés (Ax-les-Thermes)
1953 Jean Robic (Luchon)
1949 Emile Idée (Nîmes)

Speaking of Laurent Brochard (1997's Bastille Day winner), I think he is the oldest guy (age 37) on the Tour this year. You know me, I love old guys (which I used to define as "older than I am," but I'm afraid I'll be needing to tweek that definition real soon). But did you happen to catch him Tuesday, in the lead group most of the day? Gotta love the way his mullet blows out from beneath his helmet. Allez, Laurent!

That was an aside...we old people get distracted. What I was going to say was, I know in some circles bashing France is de rigueur, but I think it is cool that a French rider won today. It is their race, after all, it is only fitting they get a reason to cheer extra loud today.

(My personality type, incidentally, is niche)

Yes, I have heard the news. But it is still Tour de France time, so that's where my mind is, mostly.

Found via TDF Blog: Fat Cyclist's Tour de France Personality Test.

I read this laughing my ass off. Of course, it was lost on the guy in the next cubicle, which reminded me of part of yesterday's Gene Weingarten chat:

Anonymous: Doubtfire, MI

You realize, don't you, that you're catching all this baseball grief from a woman who has taken a cue from her girly-legged husband and follows pro cycling? This is a sport where the premier event lasts three weeks, whereas in baseball it only seems that way. And where the action can be just as subtle to the less educated. But where watching it in person doesn't help. But we'll attend a baseball game with you if you'll watch a bike race with us. Here are some tips, if you'd like:

1. Be European.

2. Arrive early. By this I mean three or four days early for some of the more choice, mountainous locations.

3. Pass the time by drinking heavily and painting the pavement with slogans and symbols, preferably giant penises (somehow these never make it onto network TV, but trust me, it's the standard motif).

4. When the caravan goes by - a parade of floats and tarted-up cars blasting music and throwing treats and chotchkes - risk your life scooping up gimmes. (Pamplona is for wussies.)

5. Spend about three seconds, or up to thirty if you've scored that mountaintop vantage, watching a bunch of sweaty skeletons fly by in possibly the most beautiful, awe-inspiring and (with full acknowledgement of those who would have us believe it is hitting a fastball) difficult feats in sport.

And because I'm a glutton for abuse, I'll throw this out (ahead of any results from today's key first-day-in-the-real-mountains): My heart is with Armstrong, but my money is on Vinokourov or Basso.

Gene Weingarten: This is Jef Mallett, creator of "Frazz."

Jef, this is funny, but I suspect many people sort of skipped right over it. You are a zealot. It reminds me of a time I was at a Gordon Lightfoot concert in Detroit many years ago. Gordon came onstage and spoke in a heartfelt manner to the crowd, congratulating them, seriously, on their wonderful recent good fortune and opining about how proud they must [b]e.

People were looking at each other, shrugging shoulders. It turned out the Red Wings had just gotten into the playoffs, or won the first round, or something. Gordon, a Canadian, thought people would give a rat's ass. So finally he sort of shuffled back to stage rear and played the Edmund Fitz.

Hahahaha.

Talk about a cool summer job

If I had time, I'd spend the entire Tour watching OLN or reading Tour-related blogs and web sites. One page I'm enjoying this year is the blog of young Alex Trautwig, who is in France taking pictures while his dad anchors the OLN broadcasts.

And I thought I was lucky getting to tag along with my dad to hockey games.

Oh, and I was curious about that protest that changed the starting point of today's stage...French farmers protesting wolves? Ok, protests aren't unusual...if I recall correctly, truck drivers interupted the race within the last couple of years to protest gas prices. That I could understand. What's the beef with the wolves?

Well, if you're curious too: Wolf Wars in France

This is why I'm at work in July, not in France talking to a TV camera

Here's what I expected in today's stage (in a tiny, Discovery/T-Mobile-centric nutshell...I didn't have CSC/Phonak/etc. predictions):

A return of the yellow jersey to Armstrong; biggie time loss by Ullrich; good time and strong ride by Vinokourov; and an announcement later by Ulle that, hurting from his two recent crashes, he was going to ride in support of Vino.

Well, I never said I was a prognosticator. In fact, I've admitted that I suck at that.

Still, I am surprised that Vino got dropped where he did (more than 10 km from the finish, I think). I can't wait to get home and see the replay.

Victor doesn't get my ambivalence about Armstrong winning again. I think what I would like to see is more suspense...not suspense about whether he'll be taken down by some act of God or a deranged spectator [like the one who came out of crowd to punch Eddy Merckx in the kidney in the 1975 Tour], but the kind of suspense that comes from more equal competition.

It's not that I want him to lose. He deserves to win...nobody prepares the way he does. I mean, he's got NASA-like engineers who work on how to best affix his race number to his jersey so it doesn't cause drag. (Hell, NASA should be so meticulous.)

It's just that, you know, it'd be cool to see something old-fashioned and spontaneous.

And I admit this thought wasn't mine, I didn't consider it 'til I read Lance Armstrong's War...but it sure would be interesting to see how he'd react to a loss.

Mock Hollandaise Sauce

Last week, Victor made Eggs Benedict with real hollandaise sauce. He is really picky about that sauce...everytime I order Eggs Benedict out, he tastes the sauce and haughtily proclaims it inferior (or sometimes something unprintable).

Me, I'm a lot less picky. We ate at one diner where they didn't even bother with hollandaise...the sauce was definitely cheese. He was appalled. I said "Mmmmm, cheese."

Now, it probably goes without saying that there's no way I'm making hollandaise sauce Victor's way...it goes against every fiber of my being to produce that many dirty dishes and take that much time and effort for a freakin' condiment. (Hell, I don't want to put that much effort into an entire dinner.)

I do recall that years ago I occasionally made a sauce that I found in my Better Homes and Garden* cookbook: Mock hollandaise.

(Which makes me think of "Once," said the Mock Turtle at last, with a deep sigh, "I was a real Turtle.")

Anyway, I decided to try out the mock hollandaise on Victor...not expecting to fool him, more to see just how horrified he would be.

In a small saucepan, combine 1/4 cup dairy sour cream, 1/4 cup mayonnaise or salad dressing, 1 teaspoon lemon juice, and 1/2 teaspoon prepared mustard. Cook and stir over low heat until hot.

Tasting it with the memory of Victor's sauce still fresh, I had to admit...this one tastes like warm mayonnaise. I added a bit more mustard, then a dash of salt and white pepper. In the end it was a little paler and a little thicker than the real thing:

...but it wasn't half-bad. And it didn't mess up the kitchen.

Oh, and the chef's review? "Better than that [stuff] you've been getting in restaurants."

*Actually the 10th edition, which is the one I got when I got married. I do have the 12th, and also a 1965 printing of the "revised" original that belonged to my grandmother. Collecting the various editions of cookbook standards has become a very space-consuming hobby of mine.

TDF quote of the day

I can probably name more mountains in France than I can in the United States.

-Victor

What color is your bicycle?

Heather's post mentioning T-Mobile's pink bikes (Giant wants you to think they are magenta...like that's an improvement) reminded me of something I was going to talk about back when I got my new mountain bike...

Victor and I had made the rounds of all the local bike stores; in fact, we'd hit most of the bike stores multiple times. (Actually, that's a pretty typical weekend hobby for us even when we aren't shopping for bikes, I admit it.) I had a pretty good idea of what level of components I wanted, all I had to do was test ride a few.

One that I considered was a Gary Fisher Marlin. The only color they had in stock was an ugly green (like antifreeze, but a shade darker.) Lord, it was a homely bike. But I figured it wouldn't be a thief target.

I was also interested in the Trek 4500. This particular Trek also comes in a women's specific design. (No snickering...many women, having shorter arms and legs and smaller hands than men, have trouble getting a good fit on a standard bike. I have ridiculously long limbs myself, though. It means I have a devil of a time buying a suit, but I'm okay on a man's bike.)

Still, Victor convinced me that I ought to at least try the WSD. You can't say it won't fit without trying it, right? So the bike shop guy brought one down, raving about what a good bike it was. He told me he'd bought one for his girlfriend. As I was adjusting it for my test ride, he asked what I thought about the color.

"The color?"

"Yeah, do you like the color? My girlfriend really liked the color."

I looked at him as coldly as I could muster (being as I was on a getting-a-new-bike-high) and said "I could not possibly care less about the color."

He sort of stammered something about how lots of women seem to be concerned about a bike's paint job when Victor held up a cycling jersey and said, full of excitement "Nic! It matches the Discovery jersey!"

(For the record: the WSD was way too short a reach for me, and I ended up on the standard model. It's red and black, not that I care. And if I were to care about such things...which I don't...it would match a CSC jersey.)

Stage 6

I didn't have a chance to "watch" the Tour on the Internet today. I didn't really even have a chance to check in on the news, which obviously seemed much more important. It was one of those wack-a-mole days at the office; even at lunchtime I had someone ask if she could join me, then proceed to discuss some new goals for me for this new fiscal year. But y'know, I can't be upset about being busy at work, since I made it to work. You know the feeling, that appreciation-of-the-little-things that smacks you in the face, and the slight unease over frivolous concerns...

This is from today's Tour wrap up:

On an ordinary day - one without the events that transpired in London this morning - Mengin’s crash could have been seen as a curse, but hindsight and video footage will remind us that such an accident can almost be amusing so long as no serious injuries are sustained. It’s another thing which makes the Tour such a hypnotic and entertaining event. Winners can emerge from no where. Heroes can crash. Formidable stars can be taken out of the equation. And the racing will continue. Thank goodness that there’s a glimmer of good on an otherwise somber day. Vai Lorenzo, vai. Go hard and go strong and remind us that there’s hope for the future and trivial things to help us smile.

The green bean harvest

Mmmmm.

Reminder for next year: plant more beans. Maybe that way we'll get an entire serving.

Really, I meant them to look this way

Ever since I got my first SLR camera I've been fascinated by the designs you get with a slow shutter speed and distinct beams of light.

Or maybe I just can't figure out how to properly set the aperture and shutter for night photography on my digital point-n-shoot.

One-mississippi, two-mississippi

I've tried to explain to my non-cycling-fan friends what two seconds means in racing. This morning, for example, someone said to me "Lance isn't doing so well this year, huh?"

Huh? He's down by two seconds! To a guy who isn't a contender!

Now, I knew Dave Zabriskie wasn't going to be in yellow much longer. Discovery is dominant in the team time trial, and going into today I expected them to win, though not without a fight from CSC. I was pretty impressed when I checked out the standings mid-morning and saw this:

16:26 - CSC With The Best Time

At the 25km mark, the CSC team has set a time that’s six seconds faster than Liberty Seguros. If they can maintain this pace, Dave Zabriskie will hold onto the yellow jersey after stage four.

Then there was this:

17:08 - 2km To Go For CSC

There are less than 2,000m to go for Dave Zabriskie and his CSC colleagues. They have set the fastest time at every check today.

Then in the two seconds it took me to refresh the display:

17:09 - Zabriskie Crashes!

Dave Zabriskie has touched the wheels of one of this team-mates. The yellow jersey is back on his bike but he has lost contact with his team-mates!

How long does it take to go down, two seconds, maybe?

The rest of CSC kept going, of course...the time for the team is taken from the fifth man in, so they still had a shot at beating Discovery [as an aside, I just typed Postal] even leaving Zabriskie in a bloody heap. As it happened, they came in two seconds behind Discovery [I just did it again...P...o...perhaps I need an auto-correct macro for this]. I'm thinking that two seconds may possibly have been swallowed up by the team's reaction to the crash. Speculation, of course, but count it out loud...two seconds is nothing. Except for Dave Zabriskie and CSC today, when two seconds were everything.

Cycling Photo Wire on ESPN

Graham Watson's Tour de France

Happy Independence Day

It seemed appropriate to celebrate the 4th of July watching America's Pastime in the Nation's Capital.

As it happened, I also celebrated by watching a French bike race and eating Italian food.

I took a little online survey thingy the other day that said I was 51% American. Actually, I'm 100% American, I'm just a liberal who like good cheese. And one of the things that I appreciate most about our country and our culture is the wonderful combination of diversity and inclusion.

A couple of years ago I was stuck in traffic on my way home from the local fireworks. From my car I could see the parking lot of a shopping center where families had tailgated to watch the show. In between two minivans were two families, one Indian, one Hispanic (the mom in the Indian family was wearing a sari, and the bumper stickers on one of the vans were in Spanish.) The adults were on lawnchairs drinking soda, the kids were playing hacky sack. I wished I had my camera so I could have captioned the picture 4th of July, U.S.A.

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.

Happy new year

At work, our fiscal year starts July 1. Yesterday we put on the party hats, sang Auld Lang Syne, and when the bosses looked at the bottom line, they we so pleased with what they saw that they gave us half a day off. Since our regular summer schedule already gives us Friday afternoon off*...it's a four day weekend, baby!

Before a meeting yesterday, somebody asked "So what's everybody got planned for the extra day off?" Around the table you heard

"I'm getting a hair cut."
"Some work around the house."
"I'm taking the car in for an oil change."

We do know how to party.

(My answer, of course, was "I'm going to sit in front of the computer making pointless blog posts until I realize, dammit, the day is almost over and I still haven't run my errands or cleaned the house!")

* In return for longer Mondays through Thursdays, of course...it's a good place to work, but not quite that good.