Are the top pro riders still cheating?

What we learned back in the Postal/Discovery days were that if it looks too good to be true then most likely it is. The dominance of Lance and his team was something to behold. I was sucked in, loved it, had my rose-colored-glasses on, I was a believer! Then that world came crashing down, and finally his confession on Oprah (of all places). Just like Floyd...he claimed, no, he swore he didn't cheat! He even wrote a book about it "Positively False" (I have it, and it's autographed btw). I certainly wanted to believe, and then HIS confession. It was Floyd's confession that really brought down Lance. Having the rug pulled out from under me, I am quite leery of believing again. Anybody who wins must be cheating. Wait...somebody has to win (except for those 7 years of Lance, where there is no winner, or 2nd, or 3rd...how can that be?)  

But now everybody is saying he (Pogacar) is arguably THE greatest cyclist of all time! Just putting him on equal terms with the great Eddy Merckx makes me wonder....if Eddy wasn't cheating, then it's possible for one person to come along, an outlier, that is far and away better than everybody else. And if there was one, then there WILL be another, and another. Michael Jordon, Lebron James, Tiger Woods all come to mind...athletes that pop up every now and then, and suddenly everybody else is fighting for 2nd place. It appears that the only real question is how far in-between we have to wait for the popping up of these mutant otherworldly athletes is all that is up for debate. Every sport has them. Gosh, think back to Mark Spitz, remember him? 7 gold medals in one Olympics! Michael Phelps...he was quite a while after Spitz, and even more dominant! Katie Ledecky, wow was she amazing! My point here is that there will ALWAYS be people that rise above the best. Are they ALL cheating in any way? How on earth would we ever know? 

So...that all said, IF Pogo isn't cheating, then he is that guy. If he IS cheating, then so are his top rivals. 

Everybody is forgetting: yes, Pogo set THE FASTEST KNOWN TIME up the Tourmalet by 2 minutes and 20 seconds! WOW, that's quite the smashing of the record for sure! Hmmm...sure sounds like he must be cheating. But wait...Vingo was only 30 seconds behind Pogo at the top of the Tourmalet...so HE ALSO BEAT THE FKT by a minute and half! But wait, there's more...the group of the top contenders Del Toro, Seixas and Lipowitz were only about 90 seconds behind Pogo, so THEY ALSO beat the FKT by almost a minute! And then, just 30 seconds behind them were the rest of the top 10, Evenepoel, Ayuso, Skjelmose, the Durango Kid Sepp Kuss, and finally Martinez! 

So the top 10 riders in this years Tour beat the old FKT up the Tourmalet. Thats pretty crazzy! Oh, wait, its also been the hottest Tour on record (and lets not forget that just a few stages later they set a new fastest average speed for a stage)! How is this possible? Are they ALL cheating? Or has the training and racers themselves adapted and are doing this fair and square? I certainly can't say they aren't cheating beyond the shadow of a doubt...I mean,, LA pulled the wool over most of us for 7 years in a row! But the Biological Passport that has been going on for a long time now, and would seem to rule that out. 

Consider that just 20 years or so ago it was pretty well established that young racers were physically unable to do well in the Grand Tours, that it was only possible by the more mature and established racers (in their mid to late 20s). And now the youngest rider in the Tour since 1939 (Paul Seixas at 19 years old) just beat the FKT on the Tourmalet. Pogo's teammate Issac Del Toro is only 22, and Florian Lipowitz is 25 (the old guy other than Pogo).

And finally, just 2 days ago (the final stage before the 2nd rest day) Remco beat Pogo across the line to win Stage 15! Is that a chink in the armor of the seemingly invincible Pogocar? It's surely the first time this year that he seems human! And Remco? Wow, good for him! To finally shatter that belief that he can't win in the big mountains. What a confidence boost that must be! And confidence breeds confidence! With Vingo out of the race, Remco, by winning that stage has put himself firmly into 2nd place overall! Now he just needs to use that confidence and build on it. Can he hold 2nd place into Paris? That remains to be seen, we still have a LOT of climbing to do, the Alps await!

And to close, I have to admit it was VERY sad to see Jonas crash out. He was really showing signs of life again, and had his entire team on the front totally dominating Stage 15, right up to that dreaded corner, and now hes out with a broken collarbone. But when one door closes another one opens, and Remco has the chance to hold his position on the Podium. 

OK, back to today's stage (the ITT, tho its an odd one, has a Cat 2 climb right out of the starting gate, a RIPPING descent, and finally a long flat to the finish). Who will win this one? Gosh, that's anybody's guess...its not a normal ITT, that's for sure. 

 Game ON! 

My first forray into night sky photography...cuz you know, I NEED another Hobby!

 

Milky Way Photography! 

So I took my new DSLR out Sunday night to try for some Dark Sky pictures (ie: Milky Way). I bought the camera very recently with my Las Vegas "Winnings" from 2 weeks ago. We went to LV for 4 days (Jeannie's brother/wife and nephew/wife and nephew-in-law/wife were there) and Jeannie loves to go to LV (and give them some of her money).

Whenever we got to LV, Jeannie saves a set-amount for each of us for gambling each day (if you lose it all you're done for the day, there's no hitting up an ATM or borrowing from tomorrows envelope of cash...it's a good policy!) However in recent years I've stopped GIVING LV MY MONEY! It's just stupid to me, they're GOING TO WIN in the long haul as they always do when I gamble! But we decided years ago that whether I gamble or not is my decision. So whatever I DON'T spend at the end of the trip is pure Winnings for the Mattster! It's a brilliant strategy IMO...I'm a WINNER every time we go there!!!! Usually I'd be whaling away on my recently updated Amazon list for Bike stuff...but this year I had a different plan. So that's how I got the camera (she did let me spend my money before the trip which us usually taboo, provided that I promised NOT to gamble, but that's really easy, cuz I had no money to gamble with).

So I'd ordered the camera a week before the trip so that I had it there with me, giving me something to do that doesn't involve being inside a smoky casino, woo HOO!  (I also have some nice shots of Hoover Dam and the Pat Tillman bridge, took the youngsters all with me one morning to get us out of the casinos for a while). And I also did some late evening walking around (when the temps dropped down to a chilly mid to high 90's), taking pics of the strip lights and such. The Bellagio fountains are pretty sweet at night!

So back to night sky pics... first and foremost, I need to switch the camera from "Auto" to "Manual", cuz apparently the camera can't do this in Auto...it needs MY HELP! Say what?? I thought this was a fancy camera with amazing capabilities, what did I just pay for? I tried once before about a week ago to get MW shots, and my stupid focus was off just a teensy bit and all I got were a bunch of blurry pics! (I didn't know that until I get home and looked at them on the desktop after uploading them from the camera). So...camera focus (specifically the lens): Challenge # 1.

Even on the fanciest cameras and lenses, AF just can't get the night sky focus right...so here's something that I found out: every lens has a focus ring (for doing Manual focus...in the AF setting it does the focus automatically when you press the shutter button half-way down)...so when looking up anywhere into the sky and press the shutter button (you know, to take a picture), you would THINK that the lens would just go to the "Infinite" distance, cuz, you know, unless there's a UFO that suddenly swooped into your shot, stuff in the sky is pretty far away right? And I'm looking at STARS...Technically NOT infinite, but realistically, yep...infinite. But NO! When focusing on stars at night, if I use AF it's blurry, and if I manually just turn the lens to Infinite, it's still blurry. I have to manually turn the focus back to something 'less than infinite' (just a teensy bit) to get sharp focused stars! Someone PLEASE explain that one to me! What in the WIDE WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS is INFINITE distance if not freaking STARS??) For crying out loud, this isn't ROCKET SCIENCE! It's not like we're trying to do the impossible and LAND ROCKETS ON THE GROUND AFTER THEY'VE LAUNCHED or anything...oh wait, SpaceX has done that MANY HUNDREDS of times now, and apparently China just did it too. Can't ANYBODY make a camera lens setting that WORKS without ME having to go in and manually do the focus? Great Googly Moogly!

And if THAT's not stupid enough, I now STILL need to make MORE changes (these are in the Camera menu)...such as taking ISO from Auto to an actual number (usually between 800 and 3200), Shutter speed from Auto to a number (at night that's usually 15 seconds, any more than that and the stars are starting to move and you have blurry shots), Aperture from Auto to a number (for really dark sky that's usually the lowest the lens will go, the lower the better for Milky Way shots), White Balance from Auto to Daylight (apparently Auto WB can't do Night sky either, how stupid are these fancy cameras these days? What, were they designed by ChatGPT?), and THEN I still need to go into the internal menus on the camera to turn off "Long Exposure Noise Reduction" and "High ISO Noise Reduction" (both of those settings are supposed to HELP with long shutter speeds and high ISO's, which is pretty much, no, it's EXACTLY what dark shy shots are doing, yet those settings are always recommended to be turned off by photo pros...Luuucy, I need some 'splain-in' please!) 

And after all that, how do I actually get a crisp and clear focus on a star on a dark night? (I'm standing outside somewhere in some pretty serious darkness btw), with my camera on a tripod looking UP at the stars I want to focus on, so now I can't even look thru the viewfinder, cuz it's looking DOWN)...so.. I have to turn on "Live View" which puts my camera lens view on my cameras little screen. Oh wait, that doesn't help either, as my entry level cam screen doesn't pull out and rotate around to SEE IT when you have the camera anywhere except level! Grrr....so now I have to now find a star lower in the horizon (where I can still see the little screen on the back of the camera) and then go to 10x zoom on the camera (it's because of the zoom that I need to have the cam on the tripod, as the stars are tiny and even the slightest movements make it all blurry). 

Once I get his far, I can adjust the focus ring to get a crisp looking star. HOWEVER, another thing nobody tells you: when you take the lens off of Auto Focus, the focus ring moves with the freaking WIND...I mean just the slightest wisp of a breeze, or even THOUGHT of touching it, and it moves! So now I need to tape my focus ring to the lens proper, and in the act of doing that the focus-ring yep...you guessed it...MOVES (GRRRR!!!!!!) and it's blurry again! So now I'm peeling the tape back off the focus ring IN THE DARK, and doing my utmost to get it taped to the ring AND STILL BE IN FOCUS! It's harder than it sounds (and I think it sounds hard). 

After ALL THAT, I'm FINALLY READY to take some Milky Way pictures! Oh wait, now it's close to dawn as I spent all night TRYING to get READY to take night sky pics and the Milky Way is no longer visible! Ok, not really, but it does take some extra time for sure. And so...after all that (seriously, it's quite a learning curve to use a fancy-schmancy camera and take pictures of THE SKY!), here are 2 of the shots I took Sunday night (I did move my tripod several times IN THE DARK around my area looking for anything to be in the foreground, cuz it turns out a shot just looking into the sky is just boring...but having something dark in the foreground makes it all better...thus I found trees. The first shot is with the camera Verical, and the 2nd is when it was horizontal (I couldn't decide which would look better in a picture). I took like 100 shots, and these were my 2 best (tho I'm not truly sure, remember there were are about 100 of them...how on earth can I compare that many? What am I, a CIA Satellite Photography analyst or something??  (note: I sent these 2 shots via email to my brothers and Dave, the one of us that's had a DSLR for a while so has some experience here) did some Hocus-Pocus Harry Potter "Pictureisimo FANTASTICO" magic spell on them (ie: post-processing), really bringing out the depth of the Milky Way compared to my untouched jpg shots. (I do still have all those thousands of shots also in the professional RAW format, which are enormous files, and supposedly, if I knew ANYTHING AT ALL I'd be looking at THOSE files and doing Hocus Pocus stuff, getting the very best of what the camera is capable of). 

Yeah...that's not happening (yet). So...well, here they are (the Hocus Pocused versions)!

The white streak in the upper left corner is a satellite passing thru, not a shooting star. That's what satellites look like in a 15 second exposure. (I took one shot looking up with no foreground, and there were FIVE satellites passing thru in that timespan!)
 

Basically this is the same shot with less trees in the foreground and no satellites passing thru.

I was pretty pleased with this first serious attempt to get MW shots...they aren't for beginners (or are they?)! And this is with a fairly cheap 'entry level' lens! Good lenses for these kind of pictures range from between $250 (which is still 'low end' in the big scheme of lenses) to over $1000. The lens I used cost me $109 on Amazon (didn't come with the camera package)...so that tells you where it falls in the big scheme of lenses. I have my eye on one that's $330, which is a lot considering I got the camera bundle for $500 (the camera, battery, a carry case and 2 lenses: a 18-55mm zoom and a 75-300mm zoom).

I just don't get it...it's not like there are just 3 or 4 people on the planet taking night sky shots...the camera has Auto settings for all kinds of things: Flash Off (forcing the camera to change settings knowing there won't be any 'extra' light), Creative Auto (fancy stuff, like background blur and lots of other stuff EXCEPT Milky Way picture stuff), Portrait, Landscape, Close-UP (Macro), Sports, Food, Night Portrait (which is not even in the same Milky Way as you know, Milky Way shots btw), and finally Video. 

And let's not get started on the settings done by rotating the knob the other direction from the ones I just listed above: there's P (for Program AE, where you can program some stuff into a Semi-Auto mode with certain constraints, primarily it DOESN'T WORK with MILKY WAY pics of course), Tv (Shutter Priority, which basically means the Shutter speed is set manually and Aperture is Auto set), Av (Aperture Priority, where Aperture is manually set and Shutter speed is Auto set), and finally Manual mode where you set pretty much everything important. And oh, let's not forget the BASIC Auto setting, where it cooks and serves me food and then takes a picture.

So to recap: in any of the Automatic camera settings, there's no Automatic dark sky settings for the Milky Way (cuz it's so small and hard to find, and even on a dark night when it's RIGHT THERE, why on earth would anybody even want to TRY to take a picture of it?). And not to kick a seriously dead horse around some more here, but we get a FOOD setting to take pictures of FOOD! Seriously???? FOOD, but no NIGHT SKY? REALLY???

So yeah...I've still got a TON to learn, but this is going to be fun (and sometimes frustrating, like driving 35 miles out of town for nice dark sky photography, taking a bunch of pictures, and having them ALL BLURRY, that I don't realize that until I drive 35mi back home to look at them on the computer). And hey....just know that daytime pics are QUITE EASY in comparison...just don't forget to CHANGE BACK ALL THAT CRAP I JUST DID FOR NIGHT SHOTS, or guess what..BLURRY PICTURES!

And maybe I can plan us an LV trip soon (so that I can get that lens)!! 

2026 Tour, Stages 2 and 3

 I originally thought I was going to try to post after every stage, then I decided that might be a bit much considering things (and how VERY quickly I fell behind in that endeavor). 

But SO FAR, I'm excited because it's an amazing race! So much going on, so much to cheer for, and boy howdy are the guys going thru a bit of Hell out on the road! (I heard it hit 107F out on the road today, that's INSANE!) 

First off, here are some more thoughts on Stage 1 before I move on. After what I believe was the most exciting TTT I've ever seen (THANK YOU to the organization for adopting the new rules) I admit that I'm a fan! As the 2nd to last rider, Visma's Vingago won the day AND the Yellow Jersey, and along with that his team taking the top Team spot (I have to admit that it's maybe a bit weird to have the entire teams position in the Team standings dependent on the 1st guy from each team across the line, rather than the time of the 4th rider from each team across the line). But I get it, really it's not really any stranger than choosing the 4th guy across the line for the teams time in the prior rules...why not the 3rd, or 2nd, or 5th/6th? 

The old rules punished any GC rider who was on a team that isn't a top contender and is supporting sprinters or stage hunters, as that team will likely not have 8 guys (or even 4) who can TT well, and will add significant time to that GC 'hopeful' no matter how good he is in ITT"s. Only the top teams bring enough guys to do a really good TTT. This new format rewards (and punishes) each rider based on their own time just like any TT in the pro peleton. That's fair, and that most TTT's are shorter than some of the really LONG ITT's they throw out there sometimes, it's more than fair. That it's on Stage 1 I really love, it's the perfect place to do a GC sorting right from the get-go. And sure, teams that have several good TT'ers will do better than those with less, but the GC guy can break away anytime he wants from a team who's dragging him down and go get his own time. It's almost like a sprint-stage leadout, except it's for the GC guy and from a LONG ways out.

So, on to Stage 2. Vingo in Yellow, Pogo in Polka dots (pretty rare we've seen THAT), What did they call it, a 'Hilly' stage, that's right. Tho when France is smack dab in the middle of a heat-wave, I think Hilly becomes pretty difficult, ESPECIALLY when UAE moves to the front (Vismo had been riding tempo all day as holders of the Yellow jersey). They put Brandon McNulty on the front and he just destroyed the Peleton, knocking it down to about 30 riders by the time he pulled off after the end of the 1st finishing circuit (it was impressive)! UAE still totally controlling the group, all that's left are basically a who's who of GC Contenders (pretty much the Top 10 in the GC Standings). With Del Toro on the front and about 700m to go to the finish (climbing all the way) he accelerates, Pogo on his wheel, Vingo behind him with Remco and the other GC guys hanging on. As they near the top a gap opens behind Pogo who is now on IDT's side holding pace and looking back, watching to see if anybody from the group can challenge for the line). Remco has passed Vingo and they both valiantly try to close the gap but can't. Pogo does NOT sprint around for the win like he normally would (obviously capable of it) and as they are coming to the line he's got his hand on IDT's shoulder urging him on, and as they cross the line IDT does a "George Hincape wins the Stage" thing!

I vividly recall when Big George won the Queen Stage several years (during Lances rampage of 7 Tour Wins), and amazingly enough, it was his FIRST Tour Stage win EVER! When he crossed the line he saw all zeros on the clock for the first time in his Tour career...he sat up and held his hands over his face in pure astonishment...it was a fantastic moment, and IDT did just that same thing! (only he did it in his very first Tour on day 2). And Pogo seemed even happier for IDT's win that he was! Hugs, teammates and competitors coming to congratulate him, and then Pogo PICKED HIM UP in a crazy man-hug thing, and held him a few feet in the air! I've certainly never seen THAT before in cycling! I was just waiting for the entire Team to get him on their shoulders and start parading around the finish line,  chanting "RUDY, RUDY, RUDY"! (if you've never seen the movie Rudy then you've really missed something that you need to rectify this very instant). 

So Pogo GIFTS a stage win on DAY 2! (granted it was one of his own guys, and actually IDT is wearing the jersey-number 2 btw, making him the top 'Lieutenant' on the Tour team...not bad at 22 years old!). The boyz in the booth(s) and CVV were astounded, they'd never seen anything like that before either! Lots of discussion about it, but if nothing else, it's a gauntlet thrown in Vingo's face declaring that HE is so freaking STRONG and CONFIDENT (and his team is SO GOOD) that he can already give away Stage Wins (and don't forget the time bonus, there was 10 seconds for 1st and 6 seconds for 2nd and 4 seconds for 3rd, and with Remco passing Vingo before the line, HE took the 4 seconds over Vingo)! So Pogo gained 6 seconds back on Vingo's lead of 16 seconds from Stage 1 and was 2nd on the Stage, and honestly I don't recall EVER seeing him SO HAPPY! It was actually a really great moment!! (and just think to the future, whatever number of Stage Wins Pogo has when he finally retires...that number means something...I think Eddy Meryx has 55? Will Pogo beat that? What if he comes up short by ONE?) Obviously none of that nonsense was going thru his mind when he did that, and I personally think it was AWESOME! To both IDT and the ENTIRE TEAM! Boy, they'd ride thru gunfire for him after that! OK, that's all on Stage 2. 

Woo Hoo, it's TOUR TIME once again! Stage 1, a TTT with the new format! NICE!!!

 Ahhhh....July....a hot cup of tasty coffee in the wee hours of the morning, and the days Stage is up on the big screen! What could be better? Having a bulldog snoring away on my lap, that's what! (Sophie is coming up on 12 years old in August)...she's doing GREAT, but 12 is definitely getting up there for Bulldogs, and she's doing much shorter walks now, and boy howdy, she sleeps like the DEAD! Her vision is sharp tho (she can spot a gecko sunning themself on the sidewalk 10+ yards away, tho her hearing is certainly not what it used to be). I've been making the food myself for our monsters almost since I retired (now that I have that kind of time)...and what a difference it makes. It takes me an entire afternoon to make a 2 week batch (half goes in the freezer and the other half lives in the refrigerator). Sheesh...our monsters eat better than I do! (seriously). OK...back to the topic at hand!

I'm pretty excited about this years Tour....Both Vingo and Pogo have had amazing seasons thus far, and neither is coming here off a big crash and in any kind of recovery mode, hooray! Vingo is coming off a dominant Giro win, and Pogo, sheesh, where do we start there? He's done 16 races this season and WON 13 of them!!! He finally got the Monument Milan San Remo this year, it's been on his radar for a while now. Also it's a very unusual win for a 4 time TDF winner (unless you're Eddy Mercyx that is).

So both of them are looking to be in the best condition of their careers right now. And both have really great teams around them, possibly they best they've ever had. I think Pogo still has the nod as he's just not human, but I'm really REALLY hoping Visma can keep Vingo in the hunt. Something a bit different this year is that Pogo has a possible podium contender riding with him!  He's only 22 years old, but Isaac del Toro is already looking like the heir-apparent to Pogo on team UAE! Depending on how things work out, he seriously looks like he could make the podium! And Remco of course is always a threat for a podium spot, and HE even has another podium contender on his team: Florian Lipowitz (who actually made the podium last year over Remco)! And even tho Sep Kuss is riding for Vingo, he's a Grand Tour winner of his own right, and if the situation allows it, he could also be a podium contender! Not counting the TTT, there's only the one ITT this year and it's not a huge one, so Remco's superpower is pretty much negated, as he is pretty much the best TT'er in the world right now. And hey, let's not forget Mateo Jorgenson on Visma...he's just getting better and better every year...if he were on any other team he'd be the team Capt and a seriously possible Podium threat, certainly a teams GC rider. But with him and Sep riding for Vingo, their chances of that are pretty slim (as long as Vingo stays healthy and competitive that is...if for any reason that changes I'd think they will get full team support to see what they can do). 

And then...there's maybe the next Pogo (that's not already on Team UAE that is), 19 year old Paul Seixas of Team Decathlon! This kid is seriously looking like Pogo was in his early days (which seem like SO long ago, when he was wearing the White Jersey from pretty much start to finish, back when he was just "Babyface"). He's a fantastic climber AND a great TT rider...both of which are pretty much required for a Tour podium (you don't have to be the BEST TT'er to win, but if you suck at it you have very little chance).

And I'm so excited for the TWO Alp d' Huez finishes at the end of this years route, boy if that isn't a recipe for gaining and losing time in the GC then nothing is!)

 I'm watching the opening TTT right now as I type...nice to see the NBC/Peacock crew is the same tried and true group of recent years. Visma is getting ready to start with UAE 5 minutes later...I love the new TTT format where the fastest man of each team sets the teams slot (for team placement) and that each rider gets his own true time across the line....that forces all the GC guys so play it right and have a good day...like the old saying goes, you can't win the Tour today, but you can sure lose it. I love the largest crop of true podium contenders that I can remember riding this year. I think more than any year I can remember, today any GC hopeful has to have a decent or better day. And this isn't like a normal ITT as the GC riders can be protected as long as the team has guys that can do it...so it's actually more like a not very crowded road race finish with 2 small climbs at the end...so top TT capability isn't really required for a good finish here. 

I'm sad that Wout is out for Visma, he's always so exciting to watch, climbing, springing, Spring Classics monster, and just all-around fantastic rider that Vingo will surely be missing. But other than that both UAE and Visma are stacked with a well rounded support group aiming at a Tour win.

And WOW, Vingo just took the lead by 7 seconds! So now it's all up to UAE and Pogo! Normally it would be smart to let Visma have the yellow and the duties that fall with it, but Pogo isn't a normal rider, he just wants to WIN every single day...so all bets are off. He obviously knows what Vingo did...so the ball is in his court so to speak. I'm betting the house that he wants to stamp his authority on this race right here right now, possibly go wire to wire wearing yellow if he does it today. Wouldn't that be something! Right ow Pogo and Del Toro are out for the win...boy Del Toro looks fantastic! Gads, Pogo just left Del Toro like a motor-bike! He is FLYING! And he's across...holy smokes, VINGO wins by 11 seconds!!!! I would not have predicted that (in fact, I'd have just lost my house if I had truly been betting!) 

WOW, Vingo in Yellow on day 1! Boy, I'm actually happy to see that! Confidence is EVERYTHING, and to take the Yellow in a head to head race w/ Pogo is an amazing result! And not just 1 or 2 seconds...11!!! Well done Vingo and Team Visma!!!! OMG, what an amazing start to this years race! I have to say, I LOVE the new TTT format!!  

So the Stage results are on the screen, they're calling it 12 seconds between Vingo and Pogo (and Pogo didn't even get 2nd, he got 3rd, tho Filippo Gano who is only 4 seconds back of Vingo won't be a contender at the end). And Remco...slots in 5th today at 19 seconds back from Vingo...yeah, not really the start he hoped for. If he has GC contentions, he can't be giving away 19 seconds on day 1. As far as the other GC contenders, Del Toro slots at 6 place only 26 seconds back, Lipowitz is 8th at 35 seconds, and Sexias is 10th at 39 seconds.

So WOW, what a fantastic crop of GC Podium contenders we have this year! There aren't any 'sprint' stages until Stage 5, so tomorrows hilly stage (that has a 10 second time bonus at the line) should ensure fireworks from the start! Vingo would LOVELOVELOVE to snag those 10 seconds over Pogo, and all the Contenders would also love to have them to cut their losses from today. 

So I guess the question of the moment: how long will Visma hold onto the Yellow? He's got a great team but it's a LONG HARD RACE (as it is every year)...I won't be watching the Podcast, but I can guarantee Lance and George and Bradley will be saying it's very smart of UAE to not be in a hurry to take the Yellow. But Pogo doesn't abide by normal tactics. Normal tactics say do NOT go out on a 20-40 k solo flyer when you are truly hoping to win the overall...yet Pogo does things like that again and again. He's SO Meryx like...he is the New Cannibal for sure! 

OK...that's it for Stage 1, what a doozy! And on the 4th too! Happy 250th Birthday America! Susie and Rae, I hope you're still out there and doing well, I'd love to hear from you!

As for now, it's "Game ON"! 

Tour Talk 2

 Boy oh boy, the last several days have gone by in a BLUR! I've meant to come back and talk about the stages but somehow each day has swooped by without that happening. As I type Stage 18 has started and they are on their way to the Sprint point. They had announced back in the Pyrenees that big day was the Queen Stage...however that was apparently ONLY for the Pyrenees, as TODAY is THE Queen Stage...3HC climbs with almost 19,000' of climbing (over 42 miles!)...YIKES! But before we go into today's stage I must go back a few stages. So much has happened and now I've forgot a lot of what I wanted to talk about...darn it, I SHOULD have taken notes like in prior years. I will go back to the other day (the 1st in the Alps) which I think is the one they were saying was The Queen Stage...started off climbing the Tourmalet (HC), then the Col d' Aspin (a lowly Cat 2), the Col de Peryesourde (a more respectable Cat 1) and an HC finish atop the Luchon Superbagneres. No doubt this was a huge stage, and the day was won by Pogo who gapped Vingo at the top by 36 seconds, with Roglic taking 3rd surprisingly! Way to go Roglic! His teammate Lipowitz took 4th on the day. This day put Pogo up by over 4 minutes on Vingo, which I'd say is a pretty comfy lead, especially considering how well he has been racing. 

On to Stage 14...ended with a breakaway from the breakaway, and Arensman from Ineos held off the pack for the win, and the first for Ineos this year (boy have the mighty fallen, wasn't that long ago that Team Sky and then Ineos was THE dominant team in the peleton). Pogo and Vingo were 2nd and 3rd, with the young upstart Lipowitz taking 5th, over a minute ahead of his mentor Rigo back in 8th. Pogo picked up a few more seconds on Vingo (and a time bonus for 2nd) so is now 4:13 ahead of Vingo. Lipowitz is solidly in 3rd now at 7:53 back, with another yong'un Oscar Onley sitting a 9:18...so 1t and 2nd are pretty solid now as long as neither of them has bad luck or a bad day, but 3rd and 4th are still pretty up in the air as a LOT can happen. Ben Healy crept up 1 spot overall to 9th (way to go BEN!), and Carlos Rodriguez (Ineos) sitting in 10th. And just to leap forward to today, Rodriguez has abandoned as he has a fractured pelvis! They didn't say but I'm guessing he was involved in the crash at the 1k banner yesterday...what a disaster for Ineos! Lipowitz has solidly took the White jersey, almost a minute and a half ahead of Onley, with Vauquelin not back in 3rd...and Ben Healy way back in 4th at almost 11 minutes.

Here I slipped in a shot of our sleeping beauty bulldog Sophie...she's in her typical Tour viewing mode for today's stage! She's doing very well, but turns 11 here in August...so like her daddy, she's no spring chicken!

  I don't have anything in my memory of Stage 15, so apparently it didn't happen (that's my story and I'm sticking with it!). So on to Stage 16, the Mountain-top finish on Col du Mont Ventoux! Another day that I was literally screaming at my TV Screen (and at/for Ben Healy to be specific)...he broke away from the breakaway and was climbing solo for the win, was caught by a young Frenchman who I certainly can't pronounce let-alone spell...(good thing I took a screen-shot of the TV!)...winning atop Ventoux is pretty huge, so here he is: Valentin Paret-Peintre, who gapped Ben by a few feet at the summit. Good for the French, they needed a winner (he's the first this year) but OMG, Ben was the Hero of the day in my book. Vingo and Pogo were not too far back as Vingo was giving it a go at unseating the indomitable Pogo...didn't happen but they did come back over 2 minutes on the leaders, finishing at 43 and 45 seconds in 5th and 6th. Roglic was amazing and finished 2 seconds ahead of his protege Lipowitz 9th and 10th. You have to love Ventoux, it's THE most iconic climb mostly due to the otherworldly treeless white granite summit with the tower. I can't think of any other finish to match it. Lipowitz added to his 3rd place GC and is now over 2 minutes ahead of Onley and is solidly in control of the White Jersey. Pogo has moved back into the Polka dot Jersey (ties with Lenny Martinez but the look-back has him ahead because he won an HC climb back in the Pyrenees). Milan is the owner of the Green Jersey but not by much, as Pogo is only 11 points back with a lot of points on the road that Pogo will likely get.

And just because, a screenshot picture of the summit of Mont Ventoux cuz I like it SO MUCH and can't even begin to tell you how much I want to climb it on my bike!

 Didn't take any screen-shots yesterday for Stage 17 as it was a sprinters stage (tho the big crash at the 1k banner took out several of the sprinters, notably Metlier who was hoping to challenger Milan). Milan and his team did good and he won the day, putting him far enough ahead of Pogo for some breathing room (now he has to finish in Paris, including the two remaining huge Alp stages 18 and 19). 

And that brings us to today, Stage 18, the BEAST! So I'm going to post this and either add to it or just comment on the results for today...I have to say how much I've been enjoying being able to watch EVERY STAGE from start to finish...ahh, being retired is AWESOME! (and I even slipped in a mt bike ride yesterday morning...you know, cuz it was a boring sprint-stage). Next week I begin my annual 'Post Tour comeback' where I try to regain my fitness that I had back in say April, which is the time I usually start my decline as the temperatures are up and my saddle-time starts to decline. OK, more coffee and re-gain MY Tour Position (very couch-potato-like). Game ON!

 OK, the leader (Ben O' Connor) is just over 6 mi from the summit of the final climb. Lipowitz has heroically come back from what was looking very bad for his 3rd place podium spot, as Roglic was a maniac on the first 2 climbs. That has turned around as Lipo rebounded and passed everybody except for the two leaders (Ben hadn't split from his Movistar compatriot yet). Just WOW for Lipo! 

And some thoughts as I listen to the Phil and Bobke banter...Sep Kuss...we just haven't seen that much of him this year. In prior years Visma was the Sep Kuss show on all the big climbs. This year not so much. And another familiar name we haven't heard doo-doo about is Nielson Powless...previous years he was in breaks all the time, this year I've barely heard his name mentioned. The American who HAS been killing it the entire Tour is Quinn Simmons on Trek...sheesh, he's been at the very front of the Peleton (or in the break) more than anybody I can think of, and I'm not just talking about this year. He was on the front yesterday and was called back to bring Milan back up, so he drops all the way back, does that, and with just a few K to go suddenly there he is at the VERY front yet again, setting the pace for the entire Sprinting-gang from all the teams! I mean (aka TJ, which btw he hasn't hardly used at all this year, bless his heart!) if he doesn't win the MOST COMBATIVE for the entire race I'll be pretty pissed...nobody else has done the work he has this year. It's seriously impressive, and I HOPE Trek is giving him a commensurate salary...NOBODY else on that team is even close to the workhorse Quinn is! HUGE KUDOS to him!

OK, back to the final climb...ooh...is Vingo going to attack? He's pretty isolated now, and Pogo had 2 of his guys go to the front and now UAE is setting the pace. What a race today!

OK, back to the final climb...ooh...is Vingo going to attack? He's pretty isolated now, and Pogo had 2 of his guys go to the front and now UAE is setting the pace. What a race today!

SO I intended to just comment on Stages 18, 19 and 20...but it got too long and wouldn't let me post it...so here it is in it's entirety:

Stage 20 is done. It was a real barn-burner for sure, and I can't even imagine how hard this one has been for the racers. It's like there weren't ANY kick-back stages for the majority of the racers to have somewhat of a slower-pace day. And there's been SO MUCH CLIMBING this Tour! In that respect it has been one of my favorites! (tho I must say that with my memory, EVERY TOUR that I'm watching is the best one, as I really only have fleeting memories of prior tours). So I left off taking about Stage 18 when Ben O'Connor won on a THREE HC day, the last being a Mountaintop finish! They climbed up the Glaindon, the Madeleine, and the Loze (which I heard the boyz in the booth say was THE longest climb in Tour history at 26.4k, which is just plain NUTS!) I know everybody was expecting Pogo to go for it, but he didn't and we don't really know why. IMO I think he's getting tired, surely his team is. He ended up finishing 2nd at 1:45 back, which is a pretty serious gap. Vingo was right with him until the final 500 yards or so when Pogo attacked and gained 7 seconds (he and he added another 2 with his 2nd place time bonus). Of note in Stage 18 wasn't the top 2 riders, but the 3rd and 4th...Onley had a GREAT day finishing 4th just behind Vingo, which moved HIM into 4th at only 22 seconds from Lipo! Suddenly the White Jersey is very much at stage with 2 stages to go (usually the last day isn't any shuffling of the GC deck, but this year it very much can/will be). Roglic is in 5th behind Onley, close enough to be scary to both Lipo and Onley I'd think.

And now Stage 19 (Friday). Another stage where both Pogo and Vingo didn't seem to 'have it' like in the first 2 weeks. I TOTALLY thought Pogo would want to win this one, but ended up losing it by only TWO SECONDS to Arensman from Ineo! That tells me that neither one of them had anything left to throw at the mountain and take the win like we expected. They BOTH lost that stage...I'd have thought Vingo would give his right leg AND arm to win a stage ahead of Pogo, just for the feeling that ONE DAY this year he beat him! But neither really tried...Pogo tried very short attacks a few times but after each he quickly dialed it back and the lead group caught back up...when has THAT ever happened to him? I can't recall any...from my meager memory, when Pogo attacks the top GC front group, he crushes them in his initial attack, and then continues to grind them under his boot all the way to the line. Not so again today. Losing by 1:45 yesterday is one thing, but losing by TWO SECONDS? He couldn't muster up enough go-juice to do THAT? He must be seriously tired is all I can think. But for Pogo and Vingo it was status quo...finished on the same time. But Lipo today stuck with them and only dropped off at the very end, when Onley had fallen off the pace a while back, so Lipo re-gained some of the time he lost yesterday, and now has a much more comfortable lead over Onley as he's now up just under a minute. Boy, I think both Lipo and Onley will both be names we here a LOT of in the years to come! And Ben Healy jumped himself into the top 10 and now sits in 9th, just ahead of O'Connor, way to go Ben! Boy, it sure seems Ben has only two rides: fantastic or meh...today was another fantastic!

And now today, Stage 20 had what, 4 climbs? (had to look)..yep, a 3, a 4, a 2 and another 4. Not a day for sprinters. Or WAS IT? That just goes to show that you can't always put a simple label on riders...Kaden Groves on Alpecin/Quick-Step was in the breakaway a good part of the day, and the 2 other riders he was with didn't want to pull thru so he finally left them and they BOTH watched him go. I guess they also thought 'sprinter, he won't get far, let him go' and BOY were they wrong! He held them both off and won the day, and now he joins the very elite club of riders who have won stages in all 3 Grand Tours! And also of note, Ben O'Connor lost his 10th place in the GC by one of the breakaway guys, easy come, easy go (ok, nothing about racing le Tour is 'easy'). 

So now it's all about the finish in Paris...it should be a doozie, as there won't be any circuits on the Champs as they are using the Olympic course. So there are FIVE cat-4 climbs tomorrow! And when they are done with that circuit (3 times over that last Cat 4) they go to and finish on the Champs. It's not likely to be the usual 'Paris finish' stage, but you never know. OK, I'm off to bed, as I'm getting up early ONE MORE TIME! 

And now, on to Stage 21. A first time (in the Tour) route for this finale in Paris. I have to hand it to the ASO organizers...this Tour was unique in many ways. Possibly the hardest Tour since the olden days when the riders were out into the night on ridiculous length stages. But this stage delivered to the viewers and fans in so many ways. And this finale delivered! In part because of the inclement weather, and in part because it was THE LAST CHANCE to get a stage win. Nobody had any idea how this stage would play out...would the riders have a cease-fire until they arrived on the Champs? It appeared so and the riders had their calm half-day to sip champagne and pose for pictures. For the first time in my memory many teams took turns going to the front doing what usually only the Yellow Jersey team does: line up and get a picture of the remaining team. On the one hand, that is a tradition only for the winning team, however all riders making it to Paris have earned this right (IMO). So I though it was pretty cool.

When they arrived in Paris the Yellow Jersey team led the peleton onto the Champs, for what usually is 8 wicked-fast laps where almost always a 'true' sprinter wins the day. Not so today...5 category 4 climbs, the last 3 of which are on the new circuit including the Champs, which used in last years Olympics (and won by Remco). The climb was only like 450' vertical, but for any kind of a sprint-centric finale this was a killer. Remco successfully used it to pull away from the breakaway, and yesterday was the same. Only WAY BETTER! The rain hit and the cobbles were wet and super slippery. The ASO had already decided that if it rained they would take the time for the entire Peleton before the rain, and they did. The word was put out to the teams that everybody is safe, the times are in the books and nobody will lose their positions (so long as you actually finish the day), so they had a choice: to race or to cruise. The Peleton quickly fragmented of course, as there were plenty who wanted a shot for final glory. And who of all people would step up to RACE to the end? Pogo! I think there were at least 3 or 4 groups and Pogo was in the VERY FRONT with the other small group of people who think they might have a shot. Wout was there, and only CVV picked him to win the day, everybody else was picking Pogo. Wout had a helper, the mighty Jorgenson, where-as Pogo was alone. And it was raining. Those 3 laps were fantastic viewing...exciting, crazy danger (had Pogo gone down on the slippery cobbles and was truly hurt and couldn't finish, his Tour win would go to Vingo). He was a man driven, to risk it all for a chance to win the final stage, even tho all he need to do was join Vingo (back in the 3rd group I think) and just cruise along, wave to the crowd and enjoy the day. Not Pogo, that isn't what Meryx would do, and Pogo is the new Meryx. A multi-Tour winner racing all the Spring Classics, winning or placing 2nd in all. A very unusual racer in this era. Jorgenson set the pace and made it crushing, to see if Pogo was human. He was, and when Wout gave his all-out attack, not even the Great Pogo could stay with him He was superhuman yesterday, and pushed his advantage to the line. Once Pogo realized his bluff was called (he pretty much knew he didn't have the "legs" for this)  he backed off and was eventually caught by the chasers, and he didn't even attack them and settled for 4th on the day. 

You have to hand it to Pogo...attacking for the win, in the rain...just wow! And in the end it all played out great...Visma got their Stage win which truly changed their dismal 'feel' (they wanted to WIN, and 2nd place AGAIN was really not doing it for them). If only Vingo had the panache to go with Pogo for no other reason that for a chance to win the day. Seeing Vingo come across the line after a rather leisurely ride when Pogo was out risking it all, well, it seemed (IMO) to diminish Vingo. Pogo isn't a 'new' style of Champion, he's a rebirth of the old school, aka Meryx (the Cannibal). He doesn't race like any recent Tour Champion. He's not afraid to put it all on the line for a chance to win. Vingo didn't even put it on the line to win back in Stage 19. Had he attacked even 20 yards further back, he would (might) have won the day. Instead he has to be satisfied with the 2 second gap (and another 2 seconds time bonus) that he got on Pogo. That's the ONLY TIME he took back on Pogo in the entire Tour! Didn't win a single stage, Pogo won 4. I have no idea if Vingo can step up his game to match the current Pogo, they say his numbers this year were his best yet, and still Pogo beat him by 4-1/2 minutes! So I guess the big question is: what does he do from here? Pogo is only 26 years old, how many years will Vingo come back to the Tour and take 2nd (or worse, what-with the new blood on the block Lipo and Onley, I'd say in another year or 2 there might very well be a challenge to that 2nd place). 

I have no idea what was going on with Remco this year, but I'm saddened that he just abandoned when he saw that he couldn't even take 3rd. That's not what a Champion does. Meryx must be ashamed at that attitude, it's certainly not how Pogo races. We'll never know what Remco MIGHT have done in Paris...he did win the Olympics on that same route. On the other hand, maybe his Olympic Gold was a gift from the Slovenian Olympics committee (who didn't include Pogos girlfriend on their team, even tho she was their current Champion). I love it that Pogo stabbed them in the eye by refusing to race for Slovenia due to that obvious sleight. I'd give odds (and we won't ever know) that Pogo would have won that gold. Remco just has no Panache (IMO). When the going got tough, he quit. Vingo at least came to the Tour last year knowing full well his condition was understandably nowhere NEAR where it would need to be, yet he raced all the way to Paris anyway. I give him huge kudos for that, and then this year when it was apparent after the ITT that he had zero chance to dethrone Pogo, he kept on racing. But as I said, I'd have WAY more respect for him had he gone with Pogo to try to win the day. That will forever be remembered, watching the Yellow Jersey leading the very small front group up the last 2 climbs, giving his all for a chance to win.

So now it's done. I think it was a fantastic race, maybe the best I've seen. The route was insanely hard. The sprinters are all mad (very few days for the 'true' sprinters, especially in Paris). Will the ASO continue with this new finale (knowing full well that their tradition of the last 48 years was to let the sprinters have their day in Paris)? We will see in a few months when they announce the route. They did share that next years Tour will start in Barcelona. That means Pyrenees sometime in the first week I'd wager. Will they change the route to somehow favor Vingo? Not sure how you do that...Pogo wins in Classics and Grand Tours...he's the most versatile Champion since Meryx. When Pogo wins his next Tour that will put him with Indurian as a 5 time winner (being as there is no 7 time winner 'officially', tho we all watched it happen). Maybe Pogo will be the one to win 7 (or more) before his reign is done. I'd say if he can stay healthy he has a VERY good chance to set a standard that may never be beat. He's the one athlete who comes along that is SO GOOD that the rest have to seriously up their game to catch-up. He's the new Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Michael Phelps, Wayne Gretzky...just to name just a few. Kaitlin Clark...there's a game-changer, maybe THE game-changer! NCAA ALL TIME SCORING CHAMPION! Since going to the Pros she has changed their game too! She's brought in money to the league like no other! And the damn ref's just continue to let the other players beat the shit out of her. I have so much respect for her, and it's pure jealousy on the bullies as they just can't match her. She's not big and strong, she just works her ass off on the court, and puts the ball thru the hoop from anywhere at anytime..she just can't be stopped so let's beat her up. Pogo is like that. Kaitlin Clark, the Cannibal of the Court! 

OK, I guess I'll end this rant. PTDS has already set-in. What do I do with myself now that I don't have 7 hours of Tour-broadcast to watch every day? Well, I guess I need to get my hiney off the couch and get back on the bikes. Tho I need to temper that with the ton of stuff to still do here on the house. It's Saturday (again....every day is Saturday now). Need to finish planning my Pacific Coast Bike Route ride that I had been planning for last May...maybe I can make it happen in mid to late August. As Larry the Cable Guy says....git er done! I need to take that advice. 

Later Gators! Git er done!

Tour Talk 1

 And so, the 2025 edition of le Tour is underway! As I type the Stage 5 ITT is happening (it's still pretty early in the day). The first week has been hard to watch all of each stage, as it's all been pretty much 'sprint' stages, mostly pretty boring until the last 15k or so.

 Obviously there have been crashes...most notably was when Alpecin lost their sprinter Jasper Philipsen (Stage 3 I think), who was taken out in the bunch sprint having done nothing wrong other than being next to guys that were doing the argy-bargy. Bobke said they were probably over 60kpm when it happened, all I know was that it was very sad, when he didn't get up and they finally took him on a stretcher you know it was bad...I think they said broken collarbone, the typical cycling damage other than road-rash (and he got a bunch of that too). He wasn't in Yellow that stage, his teammate Van der Poel (one of his primary leadout men) was, tho he had on Stage 2 having won the day on Stage 1.

 Today SHOULD be Remco's to lose... holding the current World AND Olympic ITT wins as well as the crushing he did on both Pogo and Vingo in the Dauphine a few weeks ago, and that it's nearly totally flat, means he SHOULD be on fire (and to gain back some of the 58 seconds he's down).

 As usual, the NBC/Peacock team is first rate...and exactly the same as last year from what I remember (it was a winning format, why change it?) Phil and Bobke in the trailer somewhere near the finish line doing the play by play, CVDV on the back of the Moto IN the race, Paul, TJ and Brent back in the Studio (in the US somewhere, NOT in France), and finally Steve Porino somewhere out on the days route giving us fun insights and info on people and places the race goes by. Bobke was at his usual hilarious this morning talking about how he was riding out on the TT route when Remco went by him (like he was standing still) and then Vingo...his sounds, antics and facial expressions is a huge part of what we love about him! 

 It's quite a race so far, with Van der Poel still in Yellow, but Pogo and Vingo are just seconds behind...I'd assume either Pogo or Vingo will be in Yellow tonight, tho if Remco has a beast of a ride today it's a real possibility HE could be in Yellow...wouldn't THAT be something! I will say that it's great to see Vingo uninjured and looking like he's at his best....hoping those 2 fight it out all the way to Paris nipping at each others heels!

Going to post this and go watch the ITT, the 'interesting guys are getting close to being out on the course. 

It's now Thursday morning as I type, coffee in hand, Stage 6 on the Telly, and I'm in my Happy Place! The ITT yesterday certainly didn't disappoint, holy moly! My takeaways: Remco didn't exactly torch the course like he did in the Dauphine (tho he was still FANTASTIC and rode a pretty flawless route!), Pogo rode a very inspired race, and Vingo just collapsed, you could see it mile after mile like his power was just weeping away (he lit out of the starting block like gangbusters, and it was just a slow motion train wreck from there). I actually felt terrible for him, he seemed so full of promise in the early stages, showing he was going to hang with Pogo and give him a race. In the GC he basically switched places with Remco who is now in 2nd. 

They are riding right thru Normandie this morning, and there are LOTS AND LOTS of graves in the memorial cemeteries for the WWII fallen soldiers...that brings lots of emotions to the surface, SO MANY guys didn't come home, and yet we live in the world they provided by their sacrifice (and the race literally rolling thru Normandie is a testament to that sacrifice). Nazi occupied France...it's still so hard to imagine that possible history had the allied forces not prevailed, Europe (and the world) would be a radically different place. 

OK, enough of that train of thought, it's depressing. Back to THE RACE! And WHAT A RACE!

So Ben Healy just finished the stage for the win (his FIRST Bob said? Is that possible?), and I think I was grinning like an idiot for the last 15 miles watching him continue to increase his gap against the entire breakaway all the way to the line, it was amazing! Quinn Simmons took 2nd on the day (USA, USA!) and hey, the newcomer American on Movistar Will Barta takes 6th in his FIRST Tour! Hole cats, what a great day! I loved this stage...6 categorized climbs (5 Cat 3's and a Cat 4 just before the line) really spread out the peleton leaving plenty of room for a breakaway to succeed, and it did! And can't take away anything from Vander Poel...he got in the break (which was NO EASY TASK today) and it seems he'd wiped himself out just doing that, but he wasn't in it for the stage win but to try to take back Yellow that he lost yesterday...and it seems like he did it! YES! They just posted the GC, he's in front of Pogo by ONE SECOND! OMG, what a race! I LOVE IT! Quite honestly, good for Pogo to let it slip away (he even mentioned it last night apparently in on of the interviews), very out of character for him in years past...he's maturing into the leader now, so tomorrow (another hard stage, but aren't they all?) he doesn't have to wipe out the team defending Yellow. There will be PLENTY of days ahead for that, as we all know he WILL take back the Jersey, maybe even tomorrow. Gosh what a day, loved watching it, and the commentary was fantastic (as usual!). Oh, and one final thought on that subject...have you noticed that somebody must have been working with TJ, because he hasn't been doing the "Uhm"s over and over again like every year back that I can recall (his post stage interviews when he was still racing just made me cringe!) Well done TJ!!! The fact that I JUST realized that I haven't been hearing the Uhms over and over hit me like a brick. Very well done TJ! That's not an easy thing to do (I went thru Instructor School OH SO LONG AGO in the Navy, and then taught a mainframe computer class for the next 4 years...and I know in that 1 month school they try to eliminate all the annoying things like that, but it's not easy). I'm so impressed, I know the banter between him, Brent and Paul is always interesting, and his new insight by being management for Team EF gives him serious insider knowledge that's up a step from the rest of the rider/commentators (he even picked Neilsson Powless as his winner today, right team, wrong guy...but oh so close!) OK, on to my non-Tour pile of stuff to do. Boy it's GREAT not HAVING to really do anything during le Tour...I get to just sit and drink coffee and eat snacks and watch the stages...ahhh, life is great! 

It's almost THAT time again!

 Yep....le Tour starts in just ELEVEN DAYS! Woo HOO!

And for the first time, I will get to ENJOY every single stage without needing to fast forward (unless I want to)! 

 So...it's been almost FIVE MONTHS since I retired...how is that possible? Rae, I totally understand your comment about finding a talent in wasting time...I have found that also! All of February I was on a real bike riding tear...4 to 5 rides a week. Jeanne was working from home in her little office, and I had absolutely guilt-free riding... she was home with the monsters, and with me gone she had absolute quiet for work...it was perfect! March rolled around and I caught some bug...seemed like a typical cold, the first week was the usual head-cold symptoms...and THEN, whatever that little alien monster bug was it dropped down into my chest. And for almost the rest of March I was in misery. I had aches and pains like I don't remember having, and I tried to ride once and realized that wasn't going to happen. Took a Covid test (as did Jeannie, we were both worried) but no. It finally released it's grip near the end of the month...that was really something. Jeannie had been forced to work back in the office (even tho her Union Contract says she can work from home) and her 4-10's schedule was also revoked (even tho that was also in her Union contract)...so at least she didn't see me suffering most of March. I don't recall ever being sick that long in my life. Good thing I was retired, I'd have hated to burn that much sick-time being SICK! (I sold back over a months worth of sick-time and several months of vacation I'd been hanging onto).

April arrived and I started riding again, boy how quickly I lost my hard-won fitness! But the weather was good, not hot, not cold, and the spring WINDS were moderate and ridable. May arrived, I'm still avoiding any big house-projects...tho my LIST is getting longer by the day. I still had my Peacock subscription (got it last year on a special offer, something like $25 for a year which was quite a deal). So I was able to watch most of the Spring Classics, that was fun. And sheesh, can ANYBODY beat Pogacar?? Man oh man, he is something! Classics, Grand Tours, he's a rare rider for sure! 

May came and it got HOT. Not here in my little town, but go inland just a few miles and BAM...90's +. I did a few long rides on days that were forecast to ONLY be in the 80's, but the winds and heat were relentless in the interior. Then June came and same thing...so I looked into my house list of projects, and the one I decided to tackle was replacing Fascia boards (the 'storm-side' of the house 2x10 boards, the roof  'trim' if you will) were needing replacement. Thankfully we have a 1 story house, but it does have a vaulted ceiling. That goes up PRETTY HIGH. But I came up with a plan and I'm about 3/4 of the way done. I got the entire side of the house fascia off, did a bunch of stucco patch where a creeping vine had worked it's way onto the stucco not long after we moved here (we liked the look so let it go for a few years, turns out it really digs into the stucco and is a royal beast to remove...it did damage!) I got new 2x10's, made the angled cuts to put them together (all on the ground on my saw horses), painted them (front is our house trim 'white' and the back is the color of the house...a very light brown 'mocha' type color). I bought an airless sprayer and painted the entire side of the house just 2 days ago (had to wait a few days for the winds to lighten up a bit...we've had a week or so of high winds which is pretty abnormal for this time of year). So now I'm waiting to hang and install the new fascia boards...Jeannie doesn't want me doing high ladder work or going up on the roof if she isn't home...which I understand. 

So it looks like I won't finish the fascia until after I get back from two short trips. On Thursday morning I'm meeting up with my brother Greg and we are road-touring down to Santa Monica (on Sunday afternoon we take the train from Santa Monica to Union Station/downtown LA) and from there we catch the Surfliner that takes us both north and home. Then Tuesday morning I fly to Las Vegas to meet my other brother Dave and we get our rental Jeep and get OUT of LV, headed to the Grand Canyon North Rim this trip. Yep, it's going to be warm, but if we stay up high it will be tolerable (down in the canyon it would be horrible hot). I fly home from LV next Friday afternoon. So maybe next weekend I can install the fascia boards, put in new strips of tar-paper to cover over the boards an inch or so, and the re-install the cement roof edge tiles (they hang over the edge a few inches). I originally wasn't going to tackle this project cuz it's kind of dangerous...but I figured out ways to do this by myself with only minimal danger...I think the hardest part will be putting the new boards in place...I've developed a way to hoist the boards into position, set them on brackets I made and shim them firmly to the roof and use special screws to install them to the rafter boards, then my air nailer using stainless steel finishing nails to nail the roofs outer 'ship lap' boards to the 2x10's. It's the getting the 2x10s perfectly positioned that will likely be the hardest part...once I do that the screws and nails are a piece of cake. 

So the completion of my fascia project is on hold, and anyway I need to get the rest of my road touring gear out of the attic, along with my hiking gear for the Grand Canyon trip...so I'll do that today. I've been working the 2x10s for almost 2 weeks now...(roofers would have done it all in a day, but they wouldn't have been painted, and also I did cut out and replace a few sections of damaged ship lap roof boards along the way). We had some estimates to have a crew do all this, and it was pretty pricey indeed (the house across the street is a 2 story and their fascia is REALLY bad, their quote to replace it all was 20 grand! We only need 1 side done, about 40' worth, and that was still several thousand...yikes). 

My excitement for the upcoming Tour has led me to watch the Dauphine this year (suddenly I have TIME!). My 1 year Peacock subscription ended a week or so ago, and I held out...HOPING they would make me an offer I can't refuse, and they DID! So I got another year for the same price (I was going to have to go monthly for like $17.99 because the normal annual is like $79.99 I think) and just get July, so this is a WAY better option!) I really don't ever remember watching the Dauphine before. I know it's THE SPRINGBOARD for Tour GC hopefuls...Vingegaard and Remco are both there, so along w/ Baby Face, that would be my top 3 choices for the Tour, assuming all are/stay healthy and unhurt. I just watched Stage 6 (in the background while I was typing here)...had to leave the computer when Baby Face just RODE AWAY from Vingo and Remco like he had an electric motor (ala Spartacus in his famed attack in the cobblestones...the attack where non-believers actually claimed he had a motor in his bike...remember that? It was when the electric bikes were not here yet, and conspiracy theories had a few select pro's having prototypes in their bikes, Cancellara was one of them). And wow, in Pogo's 7.2 kilometer solo ride today (I reference past races I'm just now watching like they JUST happened, cuz to me it did) he put a minute on Vingo and almost a minute and a half on Remco (who WAS wearing Yellow since his ITT win on Stage 4...he put over 40 seconds on Pogo). Vingo HAD 21 seconds on Pogo going into today...so now the GC status is Pogo all by his lonesome, Vingo back at 40 seconds or so, and Remco down by like 1:20. That's just nuts! And the next 2 stages are mountains! Baby Face is more like Baby KILLER! Man, he is something...they went thru the laundry list of BK's season so far and it was crazy with podiums and wins! Back in Stage 1 the Peacock crew of Bobke and CVV did the announcing, and then on the rest of stages it's been the other Euro guy (Todd?)...I'm getting use to him...but nobody replaces the Peacock Tour Crew! Anyway, Bobke and CVV were talking after Stage 1 that it's impossible to compare any athletes from different generations head to head, but they both agreed that IF it's possible to be as good or better than Eddy Meryx, Pogo is it. That's some pretty heady-stuff! 

Oh, and I failed to discuss MY new found talent for wasting time...well, to be honest, I've ALWAYS had it, but I kept it in check somewhat. Now that I don't have to go to work, I get up when I want and do what I want...yea, not really. Jeannie gets up before 4am most days, and me being a light sleeper, yep...I'm awake. Every now and then I can shake it off and go back to sleep, get up around 6. But not very often...most days I lie there till 4 to 4:30 and finally get up, get some coffee, and put on the news (we got rid of our satellite TV and got us a Tablo and 2 Firesticks...works well for us! The Tablo is wireless to both TV's, and the Firesticks have any streaming Apps we use). We have wall over 100 channels on the Tablo for FREE, including all the local channels and many movie channels. Jeannie wheels and deals and gets us constant streaming services for cheap, bouncing around to whoever has a deal...(those are usually for 30 to 90 days). We always have Amazon Prime, and now I have Peacock again for a year, and I think we have Netflix, HBO and Starz right now...so THERE is how I can waste WAY TOO MUCH time...all those channels! I sit down at 4:15 to 4:30 with the monsters Sophie and Abbey, and before I know it, it's 9am and I've done nothing but watch the TV! I haven't ridden a bike in over 2 weeks now...(the fascia project took over my life, that and the early morning TV). Oh, in my  defense of not riding for 2 weeks, my neck has REALLY been bothering me again...got hurt LONG LONG LONG ago (I was 19 I think?) and the last ride I did was just miserable. Usually this sort of thing will mostly go away as suddenly as it showed up...right now I'm taking a ton of ibuprofen every day...that's got to slow down/stop soon I hope. 

Oh, and one other fun item...I just applied for Medicare Part B... I turn 65 in September (how very fast THAT is coming up!) and that's going to hurt. I never took the rather pricey company insurance because I have Tricare (gov insurance) due to being retired military (Jeannie is on my plan too). When I turn 65 Tricare for me becomes free for the rest of my life, but becomes backup to Medicare which I have to pay for. And how much will that be? Don't know yet, but its going to hurt...because that price is based on OUR annual income...from LAST YEAR! Right now I'm not taking any of my 401k (now an IRA), or my other IRA's (a Roth and another one with our financial management company) and I won't take my SS until I hit 67. So MY income is down to just my Navy Retirement and my company pension...so lets say about half of what I WAS bringing in when I was working. Next year Jeannie can petition the Medicare cost based on our taxes for this year (which will be significantly lower due to my cut in gross income)...but for now it's gonna hurt I'm very afraid. But it is what it is, and WHEN I start taking my IRA's and SS I'll be in great shape! (for a while anyway...we'll see how inflation kills us once we are both fully retired). California isn't really a great place to live as they are KILLING us with taxes and fees, and just the cost of living...I heard recently that if you're making under 100k you are poor in most of CA...I get that. Single people are really living hard around here unless they have a fantastic salary.

OK..enough on that. Time for me to get up off my butt and do stuff. Attic, here I come!

Have a great week, talk more starting on the 5th for my annual "Tour Talk", it's gonna be a GREAT RACE!  

Later gators! 

I made it!

So today (Saturday) is my very first day of being TRULY retired! (I retired from the Navy long ago, but that doesn't really count as I still had to work a lot more years). Thursday was my LAST day going in to work, and yesterday was officially my last vacation day. So today, the 1st of February, is the FIRST day I'm well and truly retired (and drawing my pension, which should paying as of today). 

My mind is suitably blown, it just doesn't seem real, and likely won't for a while. I did have an epiphany in the wee-hours of Thursday morning, as I woke up ridiculously early (actually finally got out of bed at 1:15am when it was apparent that the brain woke up and was churning away on the reality of the day). So I got up, turned on the coffee, and sat on the couch. Our bulldog Sophie (always faithful and totally a daddies girl) sat on my lap while I was just thinking about the enormity of the coming day, and likely how hard it was actually going to be for me. It was then that it occurred to me that Monday was when it would really start to sink in...because Monday won't be Monday, it will be Saturday. So will Tuesday, and Wednesday, you get the picture. Also there will be no more Sunday evening 'get stuff ready for work and go to bed early', and needing to do laundry and all my other weekend chores so I have clothes for the week (without reaching down into the pile 'Navy Style' to find something suitably aged and can be flipped inside out where it's still good). I can now do laundry and any other chores whenever I want!

And I wasn't wrong about how huge Thursday was for me. I ended up going in WAY early (I was inside by about 5:15am), but had 'things to do'. The last 2 weeks was slowly ramping up for me in the 'must finish' certain things before I could in good conscious walk away (I'm not one to drop my work on others). I did however complete all the projects I had going, and then in the final few days it came down to 'holy crap do I have a LOT of stuff here'! That's what 21 years does...I'm an 'accumulator', collector, (hoarder?). I know Jeannie thinks I'm a hoarder, and that may be true in a VERY minuscule sense...true hoarders are something to behold. I consider myself 'frugal', as in I HATE to throw away something that I just KNOW I will need some day (I also HATE to have to go BUY something that I threw away, because that's just flushing away money!) So yeah, I had a lot of stuff. 

The Government (Air Force/Space Force) is our Customer, and owns pretty much everything where I work(ed). The buildings, vehicles, furniture, computers, refrigerators, microwaves, etc. Everything. Our gigantic tool boxes (Snap On, probably the finest and most expensive tools you can buy) are provided by the Gov. Due to the expense (and the possibility of a tool being left somewhere it shouldn't be) we need total and complete "Tool Accountability" (and we have several online training courses every year covering the topic). The medical field knows this as "Sponge-count", where surgeons need to account for literally every single thing that goes near/inside a patient (for obvious reasons). We actually call it the same thing, and only go full blown Sponge Count during our 'critical' times (which would be whenever we are prepping for and especially actually moving a spacecraft). If there's a missing tool, screw, zip-tie, piece of tape, whatever, that was taken anywhere in the vicinity of our container or a spacecraft, well, that's a really REALLY bad day. It MUST be found.

So anyway, we the working folk have these 'tool chits' (which are like mini credit-cards, each has our picture, name and employee ID # printed on it) that we take off our little ring 'O' chits and put them inside the tool-box in the spot where that tool was for each tool we take out (so if say a socket comes up missing at the end of shift they know exactly who to go to). In my final few days I hid almost all my tool chits (about 30 give or take) in various 'fun' places. My guys will be finding these in the coming days/weeks/years. I hope each time they find one it will bring smiles..."found another of Matt's chits today" and then everybody will want to know where it was (and hopefully NONE of the chits themselves become FOD which is "Foreign Object Debris", which can cause the other type FOD, which is "Foreign Object Damage". FOD is bad in my line of work. With our huge building and multitudes of large and supremely expensive equipment that we use for our Missions (each Spacecraft Transport is considered a unique Mission), I had a LOT of cool places to hide my chits.

So, going back just a bit, two weeks ago on Tues Jan 14th my people had a pot luck barbecue in my honor, and Jeannie was allowed into the building (escorted by my boss). Our Space Force Commander came over from the Headquarters building where she works and gave a very nice talk about me (she had been provided a copy of my bio beforehand from my boss it turns out). She then presented me with a beautiful wooden 'memento' box with 2 Coins (Challenge Coins they're called...in the last few decades they have become a REALLY big thing for the Military and there are zillions of different Coins out there). The first was a coin from the very first Launch I worked after I hired on (and it also happened to be the very LAST launch of an Air Force Titan IV rocket, which was carrying our Customers spacecraft to orbit). That launch was in October 2005, and my Mom, Dad, Jeannie and brother Greg came up to the base to watch. The other coin was my Commanders Unit coin. Lt. Colonel Ruth being our Commander, she and all her People ARE the NRO Vandenberg group, which makes all of us contractors that work for her part of that group too. And finally she pulled her NRO unit patch from her uniform shoulder and gave me that also. 

Then My people presented me with a beautiful "Flag Box" with a US Flag that was carried on our last transport mission (there are only 2 flags per Mission, one on each side of the Container, and we do anywhere from 0 to 3 Missions per year). So just know that these flags are pretty hard to come by. Also the box has two nice engraved plaques on it, the upper one saying it's being presented to me, and the lower one listing all the Transport Missions I worked over the last 9 years (when I came over from a different division to work in the PTS group, which stands for Payload Transportation Services). I was also presented a framed photo montage of a few launch pictures, a night-time shot of us going down the road in the middle of the night with our container, and also an aerial pic of SLC-6 (which is Space Launch Complex-6, the home of the Delta IV and Delta IV Heavy rockets). All of this really choked me up I have to say. It was pretty difficult not to 'lose it', but I hung in there. Then we had lunch and all was great! (our people REALLY know how to barbecue Tri Tip btw, you can even find it around the country where they call it "Santa Maria Style Barbecue", but NOBODY makes it better than my people!) I even had to give a little 'speech', and did pretty good by not breaking down.

The above picture shows the photo montage, the Commanders Memento Box and her NRO patch, the Flag Box and also my "yearbook" which the company gives to all departing people...got a bunch of pictures of launches and people doing work and company parties and such, and also everybody can sign it at the back. 

 

                And this shot is a closeup of my Flag Box.It's really beautiful, I was stunned!

After that day I still worked another 2 weeks (usually this would have happened on or very near my 'last day', but they bumped it up due to a co-worker who was retiring 2 days after and he really wanted to be at my 'party' (it was a huge surprise to me that he would be there, quite an honor as he was one of our Engineers I worked with long ago, and he was leaving after 41 years on our contract!)

On then finally, my last day of work (last Thursday the 30th of Jan). I brought in Cheesecakes (Jeannie's family recipe which I'm not allowed to give out, I can truly say it's probably the BEST Cheesecake I've ever had) and Jeannie also made me a big batch of her world-famous White Chocolate Macadamia cookies to bring in one last time...and they are also OH WOW! After our morning meeting (where the days work is discussed) I took off in a truck and made the rounds to our other buildings, saying my goodbyes to everybody. I made it back for "coffee break" and all my PTS folk along with a few select others showed up for Cheesecake, cookies and coffee. Then I had to give one last little speech, and this one I was on the very edge of losing it. 

After that it was time...I had an appointment with our Security Manager over at the HQ building at 10am. My boss showed up and came in with me, where I turned in all my badges and signed some forms (NDA stuff...mostly saying I need to forget a lot of stuff that I know which I'm never supposed to talk about, which is pretty easy when you consider that I only have 2 remaining functioning brain-cells). Then my boss took me over to the Command Center (where our Commander works) on our way out. Her Secretary let her know I was there, and she came out and we said our farewells (she is an AWESOME Commander, and I guarantee she will make Colonel on her first time up for it, probably only a few years form now). And that was that...I walked to my car and drove away (that part was actually pretty difficult). 

So this last picture is a selfie I took after leaving my building FOR THE VERY LAST TIME! Jeannie thought I looked happy, but I assured her I was on the verge of breaking down sobbing. The building you see behind me was originally built to be the OMF, (which stands for Orbiter Maintenance Facility). The giant rolling doors (they are closed here) behind and above my head run across nearly the entire lower width of the main hibay, and were made to open wide enough for a Space Shuttle to go in and out. This was where all the maintenance would have been done for all West Coast Space Shuttle launches. SLC-6 (which I mentioned earlier) had been retrofitted to launch Space Shuttles. The original "Enterprise" Orbiter (which never went to space) was flown out on it's 747 transporter jet and fit-checked to the pad, and there are even pictures of the Enterprise inside this very building, which is where I worked the last 9 years. Anyway, long ago after all the preps to do shuttle launches from both Cape Kennedy and Vandenberg, the Challenger disaster happened. After that the Air Force decided the Shuttles were too risky for their ludicrously expensive spacecraft, so they nixed shuttle launches from shuttles and started launching their biggest vehicles on Titan IIIB's and then Titan IV's which happened several miles away at SLC-4, which is where I worked my first 2 years here on base. After that SLC-6 was converted to be the Delta IV pad. So this building behind me ended up housing all our PTS equipment instead of actual shuttles (the Space Shuttles were called SCTS, which stands for "Space Cargo Transportation System", which is also exactly what our giant containers are called).

Anyway, that's pretty much my last 2 weeks. I still can't wrap my head around the fact that I no longer go to work...EVER. That they pay me now to do pretty much anything BUT work. It just doesn't seem possible.

 OK, well, I made it. The light at the end of the tunnel is no longer at the end of the tunnel, it's BEHIND me. I'm out of the tunnel. Holy smokes, I'm done! I have SO much to do, and suddenly SO much time! (or not...I don't really want to go 'there', none of us know how much time we have here, making it so important to live every day to the fullest). Whatever time I do have left is MY time now. I plan to make the best of it! I hope to do at least ONE FUN thing every single day from here on out! Hopefully more than one, but at LEAST one.

And so, Aawaaaaaaaayyyyy I go! 

Game ON!

The XXXIII Olympic games! (week 1, and 2, and now 3)

 And wow...le Tour is over, and BAM, it's Olympics time!

I've got the opening ceremonies on the TV as I type. Pretty cool bringing the teams down the Seine River to the Eiffel Tower! That's a new one! 

So I'm keeping my Peacock Premium package until after the Games, then will cancel the Premium part and just have 'plan ol' Peacock. Anyhoo, I plan to come here and write some of the great, not-so-great, fun, cool, whatever stories that I see during the games. As always, Team USA will be AMAZING! Of that there's no doubt. I have no idea what all will strike my fancy for viewing, but typically I will be watching the road and mt biking events, beach and indoor volleyball, swimming, gymnastics, shooting, diving, hm...what else...oh, I think I will check out the Break-dancing (I think they just call it 'Breaking', which I think is a cool thing to call 'the sport'). Looking on the Peacock Olympics site, I'm a bit overwhelmed...there is SO MUCH available! 

That all said, I'm glad the Tour is over as I wanted my 'life' back! Starting this week I'm on my 'Post Tour comeback', the 2nd of two comebacks I seem to do every year. The first one starts early January as I come out of the Holiday season and early darkness. My fitness always takes a pretty big hit there. But that is also our 'rainy season', which in drought years isn't much (my fav! Cuz, you know...it's all about ME!) So I ride like mad getting pretty fit and by the end of May I'm usually doing pretty good. By the time the Tour rolls around I'm ready for a break, and boy do I do that...21 days worth! (I do get rides in but not enough to keep my hard-won fitness). So now I'm doing 4 rides a week...3 during the week after work (about an hour and a half to two hours), and then on Saturday I shoot for my 'all day endurance' ride. IF I am able to hold to the 4 a week schedule I'll be killing it by Sept. So now, we shall see how well I can hold my 4 a week rides during the Olympics. It's going to be tough, I'm not going to deny it.

Hey, they just did a live bit of Les Miserabe on the show! Jeannie and I were fortunate enough to see it on Broadway probably 20 years ago...we were in NYC for a week visiting her sister and that was a goal (to see a Broadway show). It was amazing of course...the really brilliant part was the 'stage' was a very large slowly rotating disc...you could only see the front part of whatever set was in use, then it would slowly rotate as our hero walked...so behind the scenes the workers would frantically load the next set on the disc over and over again. (during that trip I took Jeannie and her sister to dinner at 'Windows on the World, the top of the WTC (can't remember which tower it was in)...that was crazy too! So glad I not only got to see it but go inside too...that was pretty fabulous! The only other Broadway shows I've seen were Phantom of the Opera (saw that in Honolulu, a Canadian Broadway troupe bright the show on the road...I got us fantastic seats, like row 15 center stage. I admit I wasn't familiar with the story, and during that one scene the cast were pointing and spotlights turned all eyes to the ceiling pretty much above us (not over the stage at all but the crowd)...the giant chandelier. So like everybody else, we are looking up at it, and then it falls! I'm pretty sure I soiled myself (good thing I wore the 'brown pants' that night...GRIN), yelled and was literally about to grab my wife and dive out of the way. Just a bit humiliating, but everybody else who was there thought it was pretty funny...I guess they all knew the story. Of course it only fell 'down' for a moment, then it caught their line and it pretty much did a zip-line ride down onto the stage. And the only other show we've seen was 'Wicked' (up in Vancouver BC). That was awesome too. Turns out I LOVE going to plays! OH, there was Peter Pan (Sandy Duncan played Peter), saw that OH SO LONG AGO in Los Angeles/Hollywood...at the Pantages Theater.  Boy, they really flew Sandy all over the place in that one. I was with my family for that, so I seem to recall I was a VERY YOUNG Navy man on leave in LA (my parents flew down from Montana and brought my little bro with them, and big bro was already living in SoCal). 

OK, boy I went off on a tangent there...sorry... I need to stay on point. So it's about bed-time, getting up early and doing a long road-ride tomorrow (on base). It's too hot inland for me to ride there just now (triple digits) and also with the fires near us the area I WOULD go mt biking in if it weren't so hot are all choked with smoke still. Hopefully I will have some insights and such after finally seeing the rest of the opening ceremony. Right now I have to admit it's going pretty ssssllllloooooowwwwww...maybe bringing the athletes in by boat isn't such a great idea. I'll keep adding to this post for the week, then I'll open up another one for Week 2 and 3, just like I did for the TDF...that way they don't get crazy long.

2024 Tour de France, Week 3

Stage 15, Sunday, 7/14/24, the Queen Stage AND the first stage of week 3 (with the 2nd rest-day on Monday). Even BIGGER MOUNTAINS than yesterday, holy smokes! FIVE categorized climbs, four Cat-1s and an HC to finish off the day, with over 16,000' of climbing! 

The day literally starts off at Km 0 on the bottom of the Col d' Peresourde (which according to Phil was one of the very first Pyrenees climbs added to the Tour back in 1910, which is when the Pyrenees was first included into the Tour). Other than the one stage years back when they did an ITT up the Alp d' Huez (which Lance won I seem to recall) I can't remember a stage when they started a categorized climb right from the start. 

1st item: boy did Bimi get screwed on the midpoint sprint. For one thing, WTH was Matthews doing going for it? I thought it was QUITE OBVIOUS that Bimi didn't even know he was sprinting when he opened up his sprint (and subsequently cut the corner by the barricades shutting down Matthews). Yes he did shut down his sprint, but why oh why was he even doing that? It was REALLY SHITTY of him, and by chance if Bimi were to lose the Green in Nice by 5 or less points, wow, that would be really bad. But in the end, yes, he DID deviate from his line, so that is that. At least he didn't get ZERO points, THAT would have been a travesty.

OK. So for today my MP's are Bimi's foiled Mid-point-sprint-win, and then Pogo. Just wow. I was certainly waiting/hoping for a vintage Vingo HC climb attack, but it's now quite obvious that he isn't quite the rider he was the last 2 years. He's still GREAT (evidenced by beating EVERY OTHER RIDER, putting in 2 minutes on the young'un upstart Remco, but compared to Pogo he's definitely a level down this year.

And just a note: boy is my sleep-schedule out of whack! I was WIDE AWAKE at 2am! (and quite conveniently, the stage started at 2:30am...what a coincidence!) Here is my Tour viewing Team, all VERY hard at work (NOT!) It's still only 5:30am when I took this. They are obviously quite tired after getting up so early and walking ALL THE WAY FROM THE BEDROOM TO THE KITCHEN to get breakfast.

 

 And one final note: Boy are Bob and TJ Hilarious (about the crew points contest, among other things). Bobke is SO funny, and gotta hand it to TJ: he's growing into the role and getting a bit looser every day. (still have to love Bobke's advice to TJ the other day when TJ picked a breakaway winner...Bobke told him "TJ, to do well in this game, on Sprint days you have to actually PICK a sprinter!" And TJ came back w/ something like "they were all taken", and Bobke came back and said "there's SIXTEEN OF THEM in the race TJ!" That was a seriously funny bit! You gotta love Bobke, he's really doing well w/ Phil in the booth (that said, I still miss Paul). They have a good crew tho, CVDV and Steve Porino rounding out the crew, CVDV is seriously doing great on the Moto! Week three is underway, and I'm already getting a bit sad at the inevitable end next weekend.

Stage 16, Tuesday, 7/16/24. A 'flat' stage. LAST CHANCE for Cav! My biggest Memory Point for today's stage was at km 19.6 from the finish, as the peleton was splitting apart for a 2nd large roundabout, and out of the blue and quite plainly Bobke says "What the H#!! do you think you're doing?" Then a moment later Bobke says "What the FU#$"? Phil is quiet, and then they just go on like nothing happened. Then a few minutes later Bobke 'apologizes for his recent language', and said "an overzealous spectator trying to get into the commentary position a moment ago, had to wave them off with some emphatic language, and I apologize profusely". Glad he explained, I backed up and watched the minute or so before the blip several times, couldn't figure out what he saw that I wasn't (assumed it was something in the race video). Pretty humorous actually, that was new! How on earth did that make it first on the air (there's always a delay and SOMEONE is supposed to be monitoring for such things, and then secondly, after making it out on the live broadcast it ALSO made it into the replay, which is what I was watching. Heads are gonna roll! (or not).

And then my sad MP's for today's stage (two of them actually) is Bimi CRASHED at 1.2k to go! He was up on Phillipson by about 80 points for the Green jersey, really just needed to get SOME points. So not only did he get ZERO, but Phillipson won the day, so now there's only 30-something points separating them! DANGDANGDANG! I'm REALLY rooting for him to win the overall, I LOVE that he's won 3 already, and was hoping it would be him or Cav winning today (really wanted Cav). And that brings me to my 2nd sad MP...once again, Where the HELL was CAV? His team was all lined up at 10k, looking good. As it gets closer to the line they start to get separated and pushed further and further back. All I know for sure is he/they were NOT EVEN VISIBLE IN THE VIDEO at the 1k point. Not sure if he lost his nerve for the 'argy bargy', but his team certainly sucks in the sprint-lead out. Obviously that's NOT in Astana's talent-list. Sad, I REALLY wanted him to pull off ONE MORE! But hey, at least he got #35, that in itself was a miracle! 

Stage 17, Wednesday, 7/17/24. A 'mountain' stage with a Cat-2, a Cat-1 and a finish atop a Cat-3. All in all a somewhat boring stage, tho for a change the Peleton (ie: UAE/Pogo) let the break go to 8+ minutes out! Finally...only the 2nd stage (so far) that the break won the day! And today it was Carapaz/EF Education! He had tried over and over to get into the break (like he did on pretty much every other day that was hopeful for a break to have a chance) but missed the one that stuck. So his teammate dropped back and pulled him to the break, very well done! From there he was able to gap his co-leader (Simon Yates) near the end and ride to victory solo! Boy did EF need THAT! They've been skunked until today! Also of note, Remco attacked from the Yellow group when he saw that Vingo was struggling and with no teammates. Pogo obviously didn't chase cuz he's up over 5 minutes on Remco. So Vingo struggled but was losing time, even when he caught up with his teammate from the break who pulled him as best he could. Then near the finish Pogo did attack Vingo and put a few more seconds on him, Vingo had no answer for neither Remco nor Pogo today. So the GC is now Pogo at 0, Vingo at 3:11, and Remco at 5:09. Pogo (barring some disaster: a crash or gets sick) is likely to win, but Vingo still needs to contain Remco in the final TT, and he now has LESS than 2 minutes on  him. As of right now I'd be afraid if I were Vingo! We shall see how the next 3 Alp stages goes. As of right this moment I'd think 2nd and 3rd can go either Vingo/Remco, or Remco/Vingo (he would have to lose around 7 more minutes as things currently stand to be off the podium). 

Stage 18, Thursday, 7/18/24. 'Hilly' stage, five Cat-3's today! Turned into a breakaway day, 3 guys broke away from the massive 'mini-peleton' break and held it to the line. Viktor Campenaerts (Team Lotto) won the day! It was his FIRST Tour win, beating out Kwiatkowski (Team Ineos, who still is winless in this years Tour). Kind of a boring stage but honestly it was pretty great to see Viktor pull off the win over a seasoned veteran, good on him! He does owe Kwiatkowski a few beers tho as he did the majority of the work, including initiating the strong attack to form the 3 man break. But hey, that's racing!

Stage 19, Friday, 7/19/24. Mountains. Er, I mean MOUNTAINS! 3 categorized climbs, Col de Vars (HC), Col de Bonette (HC), and a summit finish on the Cat-1 Isola 2000 (ski resort). The Bonette was the high-point of this years race, over 9000', and the highest paved road in France. And boy oh boy, the day was amazing! (I slipped out from work at lunch, feeling sick (cough cough) and was able to watch the replay pretty much entirely. All I can say is that whatever your feelings for Vingo, Remco, and ALL the other racers in the Tour this year, Pogo is just from another galaxy! Vingo did everything right, had 2 guys in the break all day setting him up for a launch to the front, but Pogo had his team on the front of the ever-reducing-peleton and the pace was just too much for either Vingo or Remco, they just held the wheels. Finally on the final climb w/8.7k to the finish Pogo had enough and lights it up (again), the gap to the leader was over 3 minutes. NOBODY can respond, and he just gobbles up all the riders in front like they are stopped, wins the stage (again, this is #4), putting ANOTHER 1:42 on Vingo and Remco (who finish together). It was flat-out an amazing ride for Pogo, and I'm only sad about it because one of the 3 Americans (only 2 left as of this morning) in the race, Mateo Jorgenson was one of the 2 Visma riders in the break all day, and he had attacked the break and was soloing on to a victory (if only Pogo would let it). He did not. Jorgenson takes 2nd (this is his 1st Tour btw). No matter, it was a seriously heroic and amazing ride by Mateo, who wouldn't normally have that opportunity (think of Hincape with Lance...in his entire career he only won ONE Tour stage when he was far enough out that the team let him go for it, loved that moment). Watching the Post-race analysis, TJ needs to lighten up on Pogo (for winning when he doesn't need to). He just said "Leave something for the little guy". Why? Cycling can be a cruel sport. You want a Tour win, you need to WIN it (just my 97 cents). A stage-win-gift is when the yellow is working to put time on his rivals and another rider works with him, pulls him to the line helping him increase his lead, and he lets that rider have the win. There are no other riders (other than his team) helping him, why not win? He now has 15 Tour wins at 25 years old! Back after Stage 5 when Cav won #35 I thought I wouldn't live to see anyone beat that. Now I think that if anybody in my lifetime can do it, Pogo will be that guy. GC standings now: Pogo 0, Vingo 5:03, Remco 7:01. WOW!

Stage 20, Saturday, 7/20/24 (SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!) Mountains AGAIN. One Cat-2 and THREE Cat-1s, with 16,000' of climbing and a Summit-finish...AGAIN! (that's 3 Summit finishes in a ROW!) After today there is only ONE categorized climb left for tomorrow (that will be interesting). So at the end of the day we finally have a new KOM jersey-holder: Carapaz, Team EF Education! Well done!!! Carapaz missed the early break(s) and didn't get over the Cat-2 for the points, but he (and his team) fixed that and got him into the break, and he then took the top points over the next 2 Cat-1's, cementing the jersey (as long as he finishes in Nice tomorrow). Hooray for him and the team, that's quite an accomplishment for EF! 

I won't go crazy with all the details of today, suffice to say that Carapaz was off the front of the break giving the Stage-win a shot, but Remco and his team had other plans and the GC riders broke away (Remco doing the attacks on Vingo). It didn't work, and Vingo was not only able to hold on but to then attack Remco (w/ Pogo on his wheel obviously). After dropping Remco they went on to the line together with Pogo sprinting away to take his FIFTH Stage win this Tour! I consider it a huge morale-win for Vingo, as he looked a LOT better than yesterday, AND managed to put 53 more seconds on Remco! But you have to love it that Remco tried...he could have just sat where he was and finished w/ Pogo and Vingo further back, (likely w/ no time gaps), and letting the break have the day. I'd say going into the ITT tomorrow, unless Vingo crashes or just completely falls apart, his 2nd place is secure. And unless Pogo gets hit by a meteorite or the earth opens up and swallows him whole (or something equally unlikely), he will win the overall with a nice buffer and the final podium will stand as it has been for a while now. Other than Vingo looking much better, of note to me in today's stage was Mateo Jorgenson having ANOTHER spectacular ride (especially considering how hard he worked yesterday) and was able to finish far enough up that he moved from 9th to 8th overall! All in all it was quite an exciting stage IMO! Good to see Vingo do well  near the end of a LONG HARD race and get some confidence back, he was definitely shaken after yesterday. All I can say is WAIT TILL NEXT YEAR! Can you imagine what this year would have been-like had Vingo not been hurt and was in his proper Tour form? I think Remco would be down by about 15 minutes (or more) if he and Pogo were both in top form and attacking each other all along. Hopefully next year that will be the case. And Remco, he's had his wake-up-call...he now knows what the new Tour A-game looks like, and he needs to up his game to compete with them. We can only hope he can...a TRUE 3-way fight all the way to Paris would be AMAZING!

Stage 21, Sunday, 7/21/24. NOT in Paris (for the first time in the history of the Tour) but Nice, for a 34k Time Trial (haven't done a final stage ITT since the year Lemond beat Fignon who had small lead and took the overall Yellow).

Sorry I didn't get here to post my final comments after the ITT on Sunday (lots going on, Jeannie is back home now from her 'girls trip' to Sarasota FL for 9 days). Finally finished watching the TT last evening, a bit later to bed that I'd like but now that the Tour is over I can get my sleep-schedule back to 'normal'. Also get riding again, that always suffers in July as I have a stage to watch for 21 days. ANYWAY...having an ITT as the final stage was different...if I were there in person it would be awesome! I'd find a good but uncrowded spot and have a nice little camp and get pics of every rider (preferably on the climb and not the descent as I'd have a better shot). I did miss the ceremonial ride to Paris and all the stuff that goes on there, and then the serious business of the Champs laps and final sprint finish. That said, the TT its-self went about as I figured (I didn't see Remco winning this one, not with Pogo on FIRE and still getting stronger every day). I also figured Vingo would beat Remco as he has been improving, but Remco has shown repeatedly that he's just not yet up to either the "insane" level of Pogo nor the just "really good" level of Vingo. Isn't that something, that Pogo is SO good that he makes Vingos rides look bad? If you were to take away Pogo, Vingo would have won HIS 3rd. Just as Pogos 'insane' level seems impossible, IMO so is Vingo's 'really good' level, considering he's had so little training after his crash, hospital and recovery. Broken bones, punctured lung, 12 days in the hospital starting in mid April, and in just 9 weeks after the CRASH he's the 2nd best on the planet? Seriously? Boy, these guys are now making my LA-era 'rose colored glasses' seem pretty lame by comparison.

But hey...they aren't testing positive, so who am I to throw suspicion around (cuz nobody ever goes pretty much an entire career doping and not getting caught, right?) It did make for amazing stages tho (IMO). And I think this years Tour was the physically hardest route they've done since the 'old days' when the racers were coming to the finish in the dark on their ludicrous heavy bikes of the day. But to me, even better than the race for 1st and 2nd was the OTHER stories from this year. 

Stories like Biniam Girmay, winning not only his but his teams, AND his Country's FIRST (and 2nd, and 3rd) Tour stage wins! And then holding off an improving Phillipson for the overall Green jersey! Had he not crashed in Stage 16 he assuredly would have got-finish points (and possibly won, we will never know).  Crashing out in that turn (and we have no idea how the crash happened, there were several riders down) and Phillipson winning brought his huge lead down to what, 32 points I think? And we had no idea how badly he was hurt...when he crossed the line he was being pushed by a teammate, so that was scary. But him then going out for the intermediate sprint the next day against Phillipson (and winning it) proved he was up to it, and Phillipson realized he had no chance after that. Loved that story!

Stories like Richard Carapaz (and his Team EF Education). Coming out of the blue to start getting KOM points over a week into the race, and after that trying for or being in nearly every break there was where KOM points were on the line. And finally eeking the jersey off of Pogo right near the end, and THEN holding it thru Pogo winning the last THREE stages in a row (which hasn't been done since 1930 per Phil)! That was great for him and the team (gosh, how many times did Neilson Powless end up in the break after Carapaz had tried several times, and then had to drop back to pull him up to the break shattering himself doing it each time). But you have to admit that to Neilson and the team, that effort was repaid by his efforts and success, which was no small thing.

Stories like CAXXV getting that elusive 35th sprint win (and at what, 39 years old I think?) I really thought it wouldn't happen, he was just not aggressive enough in the bunch-springs like when he was younger...(but hey, who can blame him, those are just nuts). 

Stories like Matteo Jorgenson on Visma. He was just WOW the entire race! His first Tour too! Gosh what a breath of fresh air he turned out to be! Considering that Sepp Kuss wasn't able to come (what a blow for the team) he ended up being Vingo's last man standing pretty much every day in the mountains. Especially considering that Wout van Aert wasn't up to his usual form (not even close). Loved the back story on Jorgenson,, and meeting his family out on the road (Steve Porino was amazing as always out there).

And speaking of Porino, how about the rest of the crew? Paul was as always, the consummate professional driving the conversation, while Brent and TJ added personal experience to the mix (same for Christian VDV, who also once again was awesome out on the moto). And Phil and Bobke in the booth, not much else you can say about them. I did notice that Phil calls Bobke "Paul' every now and then, and Bobke has the good sense not to say anything...Phil and Paul were together for oh-so-long in the booth, it's going to happen. But Bobke is just wonderful in that spot, his character shines thru every day. I really love his laugh when something goofy is said or done, he always cracks me up...he's really found his place!

One thing different this year was that after the final stage was over, we got to see pretty much ALL the presentations for a change, loved that! Like when they called Cav up for his special award, the framed Black shirt that just said "CAXXV" and the very nice video compilation of him over the years. That was beautiful!

And then to close out the entire race broadcast (and this post) they made a very nice video and narration by Phil. That was super-classy IMO. Nothing further after that would be appropriate, and when it was done, that was it. Very nice ending!

Doping (or whatever else is going on) between top riders aside, I do hope next year Vingo stays healthy in the early season, and comes back with the Visma 'A'-team, and we get the dog-fight we were hoping for this year. And I also hope Remco ups his game and gets a bit closer to the stratospheric condition Pogo was in. A true three way fight all the way to Paris would be crazy awesome! 

And finally, Susie (and finally Rae), thanks for stopping by and helping blow the cob-webs out of the place...it was seriosly musty in the Asylum. and that's nobody's fault but my own. I must do better.

OK, time to turn off the lights and let the Asylum go to sleep. Good night!