Chamois-sniffers worldwide are weeping into their FRS energy drink now that Lance Armstrong has failed to croak everyone in his first Tour time trial in four years. Still, the old man cranked out a strong early time, avoiding the sort of miscue that seems to dog Garmin’s David Millar, who nearly ate a barrier after overcooking a corner and was lucky to keep the rubber side down.

And as usual, it didn’t matter who was actually leading the race. At 10 a.m. Bibleburg time, with 100 riders through the first time check, that was Levi Leipheimer, who gets less love from the talking heads than a baby-seal sandwich at a PETA picnic. You can just see Levi slapping Odessa’s butt in the heat of passion, yelling, “Say my name! Say my name!”, and Odessa murmuring, “OK … um, what is it again?” Dude is the Rodney Dangerfield of pro cycling.

Fabian Cancellara finally shut everybody up by riding so fast that Carlos Sastre got off his bicycle to see what was the matter; the defending champ, who if anything is getting even less love than Leipheimer, wound up 21st at 1:06 back. Poor sod didn’t even have the chance to start in the yellow jersey nobody believes he earned.

Meanwhile, here in the Land of the Big PX it’s the Fourth of July, or July Fourth, depending upon whether you are a Red, White and Blue American or one of the mongrel hordes with all the oil and bottomless credit. Bibleburg is too broke to put on its annual fireworks display, but God is providing a little thunder and lightning for our amusement. Whether this is out of sympathy or a desire to barbecue a few barbecuers remains to be seen.

Sure wish He’d chuck a few bolts Sarah Palin’s way. I b’leeve the gal has done lost some of the Energizer in her bunny.

July 4th, 2009 | Category: Bike stuff | Comments (8)

An old VeloNews 'toon by David Brintoni depicting Charles Pelkey at the VeloSwap flea market.

Well, the Tour hasn’t even started yet and Lance Armstrong has already dropped someone — VeloNews.com’s Charles Pelkey, from his Twitter feed.

No stranger to social media, Pelkey used Facebook to announce having been 86′d from Armstrong’s exclusive private club, which at last count had just 1,249,162 members. Noting that he had been blocked from the feed “at the request of the user,” Pelkey added, “I wonder if Dan Schorr felt like this when he made Nixon’s enemies’ list.”

Shoot, ask him, Charles. He’s on Twitter, too — and the enemies list is one topic ol’ Dan is always delighted to discuss.

• Extra credit reading: Check out the Neiman Journalism Lab’s four-part series on the shifting world of sports journalism, wherein “the subjects of coverage are becoming the creators of coverage — and what implications those shifts have for the rest of the news business.”

July 3rd, 2009 | Category: Bike stuff, Journalism | Comments (4)

Random news nuggets with a side of snark for your reading pleasure:

• Give me your furry love: A 45-year-old woman has sex with a 16-year-old boy who enjoys dressing up as an animal. Does that make her a PETAphile? (Thanks and a tip of the chipmunk mask to Charles Pelkey.)

• Sour Vino’: How do you say “My way or the highway” in Kazakh?

• Sweatin’ gravy: If Colorado is the skinniest state, I don’t ever want to go to Mississippi. Hell, from the sound of it, I couldn’t squeeze in if I wanted to.

• Short time, sailor?: The Washington Post gets busted bending over and grabbing its ankles while going commando in a leather miniskirt and 7-inch spike heels. Say it ain’t so, ho’.

July 2nd, 2009 | Category: Just mumbling along | Comments (6)

My Tour de France office circa 2005 ... today, I need the G4 tower, two large flat-panel monitors and the laptop to do business.

The clock is counting down toward the start of that little three-week bike race we all know and love, and a reader asks what the workload is like for Your Humble Narrator come Tour de France time.

Put simply, it was Death back in the bad old days, when Charles Pelkey was the lone web guy and I was a two-day-a-week free-lancer who was shanghaied for the duration during the three grand tours. Charles is an early riser, so he’d be cranking out the live updates at an hour when sane journos were still abed. I’d log in around 7 a.m. and we’d tag-team the editing and posting of words and pictures from John Wilcockson, Graham Watson, Andrew Hood, Casey Gibson and whoever else was across the pond.

Charles would usually fade out early, so I — who spent all those enjoyable years at newspapers working the night shift — would stick it out past dark-thirty just in case the dope cops decided to set riders to jumping out of hotel windows. Then we’d do it all again the next day. Repeat until the Champs-Élysées.

The rules were simple: Post like an ADHD baboon flinging dung against a primate-house wall and find an hour to ride. I added a third: Drink French wine. Come July we’d go through Côtes du Rhône like an alcoholic Panzer division.

Last year, things changed. Steve Frothingham joined VeloNews.com as the full-time web boss-fella, and this year, with him and Charles both on salary (read: no overtime), I’m told I’ll probably only have to cover my usual two days a week, which suits me just fine. I unplugged the cable after the Floyd Landis debacle in 2006, and I am seriously uninterested in watching Versus bury its monocular face in Lance Armstrong’s lap again. Plus the workload these days means I can’t camp on the back deck with a laptop anymore — I need two large monitors, the souped-up G4 tower and the laptop just to take care of business in the modern age.

So I’ll follow this Tour when I’m paid to do so, with the exception of a few stages: Saturday’s opening time trial; Tuesday’s team time trial; the stage-18 ITT; and of course, stage 20 to Mont Ventoux. I like time trials, and you have to watch Ventoux.

In between business and pleasure, I’ll ride my own damn’ bike, see if I can sweat a few pounds off, which seems unlikely. I still like my wine, and I’ll have more time to cook.

July 1st, 2009 | Category: Bike stuff, Journalism | Comments (5)