If there are any Okies in the Tour of California peloton, the Dust Bowl days must be looking pretty damn’ fine to them after three days of soaking rain.
Astana and OUCH might want to think about swapping sponsors, seeing as it’s the boys in blue and yellow who are spending all the time on the deck and in need of medical attention.
Lance Armstrong, uncharacteristically, has sampled the California asphalt a couple of times now — once after T-boning his own photographer’s motorcycle — and today race leader Levi Leipheimer had a brain fart and found himself tumbling along the tarmac after a touch of wheels with Big Tex.
Meanwhile, the VeloNews.com mob is frantically cranking out the online love, slapping up live updates, race reports, photo galleries, video and the occasional pointless comment from Your Humble Narrator, so you should probably be over there instead of here. I don’t make a dime on this thing.
Mad Blog Media 
Sometimes being pointless is the point.
Or at least it should be.
Just checked out all the VeloNews ToC coverage. Jeez, this is why I enjoy mountain biking so much. Give me an isolated trail, my single-speed, and a beautiful day. I don’t need to get my rocks off on the Lotsa Arrogance/Kimmage drama; don’t have to worry about doping or dopers; don’t want to care about LA’s boring old TT bike. I just want to ride.
O’G, if it weren’t for your writing, Zack Vestal’s tech writing, and the occasional Drier MTB piece, I would quit VN altogether.
As for your little blurb on LA’s wunderbike and potbellied masters… well, I think John Strasser may have jumped out of his padded desk chair to run and cry at himself in the full-length mirror. As you once said, it’s “Saay-tire. Heee-yooomur.”
Can you tell I’m bored today?
Thanks, Steve — pointless is what I’ve aimed for throughout my professional career, and it appears I’m properly sighted in.
Joey, thanks for the applause. And ZV was a good hire. Dude is cranking out the copy at the AToC. I’m technically challenged, as you know all too well, so I don’t head straight to the tech reports when I visit VN.com, but a bunch of our readers sure do, so it’s nice to have him aboard and spewing words like a senator on filibuster.
Me, I still like watching a good road race, especially a stage race. I had one good year as a road racer, when the training, racing and sheer good fortune all came together at once, and then poof — I was pack fodder again. But I still like watching the pros bump elbows at speed over a distance of ground.
When it comes to my own riding, of course, a long spell on the cyclo-cross bike across a variety of surfaces — road, bike path, jeep road, single-track, deer trail — remains my outing of choice. But I’m funny that way.
how can anything you say be pointless?
So I call my mom tonight, somewhat dutiful son that I am, and she asks about the ToC. “Did they get Lance’s bike back?” she asks. That’s the tail wagging the dog. Spectacular break by Mancebo, capitalizing on non-working communications, voodoo mind reading by Horner to see the threat, go-for-broke racing by several, and it comes down to a bike stolen from a celebrity. Yow. What if Lance had lost his Blackberry?
And pot-bellied? Hey I worked hard for that belly. But I can’t afford a Madone. Think the Economic Stimulus Package will give me one?