Mondays always remind me of work, a recurring affliction that gives me a painful rash on the frontal lobes. And today was no exception.
First, I had to give up on trying to make a cheap USB 2.0 wireless adapter work with this elderly MacBox, which has been limping along for years with a Bronze Age 802.11b internal Airport card. But the adapter wouldn’t let the old bastard sleep, and at its advanced age, the MacBox needs all the Z’s it can get. This perverse product would let the monitor sleep, but wouldn’t let it wake up. It also crashed me a half-dozen times, just ’cause. So off it went, exchanged for a more upscale PCI adapter that should finally let me crank the wireless connectivity in these parts up to 802.11g. Look out. Nothing can stop me now.
Then Lance Armstrong went and crashed himself out of the Vuelta a Castilla y León, collecting his first broken collarbone in the process (I’ve done ’em both, and yes, it hurts), and nobody had any oh-the-humanity crash pix we could run over at VeloNews.com, where the merest mention of LA draws more eyeballs than Pamela Anderson attending a frat party wearing only Jäger goggles, kneepads and a smile.
And finally, spring and its 70-degree temps waved bye-bye. As we speak, it’s 40 and raining, with a chance of snow. If we’re lucky, we might be back into the 60s by next Monday.
I want to shoot the whole day down.
Mad Blog Media 
Uh…okay Brenda. Just put down that weapon and we’ll talk.
Nice Rats reference Patrick. One of their better (only?) major North American hits. Love it.
What I also loved was a certain media outlet’s coverage of the LA crash. First headline popped up saying that he was involved in a crash….and that “his injuries are not life-threatning.” They followed that piece of wisdom up by saying that he had “broken his collarbone” and that “his Tour was in jeapardy.”
When I read the first story I said “bummer, collarbone cracks hurt like a pissed off mofo on a three-day binge in Salt Lake City.” I’ve broken my right one twice. It is not fun, but it is definitely NOT life-threatning. As for his Tour: if a 6-8 week wait for my break is any indication (and it is most definitely not since I was not a racing pro either time I snapped it) then unless he is old, fat, or got some other issue he shouldn’t have any problem racing in July in France. Stewey broke his clavile in MSR on Saturday and he’s planning on being back by May. Why would LA expect more time? Nice to see that they cover cycling and all, but the absolute ineptitude with what they classify as ‘coverage’ makes me want to go on a three day bender in SLC.
As I once told someone who had never experienced the joys of crashing and breaking a collarbone: “There are two kinds of cyclists. Those who have crashed. And those who will crash.” Welcome to the club LA.
Peace, Out!
Amazed that Lance took this long to join the Clavicle Club. Concentration going down, or is he sitting in the pack rather than controlling his position more carefully these days? Or just bad luck on a shitty road?
Overlapped wheels and cracked collarbones go together like pork and beans, having been there too (I like that quote, James).
Get well soon, Tex. Those things mend a little slower when you are an old fart.
James, a collarbone can be life-threatening under the proper circumstances. When I broke my second at the Rage in the Sage mountain bike race bac in ’94 or thereabouts, it didn’t hurt that badly, and after catching a lift back to the start-finish for an exam by an EMT, I told him I was going to ride to the ER; save the ambulance for someone more badly hurt.
He looked at me as if I were a particularly dumb dog that had just shit on his carpet and said that if a sharp bone fragment happened to graze some major pipeline nearby — the subclavian artery, IIRC — I could plan on bleeding out in about 30 seconds. I took the ambulance ride.
And Khal, yeah, you have to wonder what Tex (or his director) is thinking. Midpack on a narrow, gravelly Spanish road with crumbling shoulders? After talking smack from the sidelines about how the post-LA Tours have been slow, he seems surprised by the speed of the ’09 peloton. It’s gonna be an interesting season, for sure.
Maybe he was distracted by all the twittering. Just a thought.
Funny… i was observing a social studies class the other day and they were talking about social justice. Spent a bit of time on Bob Geldof. No one else in the room, to include three other teachers, knew he had been a lead singer. Only knew him from Live Aid. Funny how our pop culture literacy so arbitrarily decides what to keep and what to send to history’s dust bin.
Well here’s this out of the dusty bin of history: the Boomtown Rats song “I don’t like Mondays” was based on a quote from a teenage girl in San Diego. She had opened fire sniper style on an elementary school, wounding some and killing others. When asked the obvious question “why”, she said “I don’t like Mondays”. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenda_Ann_Spencer)
The only reason I remember this was that I was living in San Diego at the time and it was big news when the Boomtown Rats did the song. The Boomtown Rats went from anonymous to unpopular in a hurry. Personally, I like the song.
Here’s hoping your Monday goes much better. Being among the unemployed, I don’t really have Mondays any more. Or paychecks, for that matter.
Patrick,
Surmise with me for a mere moment: right side few (if any) life affirming arteries, left side a few more than that. Since the original story made mention of his right arm, elbow and leg, it would be reasonible to presume that the break to that side would be non-life threatning, correct? All bets are off though if it was a major impact that shattered it (which it probably wasn’t). That was not mentioned in any story that I saw on this matter, thus the dig at the MSM for the “non-life threatning” tag to a broken clavicle.
Just a thought on the matter…
And here I thought, based on your tweet yesterday, that you broke both collarbones on Monday … I should read more closely I think.