I had to skip out on the final 10km of today’s Tour stage, as Herself’s mom was in town and we were off to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo to wallow in critterage.
But I can’t let the day go by without saying how cool this Graham Watson photo is.
As a longtime comic-book fan, I look at this and see echoes of Neal Adams’ treatment of The Batman, The Avengers, The X-Men and other caped crusaders. It makes the riders appear superhuman, yet still capable of suffering; a reminder, I suppose, that even when we suspect a rider of breaking the rules, he still has to race the race.
And the zoo? Extra cool. I haven’t been there in years, and while there were a few disappointments — the Amur tiger was in hiding, for example — the otters were a hoot. And the only thing that beats watching a grizzly dog-paddle around in a glass-walled pond on a hot day is watching a pair of lar gibbons — both of them missing left hands after injury and amputation — swinging around their cage as if nothing had ever gone awry.
And there were the meerkats, of course. They look like a bunch of little old men who survived the apocalypse and somehow crossbred with prairie dogs. This little dude looks like Charlton Heston minus the firearm and the Second Amendment attitude.
Mad Blog Media 
Yee Gads! A kinder, gentler Charlton Heston come back as a MeerKat! Now that’s a movie I’d want to see. Like El-Flowers or the Ten Whiskers or Rocket-Dog Hur.
When the big story of the Tour seems, well, Meh the small stories are just as compelling as any multi-year gladiatorial triumphal march could ever be. Thanks for point out the photo.
Hope you didn’t make and mom-in-law/Meerkat themed comments.
Yup, a great photo. I’m like a lot of the people who follow bike racing and I like to see them suffer. I remember reading some history of the early days of Le Tour, and that was a lot of the point of what Henri DesGrange (sp?) did to the routing of the race. Nowadays they just don’t look like they’re suffering, even though I know damn well they are.
Photo is great and credited to Pascal Pavani!
I like the photo of the meerkat: Judah Ben-Hur.
Crazy stage today – what a misery for a dozen -plus riders and their teams, especially Brakovic, Kern and Boonen.
How could you leave with 10k to go? You missed one of the greatest sprints ever. Cav was crafty today. Amazing. He really carpe deimed the moment.
Duh. I am a day late. I also was stricken in awe by that photo.
I used to think, give me a decent camera and access to the finish line, and I could click shots like Graham. But I tried my hand at the Tour de Georgia every year and got nothing but pix of the nosehairs of the guy standing next to me or power lines or the backside of the lens cap.