The (Not the) Tour of Colorado® raced to its conclusion in the Mile High City today, and I couldn’t be happier. These occasional stretches with stage races across the water and right here at home make for some long stints in the old VeloBarrel, especially since management decided there were too many necks still wearing heads.
For example, today I arose at 7 a.m., grabbed a cup of joe and sat down at the iMac. The VeloNews.com site was missing a little something — what should have been the marquee photo from Saturday’s USA Pro Cycling Challenge stage was instead a blank white box — so after a bit of frustrating flailing about in the website tool I re-edited and reloaded the pic and harmony was restored.
Next came a bit of Intertubular surfing, intended to find out what the hell was going on at the Vuelta a España. I touched base via IM with Charles Pelkey over at LiveUpdateGuy and contributed a bit of pointless snark as he interpreted the stage for his audience; then, once the streaming video from stage nine kicked in, I started writing the day’s race report.
Andrew Hood, the mainstay of European coverage for Velo and VeloNews.com, is following the Vuelta around Spain, but if someone can throw up a rudimentary stager to keep the punters occupied and buy him some time, it frees him up to do other stuff — gather quotes, write sidebars, compile his Vuelta notebook, and whatnot.
The Vuelta stage finished, I posted my report, results, a Graham Watson photo gallery, and two sidebars from Hoody — one about the toll the race has taken on worlds hopefuls, the other his notebook — plus a writethru of the stage report augmented by his quotes and on-site observations.
Next up: results from the GP Ouest France. Easy. No reporter there, no Agence France Presse report in English, so just results. Fat city.
The pièce de résistance: the Colorado race, the one drawing all the eyeballs. Short and sweet, that one. I got video about the time the break and chase were coming off Lookout Mountain, so it was the same drill —compile data and and write a stager while onsite staff ran the live updates and gathered intelligence, wait for a writethru, post a Casey B. Gibson gallery and finally swap out the marquee photo.
And suddenly it was 3 p.m. Time to dash to the grog shop for a sixer and then cool my heels (and my tonsils) while awaiting the final torrent of bits and bytes from the Colorado contingent.
It doesn’t sound like much, and frankly it isn’t. But it does take a fair amount of time, a commodity which is always in short supply.
Tomorrow I plan to swap the office chair for a Flite saddle and take a nice, long ride to somewhere. Please don’t run alongside me wearing a penis costume and beating on a giant IUD with a rubber sperm. It’s been a long week.
Mad Blog Media 
Well, if it was easy then anybody could do it and they wouldn’t need you.
Maybe its a trick of the photo, but is the Turk bigger than Buddy?
Jon, the Turk is a big-ass cat. He goes about 16 pounds — or he did until we stopped allowing him to roam at will — and is an extra-long feline, about a cat and a half.
The paws on the sumbitch are unreal. When the Turk’ gets you with one of ’em, you know you’ve been got.
Well, maybe there’s something wrong on my end, but as of 6:11pm MDT the Velonews.com site still has a big white spot where there’s usually a picture of somebody or something, and the photo gallery is just a grey box with “thumbthumbthumbthumbthumb” for text.
Or do I need to have something from Dechutes Brewery to make it all look right?
Sorry if I gave you more work.
Shit, I was afraid someone was gonna say that. I saw one complaint in comments but everything was (and is) displaying fine for me. Sounds like dinner will be delayed … again. I’ll get you for this, John.
What are you using for an OS/browser so I can put the geeks on the scent?
I have XP and Firefox 6.0 on this thing. And as of Monday morning everything is displaying fine. Good job!
My penis costume is in the laundry. Maybe I’ll wear a Rush Limbaugh mask, it’s practically the same thing.
… only smaller.
Patrick,
I just looked at velonews using for Firefox and Safari … It’s broken. Sorry.
Oh….. OS is Mac OS X 10.6.8. I could look on one of my Micro$oft Windoze boxes, but I’d need rubber gloves in order to touch the thing.
Hey, Bruce … still among the webfeet in Oregon? Thanks for chiming in — me, I’ve checked the site using various browsers and Macs, Windoze and Linux machines and it’s working here across all platforms/browsers. Sounds like this problem is above my pay grade. I shall (snort) inform the media.
Hee, hee. I hate to put this in print, considering how you’ve been suffering in the heat, but I’ve been living in the mid 60s most of the summer. It got up to 75 the other day, and I thought I’d die!!!! 🙂 Oh, no rain as this is the dry season. Come October through April I won’t be singing this tune.
Oh, Bruce, you dirty dog. We’ve had heat (but nothing like Texas), and rain (but nothing like Irene). Even skeeters, which remind me of Texas, a place I’d rather not think about.
I have a sneaking suspicion that since I’m returning to Interbike this September after a four-year absence, the weather will be crisp fall loveliness while I’m gone and then segue straight into a brutal winter.
Just ’cause you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.
VN seems fine right now, O’G.
Just got back from a week of work related travel and torturous running in lieu of cycling (running shoes don’t cost 75 bucks a plane tick to stash in the bay of a 737). Ten days off the bike and boy, climbing the Jemez today felt like hell on a pointy stick. Funny how fast one goes to shit at 57 when one is not constantly pushing the envelope.
K, long time no see. A former colleague of yours, David Kraig, was just up here with the wife, doing some insane bike race up Pikes Peak. They gave us a jingle, trying to drag us out to dinner, but I was stuck with the USAPCC and Herself was volunteering at the Humane Society, so no dice.
Nothing like time off the bike at our age, eh? I skip a day, I gain 10 pounds and lose 10 percent of my fitness, which is about 10 percent of what it used to be. Sigh.
Thanks, too, for your perspective on the site, which has been persnickety lately. I’ve hung up my green eyeshade for the day (night) and won’t climb back into that particular barrel until next Saturday.
Kahl, I know what you mean. I’m going for my first ride in 10 days after finally kicking the flu. I’t gonna hurt!
Patrick,
I just emailed you a screen grab of what I’m getting by clicking on your Graham Watson Photo link.
Bruce
Thanks, Bruce … I’ve forwarded same to Those In Charge. Ghosts in the machine. …
For some reason, when I read “screen grab” my brain saw “green scab”.
I thought I’d just share that. Thank you all for reading.
Oofa…maybe it matters now and maybe it doesn’t. I wouldn’t have checked except for the hullabaloo here.
It looked fine earlier in the day (say 5ish PM EST on OS X.5 and Firefox 3.6.20). However, now at 11 PM EST there is no photo on the home page and no photos on the main article about today’s stage of the race formerly known as the Toasted Sammich Tour.
Fuck it…just drink more red wine and send nasty emails to IT types.
Thanks, Barry … I’ve checked the site using a variety of devices — Intel and G4 Macs from OS 10.4.11 through 10.6.8; a Dell Attitude running Windoze WhatEver; an Asus Eee PC netbook running some off-brand Linux — and Safari and Firefox. I can’t duplicate the problem y’all are having, though I don’t deny that it exists. Plenty of cooties in teh old VeloMattress.
This is one for the smart folks, not the Irish. We grew up on an island and never developed a navy, f’chrissakes. Invented whiskey and called it a day.
Perhaps it’s times like this that you ask yourself “Did Hank really do it this way?”
The answer is most certainly “no”.
I hope today (Monday) finds you RIDING the bike instead of fooling around with reports about others riding theirs!
On the Lost Wages note, yours truly will be there September 14-15, so we should wander into the Italian Pavilion and enjoy an espresso. I’ll email you a cell phone number if you want to find me in the vast, air conditioned mess that is Interbike today.
Finally, still can’t quite understand how the NBC TV show covering the CO race managed to waste 2 full hours but show what was probably only 20-30 minutes of video in total! Where were all the nice scenery shots of the Rocky Mountains in August OR some detailed highlights of the earlier stages? They can’t say they didn’t have time, either to prepare/edit them or to run them on the program.
I sat on the side of the road and watched the race blur by for four days thinking that I’d get to see the whole show courtesy of Versus when I get home. Now that I’m home I’m finding that I actually had the better view after all, especially on Independence Pass.
We’ll trade being there for watching on the tube anytime! The whatever it was race in CO didn’t seem to be highly contested by the big stars, but when you can see them in-person without having to take a transatlantic flight…perche no? (why not?) is my answer, especially in a beautiful place like the Colorado Rockies in August! Let’s hope the TV folks get their act together next time for those who can’t be there.
Our son Matthew worked the Not the Tour of Colorado race in Denver yesterday for the people in charge of the Expo.
All the while he was wearing his authentic Tour of Colorado t-shirt and gave out a ton of authentic Tour of Colorado cards to those wanting a t-shirt.
I now have half a dozen e-mails from people wanting t-shirts. Great, I’ll make about $200 off the sandwich race…