Big, and bad, and bupkis.
Waiting for rain around here is like waiting for a Republican to grow a pair.
It huffs, and it puffs, aaaaaaaand … that’s about it.
Nevertheless, the clouds have helped keep us delightfully cool. Unlike the Tour de France, which so far seems to be a searing symphony of skidmarks and blood trails, scored for ambulance sirens.
Some pundits have been calling for a return to an “opening prologue” to mellow everyone out in the early going of Le Tour. Which might be smart, if we overlook that “opening” nonsense. A prologue is a preface, an introduction, a preceding event or development.
Have you ever seen a prologue three stages in? You have not.
Anyway, prologues are far from foolproof. Chris Boardman crashed in the 1995 prologue. Stuey O’Grady did likewise in 2007, as did Alejandro Valverde in 2017.
But it’s true that the carnage tends to be retail rather than wholesale in an “opening prologue.” A racer gets taken out by a tight corner, a slick descent, or a roadside eejit, and a writer gets taken out by the copy desk. Le Tour goes on.
Tags: drought, rain, Tour de France
Mad Blog Media 
June 28, 2021 at 2:57 pm |
Nice photo! Wonderful clouds.
June 28, 2021 at 3:22 pm |
Looks like a boiling-clouds screen grab from a Spielberg flick, doesn’t it? Shot it from the arroyo downhill from the Granite Face on Whitewash Trail.
And it practically goes without saying that as soon as I cracked wise about it not raining, it started raining.
June 28, 2021 at 4:59 pm |
Cool clouds. Nice cool clouds. Ahhhh. We’re receiving some of your past warm weather up here now in the Pac NW. The village idiot took his bike out for a spin around the frying time yesterday afternoon. It was 111F in various air masses that he passed through. Today is supposed to be a little warmer (A quick check gives a brisk 112F). Anybody up for a quick 10k run?
Regarding TDF crashes, did you notice that Sagan kept hanging onto his bars when McEwen took him down. When viewed in slow motion, it looks as though he is suddenly going to rise up and ride off of the tarmac. I’ll have to remember to keep my composure during my next crash and do as he does. Uh-huh. Yep. No more of that splayed out, panic face, oh shit I’m crashing composure for me.
June 28, 2021 at 5:29 pm |
One of the nicest bits of riding I ever saw up close and personal was during a masters race at the Air Force Academy.
For no reason at all this dude in midpack starts to fall over on a narrow climb, right in front of me, and I think, “Holy shit, we’re goin’ down!”
Nope. Dude next to him simply stuck out his left hand, caught the dude, and pushed him back up to verticality. Never missed a pedal stroke. It was mind-boggling.
Second best was the teammate who, in midrace, when a guy ate shit in front of him after bouncing off a traffic cone, simply rode over the dude like he was a Bott’s dot.
June 29, 2021 at 7:14 am |
I am no rocket surgeon, but “stay at the front” is hardly advice everyone can follow, unless you’re Team Lake Wobegon, where everyone is above average.
June 29, 2021 at 12:04 pm |
For me the most impressive (not crash related) was in a mixed women/masters field. It was fairly early in the race and some guy (maybe 170 lbs) decided he wanted the wheel Carolyn Donnelly (~115 lbs) was following (don’t ask me why. It wasn’t a teammate, and there was no advantage to be there that early). He actually put his hand on her hip and tried to push her over. She didn’t look up, she didn’t say anything, but she also didn’t budge an inch.
June 29, 2021 at 12:27 pm |
Ho, ho. Carolyn didn’t play that shit. Tough as nails, that one.
June 29, 2021 at 7:24 am |
Pro bikety-bike racing seems to embrace big data as much as anybody, so I wonder if there any projects related to crash statistics.
June 28, 2021 at 7:55 pm |
We had a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing up this way. Heavy clouds for a while. Then they break up. Then it gets dark again. Then nothing happens.
We had a good soaker on Sunday morning and then a little rain overnight but nothing today. Just clouds looking like the ones in that picture. One good thing. Rather than mid-nineties, its been mid-sixties.
June 28, 2021 at 8:09 pm |
We’ve been getting rain on and off since I shot off my big bazoo this afternoon. No thunder or lightning, just the sort of steady drizzle I recall from my Oregon days.
Whoo-boy, are those folks in the PNW ever getting fried, dyed, and whipped to the side. Has the planet suddenly developed an odd tilt in its kilt? They’ve got our weather and we’ve got theirs?
June 28, 2021 at 8:32 pm |
Heat dome, whatever that is.
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/heat-dome.html
June 28, 2021 at 9:45 pm |
Never seen a week of October in June like we just had.
June 29, 2021 at 6:28 am |
The Gazette in B-burg says, and I quote, “Forecasts for the coming week more closely resemble Seattle than a typical June in Colorado Springs.”
Well, if it’s pissing down rain throughout the holiday weekend, maybe the fireworks-sparked wildfires can be kept down to a few jillion acres. Down here the eejits began touching off the noisemakers yesterday.
June 29, 2021 at 7:09 am
The eejits are nothing if not predictable.
June 29, 2021 at 1:08 am |
One of the national news programs that “always” has the most accurate information that they think we want to hear indicated that it was 118F today where I’m at. I don’t think it was that warm although it probably increased a little when Joe Bob’s rebel flag flying truck ran into the ice machine at the mini mart. Oooo! There were tempers flaring there for a while.
A quick check of my uber-accurate communist chinese made satellite clock gives a temperature now, at just before midnight of 95F. Good sleeping weather if you’re a snake or the past electoral college chosen president.
June 29, 2021 at 7:03 am |
I remember those 95° nights … from Tucson, circa 1980. Not from Oregon three years later. From there I mostly remember slugs, mold, and damp firewood.
June 28, 2021 at 8:34 pm |
Nothing here. Promises from Enrique, probably a politician, that never came true. Wait till tomorrow the weather wranglers say. Meanwhile, our buddies up in Seattle had 108 today. Want to hear a repug howl? Cut the water off to golf courses. That’ll do it.
June 28, 2021 at 9:44 pm |
Seattle is dry and 108°, and it was 65° and drizzly most of today here. Nothing makes sense anymore.
June 29, 2021 at 6:20 am |
These heat domes baking everyone in a given area recall the death rays from “The War of the Worlds” by H.G. Wells. Mebbe the Martians are giving Elon Musk and the rest of us notice?
“Piss off, Earthoids, we see what you’ve done to your own planet. Ack ack ack!”
June 29, 2021 at 7:41 am |
Move along, move along, no intelligent life here. Let’s try the next solar system.
June 29, 2021 at 8:09 am |
Yesterday’s high was 73°. Normal value? 92°.
At 8:05 a.m. the temp is 60°. We’re looking at a high around 67°.
Nope, nothing weird about this.