I couldn’t stay long, and I didn’t see much. Frankly, it didn’t look like there was much going on for an event that supposedly attracted more than 200 riders. But it is a 13.5-mile course with a shitload of technical bits, and I suppose folks could get spread out a bit. I’ve certainly found myself spread out more than once while riding Palmer Park.
I took a couple of snaps of riders descending a nice rocky bit near Austin Bluffs Parkway and Union Boulevard, but decided to spare one weary-looking woman the paparazzo treatment after she dismounted to gingerly walk the descent, saw me and my camera, and moaned: “Oh, man, don’t take a picture of me walking my bike. That’s just cruel.”
After what seemed an eternity of hot, damp weather the furnace clicked on this morning.
“It’s not even Labor Day yet. Am I gonna have to start wearing pants already?” I thought as I pushed pixels for investment capitalists who think “velo” is the French for “EBITDA.”
Nope. I closed a couple windows and surrendered to the urge for socks, but the pants remain in the closet for now. Real Coloradans don’t pull on their trousers until the snow flies, and sometimes not even then.
The heat was on during today’s Vuelta stage, too. It always is when the peloton tackles the Angliru. Bradley Wiggins collapsed like a cheap clincher full of goatheads and Juanjo Cobo peeled the red shirt right off his back with a performance that some skeptical types quickly dubbed extraterrestrial.
Who knows? As many dipshit fools as there were lining the climb today, Cobo could have been getting Madison slings that entire last 5km. At least two motos went down in the melee, including the camera bike watching the GC group, and Eurosport’s house Limey was peeing his pants trying to get word of Wiggo’s whereabouts as Cobalt blew up the Vuelta.
Meanwhile, Boom-boom Boonen hit the deck again and broke his left hand, which probably means there will be one less Belgian at the worlds in Copenhagen. Dude must think some ex-girlfriend put the mojo on his ass. He’s spent more time on the tarmac lately than the entire Euskaltel-Euskadi team, guys who are spastics without peer on anything other than a solo flyer up a 28-percent grade.
I bet Boom-boom could fall into a barrel of tits and come out sucking his thumb. Only way he’s gonna see a rainbow anytime soon is if Monaco hosts a gay-pride parade.
August is going out like a dragon that breathes fire from both ends. We just had two consecutive days of record-setting heat, as in 93 yesterday and 95 today, and may get the hat trick tomorrow, when the forecast is for 90-94.
Toss in a 5.3-magnitude earthquake near Trinidad that was felt as far north as Fort Collins and it’s already been quite a week, though it’s only Tuesday.
Tomorrow our new dog Buddy goes to the vet for the third time in a month — this time, he’s going under the knife for bladder stones — and Herself’s Wednesday I won’t even tell you about, other than to say that it starts at dark-thirty and ends at dark-thirty and involves work, study and more than a hundred miles of driving.
And Your Humble Narrator? I actually have a day free, so who knows? I might ride a bike or something, like those dudes contending (Not) The Tour of Colorado. Only slower. Much, much, slower.
People too destitute to buy their own bike parts in this troubled economy wait at the corner of Ridge Road and Pikes Peak Avenue in hopes of being able to salvage some bike jewelry from a pro who overcooked the corner.
I spent midday rolling around the course for today’s prologue to the Vuelta de Vagary, otherwise known as (Not) The Tour of Colorado®, and found pretty much what I had expected: a bloodthirsty mob at the corner of Ridge Road and Pikes Peak Avenue; small clusters of fans elsewhere, mostly at the course’s few corners and at the finish; and … not much else.
I got to grade this thing, I give it a D.
The start made for good TV, as did the few shots of Ridge-Pikes Peak, but the finish was so-so, despite having Pikes Peak for a backdrop. The expo was tiny, though well-placed in a downtown parking lot, and with a packed valet bike-parking area. And I heard plenty of cheers but few complaints.
The long, straight shot down Colorado Avenue into a wind out of the east was the biggest turd in the punchbowl. I chatted up one cop east of Old Colorado City about the crowds, and he waved one hand at the spectators — a smallish herd you might see outside any Bibleburg bus stop, assuming you can still find one, which mostly you can’t — and said, “Pretty much what you see.” He also said he hadn’t heard any grumbling about the road closures, so we have that going for us.
For now, anyway. The comments section in Tuesday’s Gazette should be interesting. From what I saw of the route through the knick-knack shops of Old Colorado City, there wasn’t exactly a ton of tifosi clamoring to buy shit they didn’t need anyway. And the traffic downtown — denied use of Cascade and Colorado — was moderately hellish on Tejon Street.
And complete results didn’t appear until hours after the finish. C’mon. This was a prologue time trial, not a mountain stage. A chimp with a Timex could give you chapter and verse in 30 minutes or less or Dominos would give you a free pizza and then run the chimp over with a Ford Festiva.
The inaugural Race of Many Names Powered By Many Other Names (That Do Not Include the Tour of Colorado)® kicks off today in Bibleburg, and though I have a deadline to meet I think I might just toddle on down and have a look-see, as it has been many a moon since we’ve seen a field of this quality in these parts.
The prologue starts in the Garden of the Dogs, an ancient array of petrified canine turds dedicated to the Gods of Auto Tourism and Parking In Bike Lanes, and it’s pretty much all downhill from there.
Seriously — barring about a quarter-mile of up from the start, it’s all downhill from there, a brisk 5.2-mile tour of MMJ dealers, tattoo parlors and dive bars that finishes downtown at the headquarters of the U.S. Olympic Committee, the non-profit corporate personification of the Cadillac-driving welfare queen foreseen in Scripture by St. Ronald of Hollywood.
Having been chained in the VeloBarrel this past weekend I’ve missed the various gala dinners, pressers and other hoopla, and to be honest I never even bothered to collect press credentials for the race. So I’ll be just another civilian standing at roadside instead of the mighty titan of cycling urinalism you’ve come to worship like a drug-addled radio talk-show host.
Look for the ugly bastard in the Mad Dog Media jersey. One of them is bound to be me.
Mad Blog Media 