Ho hum. Stage 20 wasn’t quite the steel-cage death match I was anticipating, with everyone staying focused on defending podium positions. One wonders what Andy Schleck might have been able to do today if he had focused on his own race instead of his brother’s. Super Spaniard was actually starting to show signs of mortality there at the end — a few dozen more sharp attacks down there in the trees and Contador might’ve surrendered a few seconds. We’ll never know.

Tomorrow brings the suck-ass parade into Paris, with all its lame-o bullshit — big guy and little guy trading bikes, the maillot jaune sipping champagne with his director, Phil ‘n’ Paul jabbering on ceaselessly about Radio Shackstrong and probably Mark Cavendish out-kicking Thor Hushovd for the stage win.

Time to bring back the final-stage time trial, sez I. Make ’em race right up to the end. They can rest when they’re dead, or on suspension.

That’s a phrase I lifted from Richard Russo’s “The Risk Pool,” and I use it to describe any day when the League of Small Hat Sizes is out in force. Like today.

I cheated death a thousand times during an hourlong bike ride this morning, dodging oblivious asshats of all stripe and color. There was the mountain biker in the Pearl Izumi Colorado license-plate jersey who rolled out of the little BMX park and onto the trail right in front of me without so much as a glance over his shoulder. The recreational rider who apparently never consults the mirror attached to his glasses; had he glanced at it, he would have seen me behind him on a winding section of trail, and thus not been surprised when I announced my presence and intention to pass once the trail straightened out.

But the champeen was the bonehead peckerwood driving the bottle-blue Sixties-era Caddy. You remember those bad boys — the blocklong science-fiction jobs with more fins than Sea World? This fucktard rolls his Cadoo right through a stop sign and negotiates one of those leisurely, Queen Mary-docking-style left-hand turns that would have put me straight into the curb if I hadn’t been prepared for him to do exactly what he did (some of these guys you can read like a comic book).

So I holler, “Oi!” Nothing. No swiveling head, no acknowledgment of my presence or his error. And believe me, my voice carries. Silly shit must be deef as a post, I thought, falling into line behind him.

He does likewise on the next stop sign, turning right this time, and now it’s clear I’m going to have to follow this smelly gas hog for a few blocks if I want to take the usual route home because he isn’t exactly giving those 390 cubes a solid workout.

Then on Wood Avenue, he abruptly pulls to the curb without signaling and I get one of those real bad feelings. I hit the binders just as he executes an unsignaled U-turn directly into my path, and this time I really crank up the volume, to 11 on a scale of 10: “Hey, Chief, WHAT THE FUCK!”

Nothing. No reaction at all. He just motors on off in the other direction at about 15 mph, looking for someone less alert to run over. It was like watching a big blue shark switching lazily about, casually interested in finding something to eat.

Well, that was interesting, eh? ‘Berto Contador croaks Fabian Cancellara and everybody else on a longish, mostly flat time trial. It sent Spartacus straight to the pub to slam a cold one and wonder aloud whether the gendarmes’ motorcycles might have given AC a bit of a tow.

I had wondered about that myself, frankly. But when you’re watching the race on a 13.3-inch MacBook on a cup and a half of coffee after a second sleepless night you miss a lot of subtleties. It was tough for me to tell just how close the coppers were to Contador, but hey — every little bit helps, que no?

Super Spaniard apparently skipped the tongue-loosening, post-stage cerveza because he turned into an Easter Island statue when a journo’ asked whether he might have done some training on The Island of Doctor Moreau in preparation for this Tour. “Otra pregunta,” he replied a couple or three times, clearly meaning, “A la chingada con tu y tus amigos en las prensa.”

Radio Shackstrong admitted to suffering, rather than sucking, on the stage. He finished 16th, 90 seconds behind Contador, and 28 seconds behind national ITT champ Dave Zabriskie (DzNuts-PantsShit), and hopes to defend his third place overall during the Ventoux stage on Saturday.

If Texus Maximus had beaten DzNuts I’d recommend him for a Tandy leather stars-and-stripes jersey with matching moccasins and assless chaps, but that will have to wait for ’10.

Meanwhile, I got out for my own short ride today, down to Fountain and back on whatever the hell they’re calling that trail these days. Chapeau to the county for detouring around that old washout, which required a little cyclo-crossing. The newer washout by Highway 85 still does, but that will be a job of work to repair. I suggest borrowing a transporter from the USS Enterprise.

I missed delivering the daily dose of snark yesterday due to a combination of deadlines, writer’s block and insomnia; sorry ’bout that. So I’ll just say that the Astana boys really screwed the pooch, and if I were Alberto Contador I would give my time-trial bike a good going-over for sidewall cuts, severed cables and wired lumps of Semtex before climbing into the start house this morning.

Today we heard that big George Hincapie may have cracked a collarbone in a crash yesterday but is racing anyway (chapeau); Texus Maximus may be riding for Radio Shack next year (please fire the surly bitch at Bibleburg’s 8th Street location); and Cuddles Evans is still displaying signs of a serious short-circuit under the helmet, pissing away more time in the early going of the ITT. And now it appears to be raining, which could turn the GC war into the Battle of Jutland. More as it develops.

• Note to Phil and Paul: Shut the fuck up about Lance Lance Lance Lance Lance Lance, please. Jesus.

• Alberto Indurain: Contador slays all in the time trial.

• Killer dope, man: And oh, yeah, Danilo Di Luca tripped the Dope-O-Meter® for EPO CERA during the Giro d’Italia. He’s innocent, naturally.