From a machine translation of a French story quoting Quick Step’s Tom Boonen on winning his third Paris-Roubaix: “Paris-Roubaix is just a very long day. It is important to not die.”

Well, I’m glad I didn’t waste a minute of yesterday watering the lawn. It was snowing when I got up this morning, and now we’re enjoying a bit of chilly drizzle, with the temp just above freezing. Good times.

Doesn’t faze my man Dr. Schenkenstein, though. He ordinarily rides Highway 24 to Woodland Park and back on Saturdays, but today opted for an outing on the cyclo-cross bike, clad in every bit of Mad Dog kit he could find in his closet and grinning like a jackass eating yellowjackets.

Iowa must be America’s Belgium, as the Schenkster is a very hard man indeed. If there were any cobbles in these parts I’m certain he’d be riding them instead of cranking a ‘cross bike up the Chutes, a local trail popular with the gravity gang. And I would’ve been right there with him, too, if it weren’t for this nasty aversion to double pneumonia I picked up somewhere.

We were discussing He Who Is Not To Be Named for Three Days when we left off last night, but I think I’ll let him lie for a while (heh). My favorite road race, Paris-Roubaix, is on tap tomorrow, and it’s nearly always more fun than watching rich white guys get into pointless pissing matches.

That last post regarding He Who Is Not To Be Named for Three Days drew a number of interesting comments, and I’ve seen some of them echoed around the Intertubes today.

The usual clot of chamois-sniffing fanboys is brandishing chain whips and pedal wrenches at the despicable Frogs (from a safe distance, as usual). But a fair number of cycling fans are starting to wonder whether Le Comeback is good for the sport.

It is, if you’re talking to website geeks who track traffic. Pretty much anything about HWINTBNFTD does more hits than Cheech and Chong. But if you’re not into sniffing chamois, or making money off those who do, it’s a topic of some debate.

I want to jabber at some length about this, but right now it’s dinnertime. A man can’t rave properly without food and strong drink. Check back in a bit, or leave your own thoughts in comments.

Back in the day, we used to joke that OLN was the Only Lance Network. The outfit calls itself Versus now, but the Only Lance Network remains as a multimedia collection of web sites, newspapers and wire services for whom bicycle racing means All Lance, All the Time.

The latest from the OLN is Armstrong’s out-of-competition encounter with a French drug tester — who, according to John Leicester of The Associated Press, is “a man with 15 years of testing experience who teaches other would-be testers about the job and who has worked at the Tour, the Rugby World Cup and the athletics world championships. …”

At issue is a 20-minute shower Armstrong took between encountering the drug tester and the actual tests themselves. He and his people say it was a question of taking time to verify the tester’s bona fides; the French say it was a violation of the International Standard for Testing, which requires an athlete notified of his or her obligation to provide a sample to “(r)emain within direct observation of the DCO/Chaperone at all times from the point of notification by the DCO/Chaperone until the completion of the Sample collection procedure. …”

It all sounds very mundane and annoying until you remember that cycling is home to more dopers than was Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love. Take your eye off ’em for a second and they will be up to their bug-spattered Oakleys in human growth hormone, EPO and other people’s blood, frantically trying to cover their tracks like a diarrhetic cat in a litter box full of pot belge. Some jaded sorts, upon hearing on Fox News that Armstrong got busted doing belly shots of Floyd Landis’ Black Jack off Tyler Hamilton’s chimera, might wonder aloud, “Innie or outie?” Not me, of course. But as HST once noted, the world is full of slander.

Nevertheless, Armstrong is predictably outraged, as are his fans, most of whom probably aren’t subject to drug screening as a condition of employment — unless, say, they’re a maintenance worker at a tourist attraction in Bibleburg, a UPS truck driver or a copy editor for The Los Angeles Times. I know this last because I got an interview and a tryout there back in the Eighties, when the LAT was not yet an embarrassment to journalism and Peruvian marching powder was all the rage. I was understandably nervous; after all, you never know where those French fellas are gonna turn up.

But c’mon. What we have here, as a colleague noted wryly, is a pissing match, pure and simple. Armstrong takes a squirt at the French, the French reply in kind, and the rest of us get to sit back and watch, hoping we don’t get splashed.

The scary thing is, it’s more interesting than Le Tour has been for the past few years. Quel dommage!

Late update: Comments seem to have turned themselves off somehow, but only on certain posts. Weird. I think I’ve successfully re-enabled them, but should you find yourself on the wrong side of the moat, staring at a raised drawbridge, drop me a line.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back on the sidewalk, Segway and GM team up for a two-wheeled version of that silly-ass scooter, dubbed PUMA, short for “Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility.” Huh. I thought that was why God gave us feet. You can even strap a pair of Pumas onto ’em, if you’re so inclined. And they won’t cost you one-sixth of what a car costs today, which is as close as Segway chief Jim Norrod would come to discussing a price point with the Detroit Free Press.

The spin is even worse this time around, and provides some additional insight regarding why GM is circling the bowl. “Think Facebook on wheels,” chirps GM vice president of research Larry Burns. That may be the single dumbest thing I’ve heard this week. But it’s only Wednesday.

C’mon. You want a $6,000 golf cart, buy one. You can score a 2009 Yamaha Drive right now for less than that and spend the savings on Scotch at the 19th hole. Leave GM’s nitwits to spiraling down the loo while shrieking nonsense like, “If you want to be in the business of selling a mobility machine, you better have one that works in cities!”

Plenty of folks beat you to that little niche a long time ago, Larry. They’re called “bicycle retailers.”

Late update: A correspondent notes that Chrysler — yes, Chrysler — has offered electric autos for the better part of quite some time, as in since gas was cheap. They’re available at dealerships nationwide as we speak — even here in Bibleburg.