Says Miss Mia Sopaipilla: "Will y'get the hell out of the house awready and go ride y'bike? Y'makin' us all crazy!"
The Vuelta de España is over; chapeau to Vincenzo Nibali for winning, to Ezequiel Mosquera and Joaquim Rodriguez for making a fight of it, and to Tyler Farrar for taking the final stage victory.
Cheers, too, to homeboy Danny Pate — I feared he might be jobless going into 2011, but it seems he’s leaving Garmin-Transitions for HTC-Columbia instead of the dole and the Dumpster. I’m still waiting for word on Mike Creed, whose relationship with Team Type 1 appears to have soured. I don’t care who he pisses off, I like him. His old man’s all right, too.
And finally, a twirl of the jet-black Mad Dog Livewrong bracelet to Taylor Phinney and Ben King for completing a Trek-Livestrong sweep at the USA Cycling Professional Road Championships in South Carolina.
Yeah, yeah, I know — they are affiliated with He Who Shall Not Be Named, and Trek sucks, and the dormant journalist in me is mumbling, “Oh, really?” over his second beer. But at least it’s not another steer from that same sorry old herd crossing the line first.
And as for me? I have the day off. I should be in Santa Rosa, California, sipping local microbrew and contemplating a week’s worth of cycling up hill and down dale with my old pals Merrill and Chris, but what the hell? A guy can ride his bike around here, too, even if most of the routes feel a bit stale, like Repuglican campaign rhetoric. “Why, by gum, if we just give our poor rich folks some more money, we’ll soon be as right as rain. Well, we will be, anyway. Your mileage may vary.”
The road bike remains unforked at Old Town, Ritchey being somewhat slow on the uptake, warranty-wise, so it seemed like a ’cross-bike kind of day. As the Vuelta was wrapping Dr. Schenkenstein rolled by astride his ’cross bike to say howdy, a tad weak and pale from his Yom Kippur fast, so I — full of last night’s green-chile chicken enchiladas, rice, salad and Mirror Pond Pale Ale — seized the opportunity, broke out the Nobilette and flogged him like the miserable pissant he is for 90 minutes or thereabouts.
That he had an asthma attack as we were climbing the weed-lined, dusty single-track to Gold Camp Road had nothing to do with it. My triumph is untainted. God’s judgment, I call it. The Irish are one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, don’t you know. And you can tell Yahweh likes us best ’cause he didn’t dump us off in the middle of a desert bereft of whisky.
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