“Tweet of the day,” notes a colleague, forwarding this:

lancearmstrong Happy hour w/ the whole @LIVESTRONG team here at the house. For those who think we’ll be distracted, think again. We’re here to serve.

The old Million Pound Yellow Shithammer of Denial just ain’t what it used to be, hey? Not as long as Big George Hincapie may be one of the moles in need of a stout whacking. This shot will require some finesse, muses Big Tex, consulting his caddy: “What club do I use here, do y’think?” All the anticipation makes one’s putter flutter.

I get a feeling we’re on a rest day here on the Tour de Lance. But sometime soon it’s gonna be game on and Big Tex will have to start taking some very long pulls indeed, with the Devil running alongside him. And I ain’t talking Didi Senft here.

Meanwhile, I awakened to the sound of rain, thunder and hail at Chez Dog. I think I’ll sell all the bikes and buy a submarine. A yellow one. I bet I know where I can get one cheap, and all the rats should be out of there momentarily, if they haven’t all leaped overboard already.

The poor bastards at the Amgen Tour of California are facing weather that the Chamber of Commerce would be cheering — if this were a ski race.

Alas, it’s a bike race, and with cyclo-cross season behind us it’s looking like the lads will face a shortened course. No word whether they’ll be running the Emerald Bay KOM.

Here in Bibleburg, meanwhile, it’s rain with temps just above freezing. Good for the trees, but also bad for cycling, if you’re a sissified geezer like me, anyway. I’m almost jealous of Herself, who is off to my old hometown of Alamosa this morning, where temps should hit the 70s by afternoon. She and a colleague have some work to do with the local biblioteca and plan a visit to the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve.

Me, I’m sentenced to rumormongery without parole today, with both the Giro and the AToC going on. Oh, well — it beats shoveling snow. Or racing in it.

• Late update: As you know already, organizers pulled the plug on the Amgen kickoff after the weather got ridiculous. My friend, colleague and fellow Bibleburger Casey B. Gibson, who’s shooting the race for VeloNews, says six motos went down 20 minutes after the race was canceled, so it seems organizers made the right call. So the racers got a day off, but I didn’t. You’d be astounded how much crap there is to post about a race that never was.