Say what you will about this year’s Tour, it has rarely been dull, if your idea of excitement is watching people fall off for no good reason — clipping spectators, taking headers into ditches, surfing guardrails, you name it.

Poor old Chris Horner came home from the war with a party in his head today after getting caught up in a massive crash with about 25km to go. He rolled in DFL with a carillon playing in his head, and the video was not pretty to watch. As they were prepping him for a hospital visit he was asking if he had finished. Yow.

If Horner starts tomorrow he is either insane, tougher than whang leather or some combination thereof. Meanwhile, RadioShack is down to one functional GC hopeful, Andreas Klöden, sitting fifth at 10 seconds. And VeloNews’ John Wilcockson opines that all the North Americans are fucked, demoted to getting into breaks and chasing stage wins.

Ah, well. So it goes. I don’t have a horse in this race, though I confess to a soft spot for Horner, who seems to enjoy his work so much. Cadel Evans is still second, the soporific Schlecks are both in the top 10, as is teammate Jakob Fuglsang, and Ivan Basso and Super Spaniard are lurking within a minute or two, which is nothing in the mountains. Hell, Horner lost time in double digits on a flat stage.

So, yeah. The nonsense should abate a bit once everyone gets an idea of who the real players are, and the first hint of that comes this weekend, with Saturday’s stage to Super-Besse and Sunday’s slog to St. Flour, where many a pretender will find himself done and dusted.

I’m hoping for a weirdo to pop out of the box. But you know what they say about that — hope in one hand and shit in the other, then see which one fills up faster.

Thor packs a big hammer, and today he used it to drive Garmin-Cervélo teammate Tyler Farrar to his first Tour de France stage win, the second consecutive victory for the Argyle Armada in this year’s edition.

Getting a leadout from the reigning world road champion — who also happens to be wearing the yellow jersey — is a rare honor indeed, and Farrar was well aware of it.

“When you have the world champion and yellow jersey leading you out, you better do a good sprint,” he said. And he did, dedicating the win to his friend Wouter Weylandt, who died in a horrific crash at this year Giro d’Italia. Chapeau to Farrar, Hushovd and Julian Dean for putting on a very classy act.

And chapeau to the farmers who rigged up that nifty “bicycle,” too. That actually made me smile, something I rarely do during Le Tour.

New technology has come to the DogHaus. The fine folks at Soma Fabrications/Merry Sales Co. have sent me a Soma Saga touring frameset to review for Adventure Cyclist, and Herself has handed me down the iPad 2 I bought her for our anniversary just last month. Her boss is a convert and ordered up iPads for the staff. My bosses order up periodic floggings and forget to file my invoices with the bean-counters. So it goes.

The Saga sports a mix of old stuff from the garage, new stuff that Soma/Merry Sales sent along with the frameset, and some fresh bits to fill in the gaps from Old Town Bike Shop, which assembles the bikes I review for Adventure Cyclist because the Irish cannot be trusted with tools.

Thus it has a beefy 36-spoke touring wheelset from Rivendell (LX hubs, Velocity Synergy rims, Vittoria Randonneur Cross tires, all stripped from my Soma Double Cross); Alpina 2 cranks (48/33/24); a Deore rear derailleur and Ultegra front, controlled by Dia-Compe/Rivendell friction bar-cons, connected with a Dura-Ace chain and driven with Shimano A520 SPD touring pedals; IRD Cafam cantis and Soma aero levers (plus Cane Creek Crosstop levers); Nitto B135 Grand Randonneur bars wrapped in Soma Thick ‘n’ Zesty tape, Origin8 stem and IRD Techno-glide headset; and finally a Ritchey WCS seat post topped with a Selle Italia Flite saddle.

I have about 65 miles on it so far, and I could tell you about it, but then the editor of Adventure Cyclist would have to kill us all. I will note in passing, however, that it’s interesting to go back to friction bar-cons after all these years.

And the iPad? No friction bar-cons here, my friends. Strictly disco. It does things you haven’t dreamed of, and without my prompting, too. I’ve loaded apps for word processing and photo editing and may take it and the Saga out for an extended test drive, see if I can generate a little paying copy before the Tour gets me by the plums with a downhill pull.

So if the website looks like it was composed in Cretan Linear B sometime in the near future, well, you’ll know whom to blame: Steve Fuckin’ Jobs. He’s The Man. I just work here.

Herself hopped back in the hamster wheel today, leaving Your Humble Narrator more or less at large, so I designated today Me, Myself and I Day.

The first rule of MM&I Day is: Do no work. So I didn’t. I spent the morning hiking and the afternoon biking, and if you overlook the 25-to-50-mph winds it was all pretty damn’ fine.

I ran across a few mountain bikers during the two-wheeled leg and they roundly congratulated me for being stupid enough to ride 700c wheels on single-track. Happily, they didn’t see how badly I was doing it. I managed to clean a couple simple bits just as they spotted me. Then I waited for them to roll off before I got back to spazzing out.

Once I tired of failing to impress myself with my mad skillz I rolled home to check on our baby war, which has many fathers but no daddy. The Euros’ are pissing all over each others’ shoes, the Arab League seems to think that creating a no-fly zone means politely asking Gadaffy to park his air force, and the prez sez that once we’ve popped off a few thousand half-million-smacker cruise missiles we’ll just step the fuck off and let someone else do the heavy lifting. The Republicans, natch, are calling him a pansy.

Like watching the sun rise in the east, that is. Obama couldn’t make that lot happy if he promised them free blowjobs and beer for eternity. “Mind the teeth, and we’d like a hoppier IPA!” Jesus wept. But at least they’ve shut the fuck up about the deficit for a nanosecond. Jillions for bombs, but not one rusty penny for butter. If the lottery were as predictable I’d be able to buy Washington, D.C., and evict all these pompous peckerheads.