Charles Pelkey and I were calling stage one at Live Update Guy — pop round and see us, we’re on for the duration — and I had just stepped away from the iMac and into the kitchen when half the Garmin-Sharp team hit the deck during the team time trial. No worries: I got to see it over and over and over again, along with shots of Martin in the classic broken-collarbone pose (one I know well). Ouch.
It’s always hard to judge a crowd from TV, but it looked like a hell of a turnout, despite what the Irish call “fine soft weather.” If only the tarmac were equally soft.
The view from the DogDeck during a respite from cycling rumormongery.
The 2013 Giro has been fun to watch, but I won’t weep when it comes to an end this morning in Brescia.
Working each stage with Charles “Live Update Guy” Pelkey sort of fills up the morning, which is a time of day I normally reserve for trying to get the old motor started — stomping on the pedal with the key twisted in the ignition and the hood up, occasionally slouching forward to spray some ether into the carb’ and kick the sumbitch smack in the grille until black smoke farts out the rusty tailpipe.
This takes time. There must be at least two cups of strong coffee, followed by a leisurely breakfast taken while scanning the headlines to see what the gummint stole from us during the night and sold to the Kochs for pennies on the dollar. Fuckers are worse than crackheads. Steal the pennies off your dead granny’s eyes and the copper bottom right off your skillet, they will.
There’s none of this gradual easing into one’s morning during a grand tour. It’s up and at ’em, right from the gun, trying to entertain people who’ve already been up for hours, some of them in other countries where they actually know stuff and aren’t shy about correcting you a nanosecond after you sleep-type something exceptionally boneheaded.
And holy shit! Just about the time the peloton scrapes the Giro’s ice off its Oakleys it’ll be time for the Tour. It’s the 100th edition this time around, so there will be extra cluster in the fuck, and I can already hear my last few brain cells sputtering like a candle whose wick needs trimming.
Mister P and I are still on the fence as regards LUGging the Tour. ScribbleLive finally figured out how many viewer minutes we were doing and they’ve started to wonder how we’d feel about being bent over a desk with our trousers puddled around our ankles and some banjo music playing. There are other options, of course, but most are equally pricey or woefully inadequate.
And then there are the ruined breakfasts to consider. Twenty-one of them, to be precise.
So, yeah. I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, we have one more Giro stage to get through. Swing on by Live Update Guy to say arrivederci.
What with helping Consigliere Pelkey live-blog the Giro, cranking out the comedy for Bicycle Retailer, logging saddle time on the Jones Steel Diamond and the Co-Motion Divide Rohloff in preparation for reviews thereof, and assisting Herself with a new project — turning our House Back East™ into a vacation rental via airbnb.com — I haven’t had much time to follow the doings in DeeCee.
But now that I’ve had a minute to cast an inquisitive eye about the Innertubes, I have a question for those of you who have been paying closer attention.
Is it time we abandoned our flirtation with representative democracy and begged the Queen to take us back? God save the Queen!
Speaking of limeys, back at the bike racing, Brave, Brave Sir Wiggo’ went from descending like a girl to descending the Giro’s overall standings like a sick girl in a Radio Flyer full of anvils on Mount Doom. Defending champion Ryder Hesjedal has had even worse luck; they’re timing that poor sod with a calendar. I have no idea who’s gonna win the goddamn thing, but it sure is fun to watch. Join Mr. P and me at Live Update Guy for tomorrow’s stage, the Giro’s longest.
In California, meanwhile, it’s Jens Voigt making everyone look sick. The 110-year-old father of 16 crushed Tyler Farrar and Thor Hushovd under his chariot wheels en route to victory in stage 5 of the Amgen Tour. He told VeloNews reporter Matthew Beaudin that when he finally retires, if ever, it will take two people to replace him — “one to do the funny part, and one to be the bike rider.”
And me? I didn’t ride a meter today, in victory or defeat. Work, work, work, that’s all we have around these parts. That, and dinner with friends at Springs Orleans. Somebody had managed to FUBAR the house lights but we couldn’t have cared less, because the food was top notch. We just let our forks follow our noses.
The Giro d’Italia served up a real quad-snapper of an individual time trial today. Alas, the Black Knight failed to achieve his primary goal (“None shall pass!”), which in this case meant putting everyone to the sword and skipping gaily to the final maglia rosa.
Consigliere Pelkey and I were calling the action at Live Update Guy, and it was rarely dull — for a time trial, anyway. ‘Is Lordship flatted and still managed to finish second, so fair play to him. But I still hope someone else is wearing the pink shirt when it’s all over.
For some reason I just can’t warm up to Wiggo’. Racial memory, no doubt. One of his ancestors probably had one of mine drawn and quartered for pig theft, public drunkenness or some other shameless act of knavery.
I bet the folks at Pinarello are getting a tad weary of watching the Black Knight chucking their nifty bikes about like empty packets of crisps, too. If he keeps it up he’s liable to have both the IRA and the Mafia after his narrow ass.
Apricot frosting: Snow drapes the apricot tree at the House Back East™.
This is what things looked like around here this morning. By afternoon, the sun was out, the snow was gone and the temps were back up in the 40s.
Tomorrow, we’re looking at 55 and mostly sunny. That’s just how we roll here in Colorado.
And while we’re speaking of rolling, it seems that my old comrade Charles Pelkey is off the disabled list, which means — yes, yes, yes — Live Update Guy will suit up for the Giro d’Italia, which commences Saturday in Napoli.
Consiglieri Pelkey is a fan of the wee small hours of the morning, so look for him to be shoveling the wisdom at dark-thirty while I enjoy the indie movie playing on the inside of my eyelids until 7 a.m. or so.
Hey, God doesn’t get up until 6 — I can tell, because that’s when the light comes on.
Mad Blog Media 