The Amgen Tour of California is finally over and done with, all praise to Cthulhu, may his (its?) tentacles grow ever longer. As tours go, it was not particularly captivating, but I did enjoy a couple of stages, including the last go-round of four in stage eight, the finale.

You have an untimely mechanical for defending champ Levi Leipheimer (RadioShack), U.S. national champion George Hincapie (BMC) off the front, Garmin-Transitions abso-fuckin’-lutely drilling it in the bunch for Dave Zabriskie, and a shitload of attacks from everybody and his grandmama on the final trip up to Mullholland Highway, all of which race leader Mick Rogers (HTC-Columbia) beats back all by his lonesome. Then a fast, scary descent to the finish with Garmin’s Ryder Hesjedal first across the line. Boo-yah.

Messy as hell, fun to watch, and if an Aussie won the overall and a Canuck the finale, so what? Tough shit. I like Aussies and Canucks. They’re kind of like Americans, only with bigger balls and better beer.

Now we can all go back to giving the Giro the attention it deserves. Anybody watch today’s stage? Count Vino’ looked like he was a quart low on the climb to Monte Zoncolan. Astana’s creature of the night finished fifth on the day at 2:26 behind Ivan Basso (yeah, no alarm bells there). Rainbow jersey Cadel Evans (BMC) was second at 1:19, and the difference between his climbing style and Basso’s was reminiscent of the Frazier-Ali fights.

Meanwhile, David Arroyo Duran (Caisse d’Epargne) still has the maglia rosa, but only in the sense that a clothes hanger holds a shirt until its proper owner slips it on. It’s a long way to the finale, with four more summit finishes en route.

Jeez, what’s with the rain? Has God decided He’s had enough of these filthy, shaven-legged dope fiends flogging 16-pound bikes around His pretty globe? Stage nine of the Giro looked like a triathlon that required participants to swim with their bikes, and stage two of the Amgen Tour was not much drier. Guys were hitting the California asphalt like discarded bidons, and it will be a miracle if the peloton remains intact going into stage three.

I was running the live updates at VeloNews.com and it was a real picnic with no TV and a satellite phone that got hooked up about as often as a nursing-home dick. I nearly typed “Burma!” at one point. It was that bad.

My phone would ring and I’d hear something like, “Yack ninck fzzt Cav’ byinng yoicks Hincapie honk poot squeet Lance.” Shee-yit. As delivery systems go it lacked a certain something. If a guy is gonna deliver a pizza they generally give him the fuckin’ pizza before sending him out the door.

But that’s the way it goes when Captain Video is grounded by evil weather and the reporter at the scene is careening around Northern California in a SRAM neutral-service Volvo, trying to ID riders in the ditch while shouting into an expensive and useless communications device. “Can you hear me now? How about now? Now?”

But we got it done, kinda, sorta, and we get to do it all over again tomorrow. You’re welcome. Right now I’m doing a glass of wine. That I can handle.