OK, so it’s not exactly a Monty Python reunion, but Charles Pelkey and I are getting the band back together to provide live updates of the Tour de France starting Saturday.
Yes, that’s right, Live Update Guy rides again! There will be snark, limericks, cheap shots, haiku, bad manners, references to obscure skits from The Firesign Theatre and the aforementioned Pythons, ad hominem attacks that fall just millimeters short of actual libel, cameo appearances by The Fat Guy singing his hit single “It’s Over,” heavily moderated comments from our heavily medicated audience, and occasional bits about the actual bike race.
Counselor Pelkey will get the ball rolling at stupid-thirty every morning, and I’ll pop around 7-ish to get things wrong, make fart noises and otherwise contribute to lowering his intellectual property values.
If they allow you computer access in your particular state-run institution of license-plate manufacture and/or Edison-medicine application, surf on by and say howdy. How bad could it be?
The Old Guy got a radical kit makeover for the Giro.
You ever get the feeling someone hit the fast-forward button on your own personal reality? Lately it seems as though I’m stuck in a high-speed loop — wake up, snag a cup of mud, plunk down before the iMac, and then suddenly it’s bedtime. Repeat ad infinitum.
For instance, how the hell did it get to be June already? The Giro just wrapped, and the Dauphiné starts next Sunday? What is it, racing season or something? Next you’ll be telling me the Tour’s just around the corner.
Consigliere Pelkey and I had a high ol’ time calling the Giro over at Live Update Guy. He solved the never-ending software problem by getting a colleague to build him some, and it worked just swell. Not a lot of bells and whistles, but you don’t need many of those for the sort of one-ring circus we run.
That tent folded this morning. Tomorrow I have an Adventure Cyclist deadline, and Thursday my Bicycle Retailer contributions are due. In between we have Herself’s mother and sisters in residence at The House Back East™, so, yes, my dance card is all filled up for a while yet, thanks for asking.
I’m hoping the elves of Cupertino have been busy stomping bugs in Mavericks, because the old iBeast has been acting out now and then since I pulled the trigger on the OS upgrade (our fourth, after Herself’s MacBook Pro, the Mac Mini we use to stream video, and my MacBook Air). Those newish machines are all ticking along without incident, but with the 2009 iToad I’ve seen hard crashes that can’t be force-quit away; mystery reboots not ordered by Your Humble Narrator; and other oddball ailments that have me spending way too much off-the-clock time discussing diagnoses with kindly old Doc Google.
Right this moment all is well, but boy, does Mavericks ever use a metric shit-ton of whatever memory you have installed. I have 12 GB in the iThing, and more than once over the weekend Activity Monitor reported that 11 of it was in use.
Meanwhile, the 2006 MacBook limps along just fine with Snow Leopard and 2 GB of memory. Go figure.
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.
Niki Terpstra caught ’em napping en route to the Roubaix velodrome today. I was thinking maybe Sep Vanmarcke would be the guy this time around, and he was certainly one of them, but it was the Omega man who sealed the deal after 257km of dust and cobbles.
Comrade-Attorney Charles Pelkey decided on the spur of the moment to crank up the Live Update Guy machinery for the occasion, but technical difficulties prevented my participation. Chuckles is test-driving some new jabberware developed by a legal colleague, and it didn’t like me for some reason. Can’t imagine why — I’m such an easygoing, compliant, sweetheart of a fellow.
Speaking of dicks, Boom-Boom is coming off as something of one post-race, wondering at some length and volume why nobody seemed interested in giving him the old palanquin ride to a fifth cobble trophy. How big is your mantlepiece, anyway, Tommeke? Haven’t you been stoned enough for one lifetime, Boombeleh?
At least the winner was from your team. You could’ve gotten punk’d by Vanmarcke, Peter Sagan or (horrors!) Brave Brave Brave Sir Wiggo. Whoops, looks like you did.
Look for Belgium to change its name, move, and not leave a forwarding address.
For a minute there today it looked like a Frenchie was actually going to score one for the home team, but it was not to be. In the final kilometer the chase swept past him as though he were the Maginot Line. One of Khal’s people got there fustest with the mostest.
But at least a break finally got ‘er done. I live for these long, doomed breaks, and now and then one actually makes it to the line. So chapeau to Matteo Trentin, who is probably no relation to Mario Trantino, the bike racer from Catanzia who figures so prominently in Jimmy Breslin’s “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight.”
Tomorrow brings the Tour’s longest stage, up Mont Ventoux, a.k.a. The Giant of Provence, The Bald Mountain, and Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here. I don’t expect a long break, but I do anticipate plenty of doom.
Charles Pelkey and I will be rendering the action incomprehensible over at Live Update Guy, or at least I will be, so pop round and help console the consigliere for having employed such a feeble assistant.
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