Remains of the Day

Brain dump

I've been out of town traveling, and my short stop back in NYC has been packed with errands and preparations for my trip to China. In a few hours, I'll head off to the airport for my flight to San Francisco, and then Beijing.

In an effort to get myself on the Beijing timezone, exactly the opposite of NYC's (Beijing is 12 hours ahead), I'm staying up all night before catching the flight. For some reason, one of the only ways I can keep myself up is by sitting at the computer and writing. Watching TV, reading, eating...they all put me to sleep. But typing engages my brain in a way that staves off sleep. This didn't used to be so, especially when trying to finish term papers the night before they were due, but then again, this isn't a term paper.

I had to use all my United frequent flier miles to book my ticket to China. August is peak travel month in China, despite the torrid heat, and so tickets were going for $1300 and up. Of course, United didn't have any coach fares available for mileage redemption, but the surprise was that all the business class seats were gone as well. So I had to push all in with my miles to snag a first class ticket. I've never flown first class overseas, and I'm looking forward to it. Fully reclining seat? Sweetness.

Before I leave, though, a quick look back at Nik and Maria's wedding from my visit to Chicago last weekend.

***

Congrats to Nik and Maria on their wedding! Theirs was the first Serbian-Polish wedding I'd ever attended, and if I have any say in the matter it won't be my last. Weddings that last more than a few days should really qualify as festivals. The day after my arrival, on a Thursday, the festivities began. I missed that first affair because I was at a White Sox game with Derek, but the next day I jumped in. After a rehearsal at a Serbian Orthodox church, we all drove to Nik's parents' mansion in the suburbs.

So many people were attending that we had to park all the way down at the end of the block. Walking towards their house, we saw a massive catering freezer truck sitting in the driveway. Always a good sign. More than half of the massive backyard sat beneath a circus-sized white tent. Inside, a Serbian band played, the lead singer about three weeks from giving birth, belting out tunes with a vibrato that I came to recognize as characteristic of Serbian singing. Six or seven gigantic coolers sat in the center of the tent, filled with beer and soda, and a series of long tables lined three walls of the tent. Serbian caterers dashed to and fro, placing drinks and dish after dish before us. Then, just after the last course and before dessert, Nik's relatives stood up and started a Serbian line dance.

I was watching and studying the dance steps when one of Nik's uncles, spying my digital SLR, pulled me out of my seat.

"Are you the official photographer? Oh, it doesn't matter." He waved his arms at the circle of dancing family members. "Get that. Do whatever you have to. Stand on the coolers, whatever."

I leapt into action, straddling coolers, weaving in and out of the circle of dancers, snapping away. Several of the people in the circle held the hand of the person next to them with one hand while in the other hand they held not only a beer but a cigarette. By evening's end, I came to believe that this was actually an official variant of the dance formation.

The next morning, we drove back out for another meal, a brunch in the same tent. Afterwards, we drove about forty minutes northeast to the church for the ceremony, which reminded me quite a bit of Ted and Joanne's Greek Orthodox wedding ceremony. Joannie and Mike, both in the ceremony, claimed Nik had to summon Jim Carrey-esque facial contortions during the entire ceremony to keep the tears at bay. If you know Nik, you'd realize how surprising that was, but the love of a good woman can do that to the best of them. We often jokingly refer to Nik as a cross between Brendan Fraser and Luc Longley, but what's most distinctive about Nik is not his height or his face but his jolly, goofy personality. Always joking, always the life of the party. Good times.

Nearly 500 people attended the wedding, and that meant remembering a lot of names, many of them challenging Serbian names. I quickly learned a handy shortcut: if I met a male whose name eluded me, I had a 60% chance of guessing right if I went with Milan. Just about every other Serbian male at the wedding introduced himself as Milan.

At the reception dinner and dance, the videographer let me borrow his flash bracket as he was a fellow Nikon user. How did I live all these years without one? No more unsightly shadows or flash hotspots. Even without the bracket, the new Nikon i-TTL flash system performed like a dream.

This evening, I would not play wedding photographer full-time. Professionals were on hand to handle that. I wanted in on the line dancing. After the official dances, including a fabulous father daughter dance by Maria and her father, set to Paul Simon's "Father and Daughter," I moved in.

The basic Serbian line dance step is not too difficult to master, but like the swing or waltz or any dance step, the complexity comes once you've mastered the basics. An older Serbian woman two to my right nodded in approval at my execution of the basic step, but then with a mischievous grin she left me stumbling over my feet like a drunk on hot coals when she added a couple skips and hops and double time moves.

Serbian songs are long, and they repeat, almost like rounds. After one nearly fifteen minute song I had to retire from the line dance drenched in sweat, ready for my Gatorade commercial moment.

The next morning, because we stayed overnight at the Lisle Hyatt, Joannie, Mike, and I visited Naperville. We stopped by my mother's grave and visited my aunt. We drove past some of Joannie and my old high school haunts. We even did a drive-by of the house I spent so many years of my life growing up in. The saplings we planted in the front and back yard so many years ago had grown into giant trees. The garage door was open, and a large pool had been set up inside the garage, in the shade, on this day when the temperature was 104F, heat index at something like Hell's fifth circle. Several young Indian children splashed and laughed in the garage.

Naperville was recently named No. 3 in Money Magazine's best places to live in the U.S. Back in high school, it all just seemed so dull, but then again it wasn't Money Magazine's best places for a teenager to find hot action.

After the literal trip down memory lane, we headed back to Nik's parents' house for one final event, a pig roast. In the humidity and heat, it was more of a collective roast, but everyone persevered, still buoyed by the previous evening's happy proceedings.

As for photos, I'll have to post them after I'm back from China, but I tossed a few up on Flickr for friends and family.

***

At one of the meals, I can't remember which one there were so many, a few of the Serbian dishes reminded me of dishes from other cultures. This recalled a conversation I had with Ken while in DC a few months back. Some foods seem to be universal. That is, every culture has some take on them.

One of these universals is some meat wrapped in a leafy vegetable. The Serbian version, with ground pork or beef wrapped in cabbage leaves, was quite tasty. The Greeks have their dolmades, the Chinese have their sticky rice and meet wrapped in bamboo leaves. Another universal is some sort of soft grain, so moist it's almost liquid in form. Oatmeal, grits, porridge, couscous.

***

Another thing I had to deal with while back in Chicago was all the stuff I had stored in Joannie and Mike's bounteous storage room. Eight or nine boxes held my childhood comic book and baseball card collections, old high school and college papers and yearbooks, photos, and even some textbooks. Comic books and baseball cards? Lousy investment in the 80's and 90's, and totally illiquid. I barely eked out 10 cents to the dollar for that junk.

***

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Well, I do know, though I hope you'll read the quiver in my lips as an effort to hold back a tear.

***

Off to the airport. How time flies when reminiscing. More from Beijing. Seacrest out.

2002 Tour de France Journal Day 1: If you don’t know who the dummy is...

[More from my 2002 TDF camp journal. I meant to post these over the past week, but I was in Chicago and forgot to bring the journal along. I'll use more of these to fill in here as I'm off to China tomorrow morning for a few weeks...]

First day of camp, I meet all the other campers. One of my chief worries the whole way over was how I’d compare with the other campers. I didn’t feel any better after meeting everyone. Most everyone was either tall and lanky, with endurance sport builds, or tall and lean and muscular.

I felt worse after our first ride, right after we arrived in Joucas. As soon as we arrived at the hotel, about 5pm in the afternoon, we’re told to change for an hour “flat” ride in the countryside around the hotel, to open up our legs. Since my luggage and bike haven’t arrived (at the airport, I waited along with two other campers for almost an hour until the baggage claim belt came to a halt; no bike case, no luggage), official camp den mother Aimee provides me with CTS bike shorts and a jersey. I’m jet lagged and exhausted, and if I lie down on my bed I’ll pass out, so after a quick change into the bike outfit I head straight out.

I meet most of the other campers and some of the staff outside. The camp has set up a mini bike garage outside, and the camp mechanic Robin has already assembled all the bikes. They loan me a bike and a helmet, and before I have time to catch my bearings we’re off.

About five minutes into our ride we hit our first climb and the pack drops me instantly. Eventually I lose contact altogether and am following a long station wagon around through the farm fields of Provence on narrow country roads. If this is the flat ride, I’m in trouble. In Seattle, we’d consider this hilly terrain.

They say in poker that if you don’t know who the sucker is, you’re the sucker. It’s not even that difficult to figure out who the slow guy is in a group of riders. He’s the one in the back at the finish line. That would be me.

Some people don’t mind bringing up the rear, but not me. Being the slow guy on the first day is demoralizing and unpleasant business, but there’s not much to be done about it now. The type of fitness I’d need to gain to catch some of my compatriots isn’t gained over one week or even one year. It takes years of riding and training, just as it takes pro cyclists, including Lance Armstrong, years of competition to reach the level necessary just to complete the Tour de France, let alone compete for a podium spot. I think this to myself and try to just enjoy the rolling golden countryside of southern France.

We finish up and reach the hotel just in time to watch the conclusion of stage 12. Once again, it’s Lance flanked by his teammate Robert Heras and his chief competitor Joseba Beloki all alone in the last stretch. Lance turns on the gas with about 5 or 6 km to go on the devilish Plateau de Beille, and Beloki can’t follow. Lance finishes with a 1 minute 3 second gain on Beloki.

Back in my room, I find a bag full of strange nutritional supplements in bottles and canisters. Red liquids, fluorescent packaging, eye droppers. It looks like Dr. Frankenstein’s childhood chemistry kit. For a second I think that it’s the camp goody bag and shudder at the thought of having to ingest this stuff each night (are there needles?) but then I remember I have a roommate who has probably arrived.

After dinner, a tasty French meal, I pass out, visions of Mont Ventoux in my head. Since I haven’t seen it before, except on TV many years ago, I picture Mordor, the flaming volcano from Lord of the Rings. Little do I know…

2002 Tour de France journal: Introduction

I'll be off traveling quite a bit this next week and month, and so I'm going to drop in some old content. This week, in honor of the last days of the 2005 Tour de France, I'll toss up entries from a journal I kept from my first in-person visit to the Tour de France, in 2002, with Carmichael Training Systems, run by Chris Carmichael, Lance Armstrong's coach.

Introduction (July 2002)

I have this recurring nightmare. It’s the day of final exams in school. I wander down a hallway filled with students on their way to different classrooms. Lockers line the walls on both sides. This must be high school. I know the subject of my next final, but I can’t remember which classroom it’s in, because I haven’t attended a single class all semester. Even if I find the classroom, how can I pass the exam? I haven’t cracked open the textbook once. My heart is racing, and I try walking faster, glancing in every door to see if I’ll recognize the teacher or any of the students, but my legs move slower and slower, and the students in the halls grow sparse as everyone finds their rooms. The faces of the passing students regard me with pursed lips an grim stares as if they see my predicament written on my face. I’ve been exposed.

It’s July 20, in the late morning, and I’m having the cycling equivalent of my final exam nightmare, except I’m awake. More than that, I’m being cooked alive. For a brief second, I think my nose is running and I reach up to wipe it with my glove. No, it is just sweat, pouring off the top of my nose onto the top tube of my bike like a small waterfall. Up ahead, through the trees, a grey tower is visible, seemingly miles away, at the top of a grey, desolate mountaintop. It darts in and out of view as the road before me snakes back and forth.

Around every turn, I hope for relief from the steep uphill grade, but instead I’m greeted by another stretch of rising pavement leading to the next turn through the forest. The bike beneath me is in the smallest possible gear, 39-27, and still I can barely turn the pedals over. My bike computer displays my speed as 9. That would be wonderful, except I’m in Europe and the unit of measurement is kilometers/hour, not miles/hour. The sweat beading off my forehead has collected on my Oakley wraparound sunglasses, mixed with the dirt in the air. The view ahead of blurs.

Around another switchback, and suddenly the road rises to an 11% grade, my heart sinking by the same amount. I feel my bike decelerate as if I’ve ridden into a patch of tar, so I stand out of my saddle to try and muscle through this ridiculous stretch. My left quadricep immediately cramps, and I drop back onto my bike seat with a grimace. On the right side of the road an old Frenchman stands next to his RV vehicle and looks at my face as I crawl by. He’s seen this before and realizes what has happened. I haven’t studied enough this semester, and now, on my first exam, I’ve been exposed. Whatever happens, I have to maintain enough speed to stay upright. Please don't let me fall over.

It’s the second day of the Climbing Stages bike camp with Carmichael Training Systems, and I’m climbing Mont Ventoux. I’m 14 kilometers away from the top of the mountain.

Mugged

Short story by Tobias Wolff in this week's New Yorker
I long ago stopped reading the weekly New Yorker short story unless it happened to be by an author I know and love, like Wolff. Also in this week's New Yorker, Noah Baumbach wrote the comedy bit, titled "Tom Cruise is My Dog." I heard Baumbach speak after the screening of his movie The Squid and the Whale at Sundance this year. Baumbach, a close friend of Wes Anderson, did not seem like the type of guy who'd write a piece like that, but I guess I was wrong.

Upcoming cookbook by Ferran Adria contains recipes from his famed El Bulli
Will cost $210 and include interactive CD-ROM.

Entourage gets a third season

Tattooed fruit could mean the end of the annoying little stickers you have to peel off

***

I'm away from NYC a lot in the next month, so every day here is spent running errands. This stretch of days where I have to venture out onto the street just happens to coincide with the muggiest weather since I've moved here. Within a minute of walking out into the heat, I feel like a damp towel. NYC feels like a sauna with a concrete and asphalt floor, brick and metallic walls, and the sun for a heat lamp in the ceiling.

***

Every camera store I've been to in NYC so far is owned and run by Hasidic Jews, including the massive B&H. Yesterday I had to drop off my inkjet printer for repair at a local camera store and was greeted by a store full of Hasidic Jews, just like B&H. It's the fourth such store I've visited. Interesting cultural phenomenon.

Do camera stores have really low margins? Are photographers a jealous, misanthropic lot? How does one explain the awful customer service at camera stores (it was the same at Glazer's in Seattle)? A majority of camera store employees I've dealt with are rude and curt, as if they disdain my business. I have no idea why that is but it's really unnecessary.

The late night employees at Whole Foods, on the other hand, are just careless and indifferent. Twice the clerks there have forgotten to pack one of my items, and each time I've had to stand there waiting while the checkout clerk carried on a social conversation with one of their peers. In this heat and humidity, it's more than aggravating to walk 10 blocks round trip to retrieve a single item. When this happened again last week, I had to throw a tantrum on the phone to the manager to get him to credit me for my salad (which I pictured the manager eating himself as he replied "uh-huh" "uh-huh" to my litany of complaints). I'm not going there in the evening anymore.

***

I only caught a bit of the British Open, but it seems safe to say that Tiger Woods' swing changes have worked themselves out. To hurt Tiger, a course needs to punish him for errant drives, and if that doesn't work, competitors have to hope he's putting badly. The rough at the U.S. Open handled the former, and Tiger couldn't putt that week. But the British Open links layout didn't punish him when he hooked or pushed his drives. Errant tee shots landed in the next fairway over, and he simply hit irons from wherever he landed. The fairway bunkers? Tiger drover over most of them.

***

While in DC last weekend, Joannie and I visited the Holocaust Museum thanks to Rich's sister Catherine who works there and left passes for us. Even several years beyond its opening, it's still an attraction that requires advanced planning in order to secure a spot. The main exhibit is linear, winding down from the top floor back to the main floor. For some subjects, like this one, I prefer that format over an open format where you have to choose your own path.

Impressive exhibit and well worth a visit. Of course, I also dragged Joannie to see the insects at the National Museum of Natural History. As a compromise I went with her to view the Hope Diamond and other assorted bling.

Thank goodness the DC Metro stations are air conditioned. It was so hot that wandering from museum to monument to museum felt like strolling in a ceramic kiln. At the Supreme Court we viewed a video interview with the current Justices. Ginsberg commented that when the Constitution was written, women couldn't vote and blacks were still suffering the indignities of slavery, among other injustices to be rectified in later years. While she spoke, the video cut for a few seconds to the face of strict constructionist Scalia, and it was all he could do to keep from rolling his eyes. High comedy. Scalia's a nut.

The trip to DC was a success. Joannie found an apartment in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. It will be great to have her and Mike closer by, just a three and a half make that four five hour bus ride away. The bus drivers this time around sure took their sweet time.

On the way down, the in-drive movie was that awful movie in which Jennifer Lopez and her daughter and haunted by a crazy guy, presumably her ex-husband (I wasn't watching that closely). The lunatic was played by the guy who played Carter Buckley on The O.C. this season. Finally, after being terrorized by the guy for the entire movie, J.Lo trains herself in boxing and goes after him. Our arrival in DC cut off the final fight scene, to no one's dismay.

***

I keep receiving a phishing e-mail for eBay, an excerpt of which appears below. This fraudster needs a copy editor. If you want to steal someone's money, at least put some effort into it.

It has come to our attion that 95% of all fraudulent auctions are caused by members using stolen credit cards to purchase or sell non existant items. Thus we require our members to add a Debit/Check card to their billing records as part of our continuing commitment to protect your account and to reduce the instance of fraud on our website. Your Debit/Check card will only be used to identify you and bill any open seller fees incase your initial credit card gets declined. If you could please take 5-10 minutes out of your online experience and renew your records you will not run into any future problems with the eBay® service. However, failure to confirm your records will result in your account suspension.

George!

George Hincapie triumphant on Pla d'Adet (Image from AFP)

Women love him because he's, well, George, and men admire and appreciate him for his loyalty to Lance. He's always been the Pippen to Armstrong's Jordan, the talented and trustworthy comrade, the selfless wingman, and today he got his first ever stage win at the Tour de France on the hardest stage of the Tour. Everyone loves George, always such an unassuming good guy. For such a big guy, he's made a miraculous transformation in the past several years, becoming a very respectable climber. He's married to a podium girl and living the dream.

George and Brunyeel decided that since T-Mobile had been attacking early to shed Armstrong's teammates, Hincapie should go with an early break so that if the leaders caught up, he'd be there to stay with Armstrong. T-Mobile parried, and Team Discovery Channel countered. Since he was in the lead group purely to wait for Lance, Hincapie didn't have to pull. His only goal was to stick with the group and wait to see if Armstrong would show up. Thus he didn't have to work as hard as the others in the lead group, and when they all fell away, he had the freshest legs for the finishing sprint.

Such a story-dense stage on the climb to Pla d'Adet. George was racing for the stage win in the lead group. Armstrong marked Ullrich and Basso, and then just Basso. Ullrich, again, couldn't keep the wheel of Basso and Armstrong when they accelerated, but he tried to keep them in sight, paced by his teammate Oscar Sevilla. Behind him, Rasmussen fought to preserve third place, and just behind his wheel was Mancebo, his face always a rictus of pain, trying not to lose too much time to Ullrich in the GC.

No more massive mountain finishes, though a few challenging stages remain (these things are all relative, as all the stages are killer to mere mortals like myself). But Basso couldn't shed Armstrong, and so it looks like a week-long coronation for Lance as long as he can avoid trouble. There will be some interesting battles among riders in places 2 through 11, especially in the stage 20 time trial, and a good battle for the green jersey between McEwen, O'Grady, and Hushovd, but for the yellow jersey this is sendoff week for its greatest champion.

Just a dollop of sour cream

Another HD Gallery clip from Apple, a trailer for the upcoming movie from Terry Gilliam, The Brothers Grimm, starring Matt Damon and Heath Ledger (Quicktime 7 required)
Hadn't heard of this movie, but it looks like fun, despite the hokey special effects.

Trailer for Tsui Hark's Seven Swords
A distinctively un-HD clip

Steven Levitt's papers are now available for download for those who want to go into his Freakonomics topics in more depth
Scroll down the page to find the links to downloadable PDFs.

The Pixies are recording their first studio album in 14 years
Cool.

Pop star or porn star?

The longest final table in history is over: Joseph Hachem wins the World Series of Poker
Yeah, I don't know who he is either.

Needles in haystacks

Back from Washington, DC, arriving to a snowstorm-sized pile of links in my newsreader...

The World Series of Poker's main event is down to just 12 players
Just one pro remains, Mike "The Mouth" Matusow, in 8th place (profile of Matusow in the NYTimes). Phil Ivey, one of the last big names, finished in 20th place, while last year's champ, Greg Raymer, finished 25th. Kate Hudson's brother Oliver earned the dubious honor of being the first player to be knocked out of the tourney, and on his very first hand. He had a pair of 10's, raised pre-flop, and Sam Farha called. The flop came A-A-10, and both guys found all their money in the center of the table. Farha had A-10 and left Hudson almost famous, befitting Kate's brother.

Esquire Magazine's Sexiest Woman Alive will be revealed in the November issue, but the clues give it away: Jessica Biel

Matthew Barney and Björk collaborate on a film which debuts at a museum in Japan
From the article, a summary of the movie titled Drawing Restraint 9: "Björk and Barney arrive as guests on board the ship. During a storm, they marry each other in a mysterious ceremony, morph into whales and then swim off towards the Antarctic. In this dream-like story, nothing is really narrated." Yep, that sounds like a Barney/Björk movie. Björk also revealed that "she and Barney plan to sell their New York home and live on a houseboat." That also sounds like something they'd do.

UCLA grad student plays Russian roulette as performance art, terrifying his classmates
Huge hubbub ensues, including possible legal action and the retirement of two professors known for controversial performance art of their own, but in the end all returned to normal and the student received an A-minus for the course.

Simpsons-Family Guy feud
This is sure to end with Homer gunned down in front of Kwik-E-Mart by Stewie Griffin.

Mansquito! Attack of the Sabretooth! Dog Soldiers!

At the Tour de France, Bobby Julich is riding elliptically-shaped chainrings
These chainrings change the effective gear ratio as you pedal. In this case, Julich's O.Symetric Harmonic chainrings maximize the gear ratio when pedals are horizontal, when you can theoretically apply the most effective perpendicular force to the pedals. Then the gear ratio decreases for the bringing the pedal across the top and bottom of the pedal stroke. Shimano once made a similar pedal but abandoned it because it's so tricky to integrate with the front derailleur (the chain is moving up and down through the derailleur cage).

Morgan Freeman buys a pop-a-shot machine
Since Freeman narrates every other movie out there these days, this is timely. And funny.

Countdown of features in the upcoming Movable Type 3.2

The bizarre and sometimes disturbing world of bioart

Everything, and I mean everything, you ever wanted to know about the male hug
Mine is a hug-happy family.

Trump tries on some bad idea jeans

Texas chainring massacre

Well, okay. He's still the daddy. Stunning.

Separation day in the Tour de France, with a mountaintop finish on Courchevel. It's not the steepest mountain in the Alps, but it's such a long climb that its slope seems to rise up every kilometer you ride. It's also long enough that, placed at a finish, such a mountain causes a decisive split between the pretenders and the contenders. Climbs like this put a magnifying glass to any disparities in power to weight ratio among the riders.

Who would have thought the list of contenders would contain names like Michael Rasmussen and Alejandro Valverde while the list of pretenders might just contain everyone else? Rasmussen is tall and lanky, and he looks like a white praying mantis with chicken pox in his king of the mountains jersey and bug-eyed sunglasses. The Tour checks riders for blood doping, but they might need to check Rasmussen for lack of blood he's so pale. How a guy can ride four to five hours in the blazing sun each day and still look like an albino is a mystery to me. Maybe Rasmussen is a descendant of Dracula. Whatever he is, he's a damn good climber.

It's occurred so many times in his six Tour wins, but the sight of Armstrong riding away from his opponents on the first mountain stage of the Tour is still an awesome spectacle. Team Discovery does resemble Apollo 13 on these monstrous climbs, each domestique exerting maximum effort before flaming out and falling away, ultimately leaving Lance to rocket ahead towards the finish line. The obscene pace of the race the first week manifested itself today in all the early explosions among the peloton.

I struggled up Courchevel once, a few years back, like a man crawling uphill on his stomach. Seeing Jens Voight riding up Courchevel as if pedaling in a vat of olive oil brought back those painful memories. Tomorrow is even tougher, with three mountains I remember with a wince: Madeleine and the linked pair of Telegraphe and Galibier. Madeleine is like Courchevel, moderate in slope but extremely long. The Telegraphe-Galibier combination is worse: longer and steeper. The day I rode the two, I felt strong, yet it still felt like the climb would never end. You have to be able to sit in the saddle and just pedal for an hour, not ideal for someone like Vino, not a pure climber. It's difficult to attack Armstrong on such a climb when Discovery Channel rides so hard you're gasping for air like an asthmatic smoker.

If Lance and his rivals feel the same tomorrow as they did today, the time gaps Lance could open up could effectively put the Tour out of reach to all but Valverde (I don't think Rasmussen's time trialing will allow him to threaten the yellow jersey). Chris Carmichael said he thought Lance would win the Tour by his largest margin ever this year, and that's starting to look prophetic. Lance has to be licking his chops at a chance to punish his opponents on the slopes of Telegraphe and Galibier, while his rivals have to be glad it's not another mountaintop finish.

We got ourselves a bike race

Thrilling stage in the Tour de France today. The finishing climb was a category 2, but only because it was near the finish of the stage. It wasn't that steep, maybe 4% or 5%, but it was long, and finishing climbs like that, especially early in the Tour de France, can make for exciting finishes because more riders can hang around than on the Alpine or Pyrenean climbs that can kick up into the 10-12% slope range (that's not to say I'm not amazed that professionals can turn a big chainring and crank up a mountain like the Col de la Schlucht at around 25 mph; that's just sick).

Everyone knew Vino would attack, but few expected the following:

• Team Discovery Channel didn't have anyone strong enough to hang with the late attacks, leaving Armstrong isolated with his chief rivals on the final climb. Lance was clearly disappointed in his team after the stage, though he tried to be respectful, saying perhaps his team had been worked too hard. But Brunyeel and Armstrong aren't going to sleep as easy tonight, and no one will feel worse than Lance's teammates about not being there for him at the end. I don't think Brunyeel or Armstrong will chew the team out tonight. Everyone saw what happened and knows what they have to do. Still, all the confidence and psychological advantage Team Discovery earned in the prologue and team trial evaporated on the Col de la Schlucht today.
• Andreas Kloden, who'd had a very disappointing early race season, looked super strong in finishing second, and that was a finish that even a photo couldn't clarify.
• Pieter Weening wins the stage with after attacking on the last third of the stage. His winning attack was particularly impressive given how high the pace has been and how many A-listers were attacking on that final climb. Great day for Rabobank, with Rasmussen donning the polkadot jersey. Somewhere, the Dutch crazies were partying on some mountaintop. They may not have been seeing their self-composed can-can tune "Boogerd is the Best," but Weening has two syllables and fits in nicely. "Weening iiiiiiiiiis, the best-he-is-the-best. Weening iiiiiiiiis the best-he-is-the-best. Wee ning is the best-he-is-the-best. Wee-ning is the best-he-is-the-best." I'm not kidding, those are the lyrics. It's much more exciting when you're dancing in your bike cleats and singing it with several hundred Dutch youths dressed in cow suits on the side of the road on Alpe D'Huez.

I can only imagine what Brunyeel was shouting into the team 2-way radio on the final climb when Salvodelli became the last team member to drop off, leaving Lance alone.

"C'mon boys, we can't leave Lance ah-lone. Dis ees vuh-ry baaad. C'mon Paolo! C'mon Popo! Venga venga venga! C'mon guys! We can't leave Lance like this. Get up to the front, boys!"

If Kloden really is regaining his from from last year, then they can launch him, Vino, and Ullrich against Armstrong in alternating waves, as they did today. As soon as Lance covered Vino's second attack, he didn't have a chance to catch his breath before Kloden launched off the front. If Armstrong gets isolated again, things could get ugly. Toss in Landis, Leipheimer, and Basso, and Armstrong may not have one restful day in the mountains. Also, we have yet to hear from Heras and Mayo, and I'm anticipating some attacks from them in the Alps and Pyrenees. If Lance has any chinks in his form, he's unlikely to be able to hide them on a stage. Brunyeel will have to be in the team car doing lots of calculations to decide which attacks Lance should cover; depending on who has opened up which gaps, and depending on how much time he and Lance think he'll take from them on the final individual time trial, Lance can decide when to accelerate and when to sit tight. Ooh it's going to be a doozy of a Tour.

Armstrong's face looks particularly gaunt this year. Today he wasn't particularly strong, but at the end of the day he lost no time to any serious GC contenders, and that's with T-Mobile burning their three top guys pretty hard on a stage that wasn't decisive. Lance wasn't as explosive relative to the other riders as he usually is, in part because the slope was so gentle, but he still covered all the key attacks and finished with the same time as every rider that mattered.

Team Discovery Channel is more suited for staying around Lance on steeper climbs, and I suspect they'll bounce back when the roads rise up more quickly. It's been an interesting Tour thus far, with fortunes changing dramatically from one day to the next. One day Zabriskie is in yellow jersey, then a few days later he's almost dead last. One day Team Discovery Channel looks like they'll dominate, then the next day they seem to be the most vulnerable of the major teams. Early in the Tour, Boonen seemed like the next Petacchi, then a crash and a few more stages later, Robbie McEwen seems like the sprinter to beat.

A riders fortunes can change in one day on the mountains. Eddy Mercx, the greatest cyclist ever, seemed destined to win his sixth Tour. Then, on the ride up to the mountaintop finish at Pra-Loup, he cracked, and just like that it was over for him. The pace has been unbelievably high in the Tour this year. It's the fastest Tour in history thus far, and so I expect some riders to crack suddenly over the next two weeks. It's always difficult to predict who those will be, but it will happen.

Can't wait for tomorrow's stage, and in about half an hour, correction, in about half a minute, I guess it will be on television. Might as well stay up at this point and catch the first half, though I'll be on a bus headed to DC during the stage conclusion. I'll have to catch the replay in the evening.

Tidbits

Cory Doctorow to virtually sign a virtual edition of his latest novel in Second Life

Download some live tracks by The Flaming Lips for free

***

In the Tour de France, you often hear how the Discovery Channel Team and Lance don't mind if another team takes the yellow jersey because then that other team will have to defend the jersey. What that means is that the team which has the yellow jersey rider will drive the peloton to chase down breakaways in order to keep their man in the yellow jersey for as many days as possible, even if that man has no chance of winning the Tour. This is one of the odd things about the Tour, where just being a leader for part of the race is worth fighting for. Each stage of the Tour is a mini race in itself. I don't believe you make any money for winning a stage, but the economic incentive often cited as the reason for contending for these intermediate goals is to garner more exposure for your sponsor, whether on the podium accepting the yellow jersey or in newspaper articles or on television in a breakaway. I'm skeptical that the math works out--team sponsors seem to go bankrupt every few years in cycling, but it does create dozens of stories within the overall drama that is race to win the Tour.

***

Speaking of cycling, Vinokourov went high risk-high reward today and attacked late on rain-slicked roads to take second place and make up 19 seconds on Armstrong with a 7 second gap and the 12 second time bonus. Vino has to be seen as Armstrong's chief competitor, chiefly because he's not intimidated by anyone and he's always attacking, something that can't be said of Ullrich or Beloki in years past. Vino will likely lose at least a minute to Armstrong in the last individual time trial so you know he'll be attacking in the mountains. Two alpha dogs butting heads will make for some exciting stages, especially if Ullrich becomes Vino's sidekick. Some have faulted Vino for taking too great a risk for such a short time gain, but I believe Vino recognizes he has to take risks to even have a chance to topple Armstrong. You can't sit back and wait for Armstrong to crack; the odds of that are as slim as the new Lindsay Lohan.

***

Say what you will about Tom Cruise, and many people have called him crazy, but he is acting with the passion of a true believer. That is, if he really does believe that Brooke Shields is hurting herself with whatever drugs she's taking, and if he really does believe that Scientology offers a better way out for her and others sharing her condition, then his behavior is consistent with those beliefs. Few are the people who tout their beliefs and act on them with equal ardor. That's not to say he's necessarily right, and I'm no expert on the topic, but he's at least consistent. And his interview with Matt Lauer was a refreshing change from the usual ass-kissing puff pieces that are celebrity interviews.

***

I was reading Chuck Klosterman's new novel Killing Yourself to Live : 85% of a True Story yesterday, and in it he opines that Radiohead's Kid A feels as if it predicted 9/11 in a way. He goes on to describe what he thinks each track signifies. Curious, I popped the CD in. Exhausted, I dozed in and out for most of the album. The next morning, my clock alarm radio woke me not with music but with the absence of music. Two serious voices gave updates on a developing situation in London, and the variance from the usual music caught the attention of my subconscious. It was that same divergence from my clock radio's usual morning music alarm that woke me the morning of 9/11.

I had a class in SoHo this aftenoon and took the subway. I wasn't sure if it was the London attack that had scared people off, but only one other person was in my subway car on the ride down.

***

The kickball team I'm on won its sixth game yesterday when the other team failed to show on a rainy day while the bare minimum eight of us trekked all the way up to Riverside Park in the storm. It's the second or third game we've won via forfeit. Our chief skill is attendance.

***

Boxing fans who missed it the first time around will want to set their TiVo for Showtime on Aug. 6 when they televise a replay of the epic Diego Corrales-Jose Castillo slugfest before the Jeff Lacy Robin Reid fight. They put their heads together from the opening bell and just pounded on each other from close quarters for 10 rounds. Nothing seemed to slow either of them down. By the eighth round, Corrales' left eye was a slit and Castillo's left eye was streaming blood. Each fighter was so possessed that even several low blows seemed to have no effect. In the eighth round, Castillo hit Corrales so hard that Corrales's mouthpiece flew out, but he kept fighting and landed a left that wobbled Castillo. Both fighters seemed indefatigable, throwing punches as if they were attached to button-mashing videogame players.

Then, in round 10, Castillo knocked out Corrales with a massive left hook to the chin. Corrales got back up but looked dazed, and Castillo proceeded to knock him down again with another left hook. Corrales stood up just on the ten count and said he was okay, but the ref fined him a point for excessive spitting out of his mouthpiece (a delaying tactic). He looked done, but then he proceeded to rise from the dead in one of the most amazing comebacks I've ever seen, pinning Castillo against the ropes and pounding his head like a pinata. Only the ropes seemed to be holding Castillo upright and the ref stepped in and stopped the fight.

Just a magnificent, brutal fight, as close to a modern day gladiator battle as I've ever seen. I may need to subscribe to Showtime again; all the best fights this year were on Showtime, not HBO, and a rematch is tentatively scheduled for Oct. 8 though nothing's been signed yet.

Four explosions in London transit system kill double digits

Three explosions in the Tube and one that ripped apart a double decker bus killed an unknown number of people today and shut down the entire transit system in London. Blair spoke and blamed terrorists for timing the attacks to the G-8 summit opening in Scotland.

A group calling itself "The Secret Organization of al-Qaida in Europe" claimed responsibility, supposedly. As expected, in the chaos, many of the early reports are unconfirmed. I was extremely worried when I read that Marylebone was among the Tube stations closed in the aftermath of the explosions, but as soon as I e-mailed Peter he e-mailed me back saying he was okay.

Review: Marathon, Princess Raccoon, Mindgame

I grabbed Scott to see the Korean movie Marathon last last Sunday night as some inspiration for his upcoming attempt at an Ironman. The last several Korean movies I've seen have been excessively disturbing, with graphic violence and sex a magnitude of order higher than anything in American movies. Though I have nothing against such movies, I wasn't in the mood for that Sunday night. Marathon's description portrayed it as a feel good movie, and though I've been fooled by such for Korean movies in the past, thank goodness this one wasn't kidding.

Based on a true story, Marathon was the top-grossing movie in Korea this year. Cho Won is an autistic young boy. Like other autistic children, he has problems relating to other people, including his younger brother and parents. Fortunately for Cho Won, his mother (Mi-suk Kim) is strong and loving, with the type of patience only a mother could have. When we jump forward and see Cho Won at age twenty, his mother is still caring for him, though her husband lives elsewhere, perhaps driven away by his wife's all-consuming interest in her Cho Won, or perhaps just unable to summon the same patience and energy needed to raise such a child.

Cho Won's mother has found an outlet for him in running. He's good at it and places in 10K's in his special classification. She decides to find him coaching so that he can train to run a marathon. When a former Boston Marathon winner is assigned 200 hours of community service at a school for autistic children for a DUI, Cho Won's mother senses and opening and asks him to coach her son as a way to work off some of his community service obligation. The coach's best days are behind him, and he lives from one beer to the next in a slovenly apartment. I'm going to take a wild guess and say that Jung-wook translates as Morris Buttermaker.

Autistic children display a very limited range of emotions, and as such they serve in movies as mirrors through which we see the nature of the people around them, their problems and natures, as in Rain Man. Do people try and take advantage of them? Do they try and care for them? How do they handle the autistic child's inability to show gratitude or love? Autistic children interpret everything literally, and some comedy ensues in the failure of the coach to understand that about Cho Won.

Does Cho Won actually enjoy running? No one is certain. When asked if he likes running or not, Cho Won says he likes it. But phrase the question a different way and he'll say he doesn't. Can Cho Won even run a marathon safely if he doesn't learn how to pace himself? The story of Cho Won is mostly a story of his mother and how she struggles to best raise Cho Won. Does she want him to run a marathon because it's what she wants? Is he only a puppet for her own dreams? Whenever she lets her attention wander for just a moment, Cho Won seems to get himself into trouble, yet at other times she's accused of clinging to him too tightly or ordering him around simply to make her own life easy. It's a complex role, and Mi-Suk Kim plays it from one end of the emotional spectrum to the other with genuine heart.

The movie builds to somewhat of an expected ending, but the road there twists in surprising ways. The climax of the movie stays with Cho Won all through a race, the only sequence in the movie where its emotion seemed forced. Since Cho Won is autistic, it's not clear that all the flashbacks and thoughts shown on screen could actually be his, and we can't empathize with an autistic character the way we'd empathize with the other characters. It's one of the few times where I wanted more cutaways to the mother, brother, and coach during a climactic sports scene.

But it's a minor quibble with a touching story, one that resonated with me even more when the on screen epilogue noted that Cho Won's character was based on a real-life autistic Korean boy who ran a marathon in 2002. His time, just over 2:57, is still a record of some sort (the details elude me). As The Sports Guy often writes, it was mighty dusty in that theater.

***

Princess Raccoon (official Japanese site) is an operetta by Seijun Suzuki, whose Tokyo Drifter was a stylish post-modern gangster movie in which the lead character whistles his own theme song. Suzuki is nothing if not unique; when you see one of his movies, you knew who the hell directed it. That applies even more so to Princess Raccoon, so odd a merger of operetta, costume dramas, animation, film, and commercials that it's utterly incomprehensible. I'd summarize the plot but I'm sure I'd be doing the movie an injustice even if I happened by chance to be accurate. Still, for reference's sake: a vain king seeks to kill his son, the prince Amechiyo, when a prophet envisions that soon Amechiyo will surpass the King in beauty. Fortunately, Princess Raccoon (Zhang Ziyi) has eyes for the prince and protects him with some magic.

Some of the visual cuts and transitions are kind of brilliant, and the very mannered performances, much like those of singers in an opera, are so different from those in almost all other movies that they provide a type of cognitive dissonance that one hopes to find at a film festival. Much of the movie is a comedy of the absurd. On the other hand, the story is both too simple in its overall structure and too unintelligible in its detail to hold a viewer's interest for nearly two hours. I was glad I didn't bring someone with me to sit through the movie; this one should be rated D, for daring audiences only. Some plotless movies speak to the subconscous with their surreality; this one's simply a Tokyo drifter. At one point a golden magic frog appears on screen and starts speaking. If you can get your hands on one, I recommend trying to smoke it before watching Princess Raccoon.

***

Even if you don't smoke some golden frog, though, you'll feel like you did while watching Mind Game, a remarkable animated feature film from Japan (trailer). Recent Japanese animation has been a letdown. Appleseed had an insufferably banal plot while Steamboy offered one-dimensional characters, long a bane of anime.

Mind Game has a hero with a soul and a personality in Nishi, and the wide-ranging animation styles on display are not just for show; each style reinforces the character's feelings or the scene's mood in a synergistic way that reminded me of well-drawn manga. On average, though, the animation is less Ghost in the Shell and more The Triplets of Belleville on acid.

Nishi has been in love with his childhood friend Myon as long as he can remember. Since he met her when she was but a child, we can presume he loves her for more than the outrageously ample bosom she sprouts by the time we meet them in their early twenties. Nishi is shy and neurotic, though, so passive he can't express his true feelings for her, and now she's engaged to marry another guy. The three of them meet up with Myon's father in a diner to catch up over a meal when suddenly two members of the Japanese mafia drop by in search of the owner. The tension in the diner escalates, and one thing leads to another, culminating with Nishi in heaven, conversing with God. Nishi wants a second chance at life, a second chance to tell Myon how he feels. He feels so strongly he outraces divine creatures to return to the world and change his fate.

And then the movie really takes a turn for the bizarre. What seems like a straightforward story transforms into almost a religious or metaphysical fable in the second half, the plotline involving the gangsters discarded like a dream. If I sound vague it's only because I don't want to ruin the story; the unexpected turns are part of the movie's joy.

***

The New York Asian Film Festival feels like an underground movie festival. The bad:

• The Anthology Film Archives Theatre, where the first half of the festival screened, is a dump of a movie theatre. The projection is too dark, the seats are uncomfortable, and the air conditioning barely works.
• The popcorn at ImaginAsian Theater, where the second half of the festival screened, feels and tastes like salty packing peanuts.
• A Venn diagram of nerdy film geeks who attend the NY Asian Film Festival and people who don't shower daily would show two circles sharing a lot of area.

The good:

• Good movie selections, on a whole.
• The ImaginAsian Theatre serves Asian snacks and drinks like Pocky and Guava Juice. Mmmm, guava juice.
• They don't show the festival's promotional commercial before every movie.
• At each screening they raffle off a few prizes before the movie starts. I won lousy DVD and $2 of Jet Li postcards, but who am I to turn a cold shoulder on a gift horse?
• One of the festival's promoters introduces the movies with breathless enthusiasm, somewhat of a welcome change from the usual dull speech from some film festival promoter explaining exactly why you should enjoy the movie you're about to see.

Team Time Trial, and my breakaway attempt

A highly competitive team time trial today, the closest ever, marred by David Zabriskie's crash near the finish. It's one of my favorite events, as I love the feeling of riding a blazing pace line with other riders. One of the things I most look forward to about going to France each year is flying through the French countryside with a couple of other riders, each taking a short turn up front. A group of riders like that can go faster than any one of the riders can alone, so a paceline like that allows you to sustain higher average speeds for longer periods of time. The feeling is exhilarating, and the formations of the professional teams resemble flocks of birds in their precision, a beautiful color-coordinated backlash of man and machine.

Photo ©: Roberto Bettini www.bettiniphoto.net

It's still not clear what happened to Zabriskie. The commentators theorized that he crossed wheels with the rider in front of him, but I haven't read any definitive account of the crash. A rider usually knows when he crosses tires with someone in front (UPDATE: Zabriskie has blamed a skipped chain). CSC is very fortunate in one sense in that they'd just come out of a corner, slowing them down just before the crash. Otherwise, I'm fairly certain that Roberts and more importantly Basso would have gone head over heels over Zabriskie. That would have lost Basso another minute or two on Armstrong (the crash was outside the 1km red flag, so Basso would not have received the protection of sharing his team's time).

Cyclists everywhere had to be wincing in empathy watching Zabriskie roll slowly to the finish line, the left side of his cycling shorts ripped open, revealing a massive patch of bloody, gravel-scored skin. As any rider knows, Zabriskie is in store for some hellaciously painful showers and several days of riding with a mixture of throbbing soreness, joint and muscle stiffness, and a sharp stinging pain. On a positive note, he's a bit lighter now, having lost some blood and skin to the road.

Team Discovery Channel set a team time trial record, averaging 54.93 kph or 34.13 mph. To sustain that for over an hour and ten minutes is absurd. Just silly fast. I'd need a long stretch of downhill to get myself up to that type of speed, and if I was lucky enough to sustain it for several minutes my heart would explode. That's assuming I could even turn over a 55-11 gearing. With a flat course and a tailwind, the conditions did not seem to favor huge time gaps, and the negligible time difference between CSC and Discovery Channel showed that to be true.

The next few days will be somewhat uneventful, as Lance and Team Discovery would prefer. They spoke of perhaps sending George up in some breaks to see if they could transfer the yellow jersey from Lance to George, but I'm skeptical. It would tire George out needlessly before the mountains. I'd love to see it happen, though. These are the least interesting stages of the Tour de France, everyone riding together to the finish, perhaps chasing down a break or two, before the sprinters amass for the insanity of the bunch sprint. The first several stages, with the team time trial and a longer than usual prologue, has probably left many riders exhausted, so riders will be more reluctant to break away the next day or two.

Tom Boonen has just been a beast this season (he won the Tour of Flanders and the fabled Paris-Roubaix), and it's just a shame Alessandro Petacchi isn't at the Tour so the two leading sprinters in the world could duel it out. That would make this first week more compelling.

***

I went for a bike ride yesterday, trying to find my away to the George Washington Bridge and across into New Jersey. I printed out a cue sheet and stowed it in a sandwich bag in my rear jersey pocket. The first time I reached for it, up in Harlem, it was gone. I may have lost it within a block or two of leaving my apartment. Finding my away across the GWB wasn't difficult, but once over to the other side, I had no idea where to go.

Though most cyclists seemed to have stayed home to avoid the auto traffic for the 4th, I managed to run across a local who talked me through a moderately hilly loop just on the other side of the bridge. He was a scrawny, stick-armed, middle-aged man with a big white beard and a deep tan, riding an old, beat-up road bike. I imagined him to be the town crazy, spotted everywhere but rarely spoken to, the kind that turns out to be a former Nobel Prize winner in the movies. He had a voice like Will Ferrell's Old Prospector from SNL.

Harlem streets are rough (literally). My rear tire flatted on the return trip. It wasn't a blowout, so I managed to drag myself home by stopping every two or three miles to put a few pumps of air in. I'll have to change that tube and find some tires more suited to shattered-glass-and-pothole complexion of New York city streets.

I didn't realize so many New Yorkers abandon the city on summer weekends, especially holiday weekends. I should have stolen away, somewhere, anywhere. I think I need a time out from the city. Riding around the city by myself and past so many families out at parks with picnic coolers and BBQs, I felt a vague sort of longing that the warm summer air always seems to stir up. A yearning for something, but I wasn't sure what.

Well, that's not exactly true. I am yearning to be in France, where my life would be as different as possible from life in Manhattan. My daily concerns on Tour de France bike vacations has always been so wonderfully circumscribed. Wake up, prep my bike clothes and equipment, eat a good breakfast, study the route map, check the bike and pump up the tires, and set off. Then you eat, stroll through quaint little French towns, watch the race finish, and choose a restaurant in which to eat a two to three hour dinner. Then it's back to bed or on to the next town.

Everything moves slower except the cyclists. People walk more slowly, meals are eaten at leisure, and one senses that everyone around them has the same, simple outlook and daily concerns. Even when I'm out for a leisurely stroll around NYC, I can't help but be swept up by the current of suits streaming in both directions on sidewalks and subway. People here are like molecules compressed into a low volume space, oscillating at higher speeds under the pressure. Compare it to Los Angeles, a horizontal city as opposed to New York's vertical configuration. With so much horizontal space per person, everything moves more slowly, and even those looking to speed around get caught in gridlock.

I do think that finding some routes out of Manhattan on my bike will help. My breakaway didn't quite succeed, but attack enough and one day you'll outrun the peloton. I'm going to tape that cue sheet to my forearm on my next trip.

Tour Day 1

Well, I guess Lance is in good form. His performance today was like coming out in the decisive game 7 of the World Series and knocking out the other team's starter in the first inning, or coming out in the first round of a prize fight and knocking his opponent to the canvas twice. Or like Michael Jordan reversing baseline to elude a double team against the Knicks and then throwing down on Patrick Ewing. In actually catching and passing Ullrich, Lance dealt a humiliating psychological blow to one of his chief competitors. It sounds as if Armstrong and Brunyeel and everyone in the know consider Vinokourov the chief competitor from T-Mobile anyway, but it was still a bit shocking and sad to see Ullrich actually passed in a medium length time trial (TT). Mentally, it's always easier to chase a target on a bike than to be out front, and as soon as Lance saw Jan, everyone knew what was going to happen.

(Image by famed cycling photographer Graham Watson): check out Lance's
sweet custom Bontrager rear disc wheel, covered with graphics of significance
from his life, including the number 7 and the Zodiac symbol for Cancer.

Another timely pic by Graham Watson: Armstrong lines up Ullrich.

Ullrich was fortunate to be able to mount his bike at all today. In a TT training ride yesterday, Jan was pacing behind his team station wagon when a truck cut them off. The station wagon braked hard, and so did Jan, but as anyone knows, road bike brakes suck. Jan flew through the rear window of the station wagon head first and ended up in the back seat, shattering the rear window. He's lucky to be alive.

Prologue winner Dave Zabriskie showed that his TT win in the Giro was no fluke. He rode the second fastest average speed in a TDF TT ever. Amazing! In 19km, he was putting gaining about 3 seconds a km on riders like Vino, Landis, Cancellara, Voigt, and Ullrich. On a flat TT course that's massive, requiring a large advantage in power output. The future of American cycling may not be that grim after all.

The future may be grim for Lance's Shimano rep or mechanic, though. I'd hate to be that guy. Lance came out of his pedals at the start of the TT, just as at the Dauphiné. I believe Lance still rides Shimano Dura-Ace pedals. Don't expect Lance's cleat to pop out in Tuesday's TT, or they'll be building another roadside memorial for someone.

Bill Gifford writes in Slate that the Tour de France has become a bore and suggests some ways to spice it up. The article is a bit of a mess, and it's not entirely clear what Gifford claims is boring. At first he blames the French and the course layout. He feels the template of flat stages, a time trial, followed by the mountain stages is dull. The Tour organizers have actually altered the course every year the past few years to try and make things more challenging for Armstrong, but it doesn't work because the best rider is the best rider, and Armstrong adapts to each course and turns it to his advantage. I don't think Gifford seriously considers going back to a Tour with fewer, longer stages (in the past, some stages have run nearly 300 miles and forced riders to ride on into darkness) or to a Tour with riders slogging through unpaved roads. He cites both as evidence of the good ole days of the Tour.

Then Gifford writes that the riders today are "overtrained automatons," reminiscing about colorful characters like Eddy Merckx and Jacques Anquetil, "whose ideal race preparation consisted of 'a good pheasant, some chapagne, and a woman.'" The truth is that there are colorful characters in cycling now, but a cyclist who drank and ate and didn't train to his full potential wouldn't survive in today's Tour, nor would they in most other sports.

Gifford's first suggestion is to put more mountain stages in the first week of the Tour, or insert some steeper mountains like Spain's Angliru, a mountaintop finish so steep that David Millar got off his bike a foot from the finish line and retired in protest after riding up Angliru in the rain one year. I'm fine with more mountaintop finishes, even steeper mountains, but adding these, especially in the first week of the Tour, would likely just give the Tour to Lance sooner. You'd also lose all the top sprinters, many of whom retire when the mountains arrive anyway, and I enjoy watching the huge sprinters haul ass towards the finish at some 45mph the first week.

Gifford also suggests adding more unpaved roads to the route a la Paris Roubaix. Well, the Tour added cobblestones in last year's route. By virtue of having the strongest team, Lance was out front safe while Mayo crashed and never recovered, effectively dropping out of contention that day. Gifford wants more mountains to separate the contenders from the pretenders, then asks for more unpaved roads, which just add more random accidents that might actually hurt the real contenders.

His next suggestion: lose the dope. Sure, everyone would love to see that, though that doesn't necessarily correlate with a more interesting Tour. It's just the right thing to do, but Gifford doesn't offer any proposals as to how to clean up the sport.

Lose the race radios. An interesting idea, to remove the element of on-course tactical coaching. This is how cycling used to be. It could be interesting to do so, allowing for more breakaways and forcing cyclists to rely on themselves on the road. In practicality, live television coverage means even the average spectator knows how far ahead a breakaway is, and without radios domestiques would simply have to ride back to the team car to get an update from a coach watching a live feed on television or hearing it over the cell phone from someone in a hotel room. Gifford believes this would allow more breakaway packs to stay away, which might be true, but a pack of unknowns in a breakaway has never really been all that exciting to me. A solo breakaway? Yes, that makes for good drama, and with race radios, they're all the more compelling when they succeed, which still happens at least a few times each Tour.

I agree with Gifford that the French are over-represented in the Tour. The race organizers favor French teams, even when they don't earn their spots on merit. It dilutes the field, and last year the Tour missed the flamboyant Italian sprinter Cipollini, who earned a fine in every Tour for wearing an outlandish costume of some sort.

Finally, Gifford comes to what feels like the crux of his argument: "Lance must lose." Gifford felt Lance rode defensively last year. I seem to remember Lance sprinting to a stage win over Kloden, even when he didn't need it. Asked why he hadn't just given Kloden the meaningless stage victory, Lance replied: "Pas de cadeaux." Lance won five out of the last eight stages, hardly riding defensively. I think Gifford simply doesn't like the fact that Lance dominated the Tour last year. Maybe Gifford should mail Lance a pheasant and a bottle of bubbly to share with Sheryl in the hopes of throwing the king off his game.

What the Tour needs are some challengers to push Lance in the mountains, like Pantani did in 2000. Vino, if healthy, is a lot of fun to watch, always attacking, and if Ullrich throws his support to Vinokourov, that would be a compelling storyline. Another potential adversary of not would be Iban Mayo if he survives to the mountain stages without losing too much more time and if he can find his pre-Tour form from last season. Maybe former teammates Floyd Landis or Levi Leipheimer or even Roberto Heras will attack in the mountains.

Another way to spice up the Tour might be to toss in a time trial as the final stage, as in the 1989 Tour when LeMond edged out Fignon to win by 8 seconds in the closest Tour ever. In all of Lance's Tour victories, the final stage has been ceremonial, a victory parade up and down the Champs Elysees.

The truth is, however, that Lance peaks for the Tour and is always the strongest rider coming into the race. No amount of meddling with the course will hold off the inevitable, especially when he rides on the strongest team. Contrarian sentiments are always refreshing, but Gifford's critique of the Tour lacks punch.

***

I wouldn't go so far as to call Wimbledon a bore, but the absence of the pure serve and volley game at the All England Club saddens me. On the women's side, all the top girls are baseline mashers. Since Navratilova, I can't recall a single woman other than perhaps Novotna who played the serve and volley game on grass. On the men's side, Tim Henman and Taylor Dent seem like the last of the serve and volley grasscourters. Federer actually came to net less than Hewitt in their semi. Part of this is because racket technology has increased the effectiveness of the backcourt game. You can hit a lot more winners off the ground, and increased spin and pace on passing shots and service returns decreases the effectiveness of going to net. There was something beautiful, though, about seeing guys like McEnroe and Edberg charge net and turn a huge return into an unreachable, angled volley. Maybe with so many hard hitters and big returners in the juniors, no one ever develops a serve and volley game. Grass court tennis is starting to look just like tennis at the Aussie Open or U.S. Open.

Doyle Brunson wins his 10th World Series of Poker bracelet. And, though I didn't even know she played poker until James and Angela told me she did, actress Jennifer Tilly won one, too. There are so many WSOP events that soon there will be as many WSOP bracelets going around as Livestrong bracelets.