If you've never watched cycling on TV before but were curious about whether or not it could be interesting, watch Stage 13 of this year's Tour. That's the most exciting stage of cycling I've ever seen. A little of everything. Frenchman Laurent Jalabert attempting a solo breakaway. Francois Simon trying desperately to keep the maillot jaune (yellow jersey). All the crazy race fans along the sides of the climbs. Ullrich's team isolating Armstrong and trying to put him in trouble. Kevin Livingston, once Lance's mountain lieutenant, now riding for his main rival Ullrich. Armstrong's teammates Heras and Rubiera somehow coming up with the effort to reach him at the bottom of the last climb to help launch him on his final attack. Ullrich falling off the side of a mountain on a descent. All the race leaders in a pack at the front. And of course, Armstrong's final attack to capture the stage, and his salute to the sky in memory of his fallen teammate Fabio Casartelli. Awesome stuff.
The highlight of my weekend was getting a totally unexpected guestbook signature and e-mail from Nate, my old high school buddy, debate partner, fellow New Order fan, minivan transporter, sometime tennis doubles partner, and the glue that brought some strange folks (including myself) together in high school back in Naperville. He found my website in Google, and that makes all this weblogging and website work worthwhile. I've had so many people just stumble across my website recently. It's very odd, very 21st century. But I now have many more e-mail penpals, and I'm glad to be suddenly plugged back in to all these people's lives, like Nate, Shanon, Cindy...
He filled me in on the high school reunion I missed. I guess they sent the invite home, but no one's there now to receive it. That's too bad. I was looking forward to attending my 10 year HS reunion and seeing what everyone was up to now. Fortunately, Nate's a journalist and thus a good storyteller and managed to fill me in on some folks I knew back then. A very long e-mail, I might add, which I enjoy receiving. Every since e-mail replaced paper, I've stopped receiving nice long letters. The long personal correspondence is a dying art form. They contain a personal touch that is missing in the 3-line e-mails or the one-line e-mail jokes and retorts that seem to indicate that the sender is too busy to bother with composing full sentences or punctuating or sharing anything else of substance.
Anyway, Nate, welcome back.