Thursday, July 27, 2006

now that's cheatin

this made me laugh:

The last time a final yellow jersey was disqualified
from the race was in 1904 when defending champion
Maurice Garin was stripped of his title when it was
judged he had taken a train during the race, rather than completing the full route.



who amongst us has not considered hopping on a train during a hard, hard race?

say it isn't so

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

that's not right


found this lovely pic on Saul Raisin's website. nice pic of him and Tommy D. going up Sierra Road during the Tour of California. funny, looks a lot like the picture Linda took and I sent in an email to him about a month ago... to which he never responded. and lookee here! what's that beneath the pic?

Content copyright SaulRaisin.com © 2006


that's not right.

Friday, July 21, 2006

Scotland, here we come

this is my auntie margaret in Paisley, Scotland. we're going to visit her August 2nd. she's not doing well. her memory is shot. she forgets things very quickly. when we saw her last year and took her to a pub for a meal she asked if we were going to order looking around for a menu. the waiter had just taken her order for scampi and chips. she has a good appetite and cleaned the plate.

we have to hold onto her elbow when we walk; otherwise she'd just wander off looking into all the shop windows. she ventured into this boutique. she wanted to buy us something. I found the bunny ears and she was more than happy to pose for a picture.

She and her good friend for many years, Mavis, travelled all over the world together. Mavis is tough and loses her patience with Margaret. we were hanging out with the two of them waiting to get picked up by Mavis' brother Stuart. we were chatting and chatting but it was getting late, past the time for Stuart to arrive. Margaret interrupted our conversation and asked, "will we be having a meal?" then fished around in her purse for a brush to brush her voluminous swirls of grey hair. "won't do any good," Mavis said. You can see from the photo that Mavis had a point.

So now after i've been slaviing away at the stove reheating leftovers and linda is blogging or suddenly degreasing her bike chain, I will ask, "will we be having a meal?"

but now they're both not doing well. Margaret is being put into a home and mavis also is losing her memory. mavis told us we should do all the travelling we can now.

don't wait.

i am so tired from the Tour

i could go to sleep right now at my desk and most likely no one here at work would notice.

one day, in fact, i went to go talk to my supervisor in her cube. i usually do a small hop in the air about half a foot or so to get a glimpse of the top of her head before entering. this day i didn't see any orange sprouts so i turned the corner and walked into her cube. i nearly stepped on her face. there she was stretched out on the floor a nappin. "Oh" she said, "people don't usually come back this far." which made me wonder does she do this often?

I also shared an office at one time with a woman, who had several small, fat children and a real lout for a husband. his name was Auggie. they had no money and were always fighting and looking for spare change to buy Chicken McNuggets for dinner. she was tired all the time. she'd come into work a good forty minutes late and plop down in her chair and just sit there with her coat still on and her purse hanging off her arm, not saying nothing for a while. then she'd pick up the phone and yak and yak and yak --to her cousin, to her mother, to her brother's ex-wife, to anyone who would listen -- for the rest of the morning until it was time for lunch. she'd would then sift through the fluff and long lost tampons in the bottom of her purse for spare change to buy a heaping mound of nachos that would coat the small office with a greasy, cheesy film.

after lunch she'd begin working. she was not bright. she was very dumb. my supervisor, when she was not napping, would help her out as best she could. she bought her a dictionary. i'd often see the dictionary on her desk beneath a gallon of Coke. one day she too fell asleep and snored. this is the truth. she had a delicate snore considering her enormous mass. the kind of snore that i could put up with in a loved one -- but not in a co-worker. i reached for my stapler and banged it on my desk. she jerked awake, slurped some coke and got on the horn to her father in-law’s ex-wife, Patty in Yuba City.

so perhaps i will put my noggin on the desk and pass out. g'night

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Le Figaro


Cyclisme, Tour de France - Journal du Tour, 17e étape, Retour
Florian Egly, Sport24.com


Okay, here goes. Let's see if I retained anything from all those French classes in school:

Incroyable Floyd Landis!

Floyd Landis is incredible! (heh, piece of gateaux)


Telle la bête blessée, l’Américain, meurtri, touché au plus profond de sa chair après une journée noire sur les pentes de la Toussuire, a fait preuve d’une réaction d’orgueil incroyable pour écrire l’une des plus belles pages de l’histoire du Tour de France.

Er, okay, little harder now...something, something...something American!..something profound!...sa chair (his chair? can't be right, moving along)...something incredible again (frenchies certainly like that word)...something written...okay, okay. I think i got it:

One of the most beautiful pages written in the history of the TDF.
(written in a chair, perhaps? okay scratch that)

so there you have it. Eight years of public school French.

Incroyable!

Please! Will someone get me a hanky!

i don't feel so doofy that a tiny bit of moisture formed in the corners of my eye sockets this morning watching floyd.

paul and phil looked like they were a tad choked up too. don't you think?

Monday, July 17, 2006

my prediction for tomorrow's stage

I have been told to post my prediction tonight because nobody will care tomorrow. i do not think anyone will care anyday, but here we go:

if there's a break i think it might be cunego or levi otherwise it'll be menchov....

there, i said it.

and i'm sticking to it.

unless maybe it's Chechu...now where did i come up with that?

And Minnie wants Jan because they have the same color hair.

And Daisy wants Barry Bonds

Place yer bets!


okay, i'll admit it, i don't know crap and i really have no idea who's gonna win tomorrow. Linda however, has her print out of the GC and is flipping through it, wetting her finger as she turns pages. That girl knows her stuff. as a wee lass she went to baseball games and kept track of all the plays in her playbook.

We were at a Giant's game this summer. we don't go very often and mostly i go for the garlic fries. I also like to look at the crowd through the binoculars watching some stranger clear across the field sitting drinking their beer. Or, I'll just aim the lens straight up at the sky and try to catch birds zooming around. "E6 - that's an E6" Linda nudges me glancing curiously at the binoculars aimed skyward.

we're very different. we'll be watching the Tour listening to phil, paul, bob and al blathering on and i'll be thinking, i bet bob would look better if he shaved his hair off, not all the way like Levi, but with a little stubble kind of like Garzelli and Linda will ask (because her hearing is not the best) "who quit?" or "what did they just say?" and I will have no idea. none t'all.

so go checkout Linda's blog if you want some real solid Tour predictions based on hardcore data and real analysis.

but seriously, don't you think bob should lose the hair?

Saturday, July 15, 2006

CSC: Cats Say Cheese




...we like dressing up like bike geeks XBunny...

Jens Voight saved the Tour for CSC today...

Besides the fact that Oscar Periero can *climb* pretty well, I think it was a good move to give Illes Balears the jersey. Phonak looked weak in the Pyrenees so maybe this will give them a break in the Alps. At least, I hope so.

*at least he did in 2005 and before OP 2006...

Friday, July 14, 2006

Commercials of the TdF

"Here's to Men. To guys who want to take longer drives with fewer pit stops....to guys that want to spend less time in the bathroom and more time fishing!"

Is that oddest copy? What about that stream o pee in the pic?

And what what about the guys who want to spend more time in the bathroom and less time fishing? Hey you bathroom guys -- here's to you!

And because I had little going on at work, I did a search for the commercial on Yahoo! apparently some photogeeks on photo.net have their own issues with the commercial. One states:

"In one of the shots, two of them are looking at the back of a Leica M, as if it were a digicam."

Jesus, how did that get past the copy editor??

Another responds:

"I could be wrong but the camera looked more like a Zeiss Ikon rather than a Leica."

People, people, people!


Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Love means never having to say you're sorry

uh, so not true....sorry, sorry, sorry.
what was I thinking?

anyhow this was one of my favorite movies as a teenager. I thought Ali MacGraw was the bees knees. And oh how I cried and cried! so young! why did she have to die?

And thank you so much VB and OV for the Sidi order info!! Linda's gonna
get right on it.

Phew!

Sunday, July 09, 2006

KOM...





mountain goats can really climb, but no spotted jersey for this one





definitely not this catwon winner







and not this one either, but he sure is cute all decked out in spots...

le Tour



...tomorrow's a rest day...yea, I can sleep in.

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

happy 4th!


in honor of America's birthday celebration today, I've decided to post a picture from our trip to Paris last year. No mention of the 4th of July celebrations would be complete without a tip to our fine president, George Bush. So here's to you George.

That's genuine fraiche poodle poo!