after the race today me and some Bellas were sitting on some rocks eating burgers. we got to talking about underpants. seems a certain Bella sometimes puts her leg through the wrong hole and ends up wearing the underpants that way till she notices something's not quite in order. and then linda announces that i flip my underpants inside out to get extra mileage --which is so not true and i wished she'd stop telling people this. then linda tells us how she was at a meeting one day and looked down at her cargo pants and wondered how come the back pockets were in the front, sitting on her belly. so from there we naturally started talking personality types and how bike racers are pretty much Type A personalities. very focused, driven to perfection and perhaps slightly overly aggressive. at this point, the Bella with the misaligned underpants announced she wasn't a type A which, not to be unkind or anything, wasn't a stop-the-presses kind of statement. and i have to admit i'm not a type A either, more of a Type P, or perhaps even a W, far from the A action, near the alphabet rump. linda's more of a type A and she definitely gets things done. we travelled to Rome a few years ago. we toured the sistine chapel -- let's just say, i got a little winded from the pace she was setting. but i like this about her. and it's good for me. but still sometimes, i think my P-ness doesn't fit well with the bike racing. i mean i can be aggressive and fight for a wheel and all that but come May (which is usually the end of my season which starts late April) my feeble A imitation starts to crumple. the round edges of the P start to appear and pretty soon, i'm thinking wouldn't it be nice to go right at the bottom of this hill where the man in the orange vest is flagging everyone to the left. and that's where i'm at right now. i want to put the heart rate monitor away, stuff that damn trainer under the bed with the dried up cat barf and call it a season. i want to go on long lazy bike rides and not think about competition or placings. i want to be one with the P.

this post has a lot to do with cat barf, and nothing to do with the TdF

i'm just gonna say it. i am fed up with the stuff. it's rampant in our home. just when i think i've cleaned it all up, there it is again -- a chunky gob in the middle of the carpet, a runny, sticky sliminess on the bottom of my foot. we have a rule, linda and I, "you see, it you clean it." but she's not much help in the matter.

"did you get that spot over there? and there? and there?" she asks lazily as i am down on my hands and knees with paper towel and lysol.

what to do? i don't really know. i mean is it really possible to stop cats from barfing? even if i catch minnie mid-hurl and toss him off a newly cleaned bedspread to the safety of the hardwood floor, he'll still go right on barfing. and once he's upchucked a perfectly good 1/2 can of organic salmon and caviar wet-food and you say, "no, minnie! no! don't barf. barfing is bad!" he doesn't get it. he'll go right ahead and do it the next time underneath the bed where i can't reach it easily. and sure i could clean it up right then, but why, why? when it'll dry up on its own. does that make me part of the problem? i wonder.

so maybe, there's really no stopping them. i suppose i could monitor them all day long and make sure they don't barf. i could follow daisy from the bed to the chair, from the chair to the bed, from the bed to the chair but that's not right. and dull. or, i could hide around the corner and sneak up on them when they least expect it, to catch them in the act - gagging, drooling a little pre-barf spittle (as is their way). but daisy is delicate. so very delicate. fluff scares her. and minnie is old and pissy. he's likely to latch onto my leg if i jump out at him unexpected like that.

i suspect there's just no way to stop the barfing. it's a shame really.

Enablers?

"Well he's wonderful isn't he?"


"He is riding like a man possessed today."


"A very popular man - everybody loves a fighter."

"That's not knowing him. Not knowing the courage that he shows."

"He did everything right for the Tour de France this year."

"So dedicated has been his approach this year; that's why he won't give up."

"They care about what this man has done for the sport!"

"The man who refuses to die."

linda and I had a hard, hard ride today. We did three, six minute hard efforts up hill. five four minute flat efforts. seven 30 second sprints into the wind and then....

ha, right. we got on our bikes, rode half a block then said let's go have a mojito.

it's that time of the year. for me at least. so hard to think about training.

August and all the next months are my all time favorite months of the year. there's a moment when I can feel fall coming. it's the way a jet sounds in the sky, or the shadow on the pavement...love, love it.

I know, it's only July.
Linda was zonked out cold tonight. C-O-L-D. snoring her snores. but all I had to say was "Vino!" and she got her little kazahk ass out of bed and stumbled to the tv. she wanted to see him cry.

boo-hoo.

i ate half a bar of chocolate in little tiny bites tonight. i think it's better if you eat it like that. it gets dispersed more evenly then. doesn't go all to the ass. some's gone to my elbow. i can feel it.

what else?

I made fava bean pasta sauce last night. What a dreadful meal. Linda was so hungry she ate it and then put her plate in the sink and said, "you trying to kill us?" and walked off.

now there's gratitude for ya.