Rants and Revelations

One of the things that makes the Tour de France much more interesting to me than a one day spring classic is the aspect of having to save enough energy for the next day, and the day after. It’s “easy” (in relative terms) to go all out to win a stage or a jersey, it’s harder to do it in such a way that you have enough energy to go out the next day and do it again.

On the final climb of a stage full of hard climbs, Floyd Landis, sitting in a pack surrounded by multiple T-Mobile, CSC and Casse de Eparne riders but without any real support from his own Phonak squad, was attacked hard, and bonked hard. He just ran out of gas. It was painful to watch as he slowly crawled up the mountain, getting passed by riders who had been dropped by the peleton kilometers earlier.

Meanwhile up the road, Rasmussen repeated the same strategy that won him the King of the Mountains polka dot jersey last year, and went on an attack. By the second last mountain he was alone, and he looked unstoppably strong until about 5km to go on the last climb, but by then he had such a huge lead that even Sastre couldn’t catch him. Sastre had attacked out the front of the main peleton, and had gotten major time on the rest of the GC men, but only got within 1:41 of Rasmussen as the rest of the GC contenders without Landis nearly caught him back up. Leipheimer went on a daring solo attack but eventually bonked on the last climb and ended up behind the “Groupe Periero”.

Landis finishes 10 minutes out, and is now 11th overall and has basically no chance of seeing yellow again this year. But he’s not a complainer and he’s not going to make excuses, and I expect him to come out agressively and try to prove he’s still a great rider, either on the last mountain stage or in the time trial.

Periero has to be the surprise of the tour - he was 28 minutes out of GC, and didn’t look like he had a prayer, until the Phonak led peleton let his break-away get 30 minutes ahead. Once he tasted yellow, he started riding like a contender. Will he keep it? I doubt it. I have to say that it’s probably going to be Sastre or Kloden, because they’ve got the strong teams, the experience, and the ability.

Over the Armstrong Era, we’ve come to think of the Alps as the place where the favourite made time on his rivals, gaining time on most or all of his rivals by attacking on the last major climb of stages with several killer climbs, never losing time to any of them. Well, it’s a new game in town, and favourites are human too. No one team and no one man is as dominant now as Armstrong and US Postal were. That’s both sad and exciting.

Tomorrow, sometime around noon, log on the the FAA’s Special Traffic Management Program’s web site and get our arrival reservation for Oshkosh.

Ok, I guess the verdict is in on Floyd Landis strategy a few days ago of giving the yellow to Pereiro. And that verdict is “Good thinking”.

Today Phonak seemed to be doing everything right. They had one guy in the main break-away, Axel Merckx, and they had two guys near the front of the peleton protecting Landis while Periero’s Caisse d’Epargne-Illes Balears team did a lot of work. Good team strategy for a team I was almost ready to write off as not being strong enough for this task. T-Mobile was essentially playing from the same strategy book, while CSC seemed to be putting major effort into the break-away.

At the base of the last climb, the infamous Alpe D’Huez, the field basically consisted of a 15 strong break-away, and the peleton. There were some interesting names in the break-away group, including Hincapie and Damiano Cunego. As soon as the road tilted up, both groups splintered into little chunks.

A large group of GC men went off the front of the peleton, including Floyd Landis and Andreas Kloden, but NOT including Pereiro. Landis Phonak team-mates immediately attacked to launch Landis, and Kloden’s T-Mobile team-mates counter attacked Kloden. As the attacks came, the group off the front (Groupe Landis) got smaller until the only names of consequence were Landis and Kloden. And then they started picking up people from the original lead group - as they caught up to Merckx, Merckx looked a bit surprised to see Landis up with him, but gave him a bidon (water bottle) and lead Groupe Landis for a few km. But he soon fell off the pace, but then they caught up to a T-Mobile rider Mazzolinni, who did the same for Kloden as Merckx had done for Landis. Various people tried to stay with them as they stormed up the mountain, but ultimately only Garzelli and Lobato could stay with them. Up ahead, the leading group ended up down to just Cunego and Frank Schleck.

Frank Schleck ultimately attacked Cunego and finished a few seconds up on him. Then Garzelli outsprinted Landis for third. The Groupe Malliot Jaune finishes far enough back that Landis is back in yellow, and looking like he has the legs to keep it.

Besides Landis, the great interest today for me was Cunego and Kloden. A few years back, Cunego surprised everybody including his team leader Gilberto Simoni by winning the Giro D’Italia. And Kloden surprised his team leader Ullrich by finishing second overall in the Tour de France behind Armstrong but ahead of Ullrich. Both riders were considered quite young to do so well in major tours, and both of them have done bugger all in the intervening years. It’s great to see that they’ve started to get back that form from before.

In surprising news today, Tom Boonen quit the race early on, citing problems breathing. I think McEwan is pretty assured of the green jersey now.

I think this sets or ties a record for most yellow jersey changes in a race in a long time. Is that just because there isn’t a single dominant rider with a dominant team, or is it because they’re all off their drugs because of Operation Puerto? Either way, this is in many ways more interesting that the last couple of years of Armstrong dominance.

Now that I’m home, I’ve watched the two stages - or at least skimmed them.

Saturday’s was a big weird - the top placed guy in the break-away was 28 and a half minutes behind Landis in GC. Everybody expected Phonax to pick up the pace to keep the break-away within ten minutes or so, but either Phonak didn’t have the legs, or they didn’t care, or they *wanted* to give away the jersey, but they refused to step up. And while Rabobank tried to whip up the peleton, the break-away time gap actually increased towards the end. Instead, the 5 members of the break-away finished 30 minutes up, and this put Oscar Pereiro of Caisse d’Epargne-Illes Balears into the yellow jersey.

If Landis doesn’t get the yellow back, people will mark this stage as the stage when he lost it. If he does, they’ll mark this as a brilliant piece of strategy when you don’t have a team as strong as US Postal of times past.

McEwan and Boonen got good sprint points, and Friere didn’t, so he drops down to third in the green jersey competition.

Sunday’s race had a couple of moderate mountains, and the fatigue is showing. A 6 man break-away got away, but while descending the second last hill, 3 of them crashed hard. Two of the crashers left in an ambulance, out of the race, and Kessler, the guy who won on the Cauberg, managed to get back to the peleton. Kessler soon dropped off the pace, but he managed to finish before the cut-off time and will survive to continue the race. The three surviving members of the break-away attacked each other and one of them fell behind and got swept up into the peleton.

The peleton split apart on the last climb, with the main GC candidates present. Popovych tried to make a lead-out for Discovery, with Hincapie well placed behind him. But that faltered. Then Vandevelde attacked off the front. But the peleton left it too late and they didn’t actually catch the two members of the break-away, so the two finshed, then Vandevelde 3 seconds back, then the 33 members of the peleton 7 seconds back, and then the rest trickled in.

No change in the GC and green jersey competitions today, but some shake-ups in the King of the Mountains points. Last year’s champion Rassmussen moved up to second over-all. Look for him to go on a long break-away on the first big Alps stage on Tuesday to get major mountains points, while the GC contenders watch each other and maybe make an attack on the last climb up L’Alpe D’Huez.

Tomorrow is the rest day, then it’s major mountains stages for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Friday is flat and long, and Saturday is the time trial that will make or break the tour.

Sorry about the delay here. I write these things up on a mailing list based on “watching” the tour live on live.cyclingnews.com and letour.fr, then I come home and watch the race on TV, and then post a cleaned up version here on my blog. But Friday I left for a friend’s house straight from work, so I never got home to watch the race. I’m just home and getting caught after a weekend with no TV and no internet.

For the Discovery Channel team, it was good news and bad news kind of a day.

First the bad news: After the race yesterday, Paulo Salvodelli, two time winner of the Giro d’Italia and one of the better placed members of the team, was riding down from the finish to the bottom of the mountain where the team buses were, and a spectator lurched in front of him. He crashed into him and hit the pavement hard - he needed 5-10 stiches in his eyebrow. He started today, and then soon abandoned. Noval, the young Discovery team rider who had to be left behind during the team time-trail a few years ago, abandoned not long after.

Now the good news: With the bad results on the mountain yesterday, Discovery’s tactic switched to trying to get into break-aways and win stages. After a few attempts by Hincapie to get into a break, Popovych went into one. He was with Oscar Freire, which could have been a bad combination - since Popovych was 9 minutes down from Landis, Phonak would have been motivated to keep the gap down, and since Freire was near the top of the sprint competition McEwan’s Davitamon-Lotto team would have been motivated to close the gap and get McEwan into a final sprint with him. Also if the break stayed together right to the end, Freire is a better sprinter than Popovych. But everybody was too tired or trying to recover or had other plans, so while Phonak did keep the gap down to 4:25, the sprinters teams didn’t reduce it any further.

Popvych attacked with a few km to go and got free from the other three and took the stage. Friere finished 3rd 29 seconds back, and Boonen and McEwan lead in the peleton.

This moves Popovych into 10th overall, 4:15 back of Landis and maybe makes him a contender again. Landis stays in yellow.

Robbie McEwan is still in the lead of the sprinter’s points, but Friere moves into second ahead of Boonen.

If I can wax poetical for a moment, I’d have to say that today the Pyrenees are littered with the broken dreams of the riders who thought they had a chance to win this year. It was a killer stage - an HC (Hors Categorie) climb, then 4 Categorie 1 climbs, the last summitting 2km from the finish line. A killer, but evidently not the “Queen Stage”, which is what the announcers call the hardest stage of the race - they’re probably reserving that designation for next Wednesday’s stage, which has two HCs and then finishes on a Cat 1.

Mayo was the first to go - he was dragging his way up the first mountain well behind the pack, yelling at the camera motorbike to stop following him, although the motorbike was there because they could tell he was going to abandon. He eventually did in the feed zone between the second and third mountains.

On the first mountain, Leiphiemer, Cunego, Simoni and many others were getting left behind. But those three at least regrouped enough that on the second last mountain, Cunego was actually able to attack off the front for a while, although he cracked badly. But Leipheimer stuck with the group that was about 18 strong on the second last mountain, containing Landis and a bunch of other GC hopefuls. On the final climb, that group went down to 5, including Leiphiemer and Landis, and then Leiphiemer attacked and suddenly it was just him, Floyd Landis, and Denis Menchov. There is a string of little groups trailing behind them, then the “peleton” with AG2R trying to protect their yellow jersey, and some of the former GC hopefuls. But strung out behind them, some more GC hopefuls cracking hard.

Landis lost the sprint to the finish to Menchov and Leipheimer, but his time bonus for third place puts him 8 seconds up on Dessel and into the yellow.

Surprises today:
Euskatel is leaderless with Mayo abandoning. Since the finish is in Spain, near the Basque region, this is a huge disappointment for the fans.

Discovery totally melted down. Azevedo was the only bright spot, only losing 4:10 to Landis. Popovych, one of the candidates to lead the team, was over 6 minutes down. Hincapie and Salvodelli melted down entirely, losing more than 20 minutes each. I hope Hincapie and Salvodelli like carrying bottles because they aren’t going to be leading the team for the rest of this race.

Rabobank and T-Mobile are surprising me with how well they are organizing and delivering their good riders to the front of the race on the mountains. T-Mobile arrived at the tour without their leader and their best “super domestique”, so seeing them with 3 guys in an 18 man lead group is pretty amazing.

AG2R is another surprise - they worked like hell today to keep Dessil in yellow. I wonder if AG2R will work to get Dessil back in yellow for the next couple of days.

Phonak is a surprise and a disappointment. The one rider they had with Landis on the first mountain, Robbie Hunter, is not their best climber, and it was expected that their mountain specialists would stick with Landis but they were nowhere to be seen. Mind you, last year Discovery did the same thing - leaving Armstrong alone whenever he was attacked on the mountains. Maybe you don’t really need help if you’re good enough.

The next three days are “lumpy” stages, which might end in bunch sprints if the sprinter’s teams are not too tired from trying to get over the mountains. Small break-aways might succeed because of that and because of the small hills on the day. Hopefully Phonak won’t tire themselves out trying to defend the yellow jersey. The next important mountain stage is Tuesday which finishes up L’Alpe D’Huez.

Cyclingnews.com says that they purposely didn’t have the mountain stages on the weekends this year because they were getting too crowded with spectators and the organizers were worried that there were going to be more crashes and more spectators interfering with riders.

First mountain stage, and it was worth the wait!

As predicted, the peleton fractured into pieces on the first mountain. There were 20 or so riders back in the “sprinters bus” including one of the GC favourites, Iban Mayo. I guess his dreams of GC are over. Other riders who didn’t seem to have what it takes in the mountains but who’ve managed to get back into the peleton on the long flats include Levi Leipheimer and yellow jersey wearer Sergei Gonchar, and my hero from the Giro a few years back, Cunego.

Gonchar is definitely *not* T-Mobile’s preferred leader - his team was setting tempo on both of the major climbs in spite of the fact that it was causing him to drop off the back of the peleton. If he’d really been the leader, they would have either slacked off or sent somebody back for him. Instead, they had him carrying bottles, and made him take a pull up front for part of the downhill drag into the finish. I guess they’re dedicating themselves to Kloden or Rogers.

Cyril Dessel took yellow by being one of two survivors of a group that got way ahead and stayed ahead - the two man break-away was leading by nine and a half minutes with 5km to go, but they were fighting each other for the stage win and so ended up finishing 7:23 up on the peleton. He’ll also have the polka dot jersey for the “King of the Mountains”. He’s likely to lose both of them in the next two days as other opportunistic breaks go up the mountains.

Freire, Zabel and Bennati are in the peleton while McEwan and Boonen were in the sprinters bus, so yesterday’s stage winner and those others will gain some ground in the green jersey competition, but not enough to wear it yet.

Tomorrow is another mountainous stage, but this time it finishes up a long climb. The announcers don’t seem to agree with me, but I would expect the GC contenders to have a go at getting some time on each other tomorrow, since it finishes with a long climb. An attack on the mountain, but with no downhill to recover and regroup, would be a great opportunity to stir things up. Friday, Saturday and Sunday are not so much flat as “lumpy”, but nothing great is going to happen to the GC on those days. Monday is another rest day, and then Tuesday is a mountain stage that finishes on the famous Alpe D’Huez.

Another flat stage, another 3 man break-away caught with a few km to go, and another bunch sprint. All as everybody predicted. The surprise for me was Oscar Freire winning his second sprint of the Tour. Robbie McEwan was about 5cm behind in second. Robbie made an amazing cut as he was boxed in behind Boonen and Zabel on the right side of the road, and suddenly zipped over behind 5 riders, and attempted to come around Freire. In spite of the extra distance he had to do to make that zip, he nearly made it too. Aging former sprint star Eric Zabel spoiled Tom Boonen’s day by coming in third just ahead of Boonen, so Boonen ended up getting 6 fewer points than McEwan rather than 4.

McEwan’s lead on the green jersey competition is now 23 points. We’ve got a couple of days of mountains now, so he’ll get to sit at the back of the race in the “sprinters bus”. The “sprinters bus” is a pack of riders whose only aim on the day is finishing before the cut-off time so they don’t get disqualified.

Tomorrow’s mountain stage has an HC climb, then a Cat 1, then mostly downhill for 40km to the finish. The climbs will probably break the peleton into chunks, with the main GC guys watching each other and a few opportunistic breaks going up the road (and the sprinters falling off the back). I wouldn’t be too surprised if the long down-hill means that the chunks will re-coalesce into bigger packs - maybe the lead couple of breaks will get away or maybe not, but you can bet that Landis, Gonchar, Hincapie, Salvodeli, Kloden and the rest of the GC contenders will finish together.

Ok, I didn’t think I’d be posting about the Tour today either. But today I have another reason to respect Floyd Landis.

Floyd has been doing great this year - he won 3 major races before the Tour, and now he’s a minute out of the yellow jersey after a great performance in the first individual time trial. He’s always had a reputation for hard work and for never making excuses or complaining. But now I find he’s a fellow chronic pain sufferer. He’s just admitted that for 4 years he’s been suffering from osteonecrosis in his hip, and he’s going for hip replacement surgery soon after the Tour (to maximize his recovery time for next year’s Tour). The New York Times has two stories, here and here. (Registration required, use BugMeNot.)

One of the interesting facts I learned from the articles: his extreme forward position on the seat on his time trial bike was chosen to create a wider angle between his trunk and his femur to help his hip work.

Some of the quotes from the articles:

He walks with a limp. He sits as often as possible and cannot cross his right leg over his left. He takes elevators instead of stairs, valet-parks at the shopping mall and sometimes has difficulty sleeping. Running is out of the question. Like many of the 216,000 Americans who will receive hip replacements this year, his life is defined by chronic, debilitating pain.

Yeah, I can relate.

Later, back at his house, Landis would finally open up a little about the pain. He would say: “Everybody thinks you can overcome pain if you want to enough, and let me tell you, you can’t. This isn’t some Jean-Claude Van Damme movie, where somebody can get shot in the leg and keep going. There’s pain that makes me stop, makes everybody stop.”

Here’s hoping you don’t have to stop, Floyd.

Ok, that was a surprise. The stage was flat enough that the sprinters teams *could* have controlled the field and made a bunch sprint. But it looks like Boonen decided that his team had done enough work this week and waited for another sprinter’s team to step up, and none of them did.

Instead Phonak, Floyd Landis’ team, acted like the “senior team” like US Postal/Discovery has in the past, and made pace most of the day. But Phonak wasn’t concerned with catching the six man break away, so they didn’t go any faster than they had to. Eventually some of the sprinter teams started to step up, but it was too late - with 30km to go, they started to close the gap, but Calzati attacked off break-away, nobody went with him, and he stayed away and won. Two more of the break-away tried to bridge up to Calzati but they left it too late and couldn’t make it.

The surprise of the break-away is Kessler, who won off the top of the Cauberg a few days ago. He was in the break-away, but just sitting on, never taking a turn at front. And yet, he didn’t use that energy to chase either of the attacks off the break-away and ended up being absorbed back into the peleton along with the other two.

Behind the two break-away groups, there was a bunch sprint and once again Robbie McEwan out sprinted the rest of the sprinters and got some more lead in the green jersey. No significant change in the GC.

Tomorrow is a rest day, then Tuesday is another dead flat stage on the coast of Bordeaux. Wednesday is the first mountain stage, although it has a long downhill finish.

This is by far the biggest venue we’ve ever seen GBS play. That has good points and bad points. Obviously the view and sound wasn’t as good. But the energy level of the crowd was pretty amazing - I can see why the band lives for this sort of thing. Although I have to say I don’t think the Toronto crowd were all die-hard fans the way the Water Street Music Hall crowds were. Most of them didn’t even know the words to “Rant and Roar”!

The opening act wasn’t bad, except they didn’t know when to quit. They said they were doing a last couple of songs, and everybody cheered, but then about 3 songs later they said they were doing the last song. And then afterwards, they did another. And then when everybody cheered the announcement that they were going off to let Great Big Sea come out, they did the same two songs again as a medley. And again! I yelled out “How can we miss you if you won’t go away”, which a few people around me found amusing.

GBS didn’t do all the same songs they did at Water Street. For instance they left off some of the songs from The Hard and The Easy, their latest album. I can’t figure out if they added any in, but the shows were probably the same length. But they did do that bizarre medely of popular songs from the past 30 years. It’s scary how few of them I know the words.

Once again I left a Great Big Sea concert hoarse from singing along, with my knees sore as hell from jumping up and down, and with my ears ringing. And I love it.

Saturday, I flew back from Buttonville to Rochester, and then back to Buttonville.

For the flight back, I filed direct, but I was cleared “Buttonville One, vectors to V252 AIRCO V31″. Ok, that’s not too different than one I frequently got in the past coming back from Oshawa, so it was easy to program into the GPS. Taking off, Buttonville tower and then Toronto Approach keep you under 3000 ft until you’re a bit off-shore, and then they start you up to your filed altitude (9000 ft). But then it’s up to altitude and “direct BULGE” (BULGE is a waypoint on V252). And before you even get to BULGE, they clear you direct Rochester and switch you over to Buffalo approach.

It was a pretty uneventful flight - a few clouds around 7000 feet, bright sunshine, summer haze. After they switched me over to Rochester Approach, he was talking to two aircraft “DEMO 1″ and “DEMO 2″. I had no idea what that was, although maybe I should have clued in as the controller asked one of the planes if it was a flight of two or not. But as I was finally getting a descent after being sent over the approach end of runway 22 at 5000 feet, I heard him clear “DEMO 2″ for a overhead break. An overhead break is a military approach, and so I finally clued in that these guys were military.

As I turned final to 25, I saw “DEMO 2″ doing his overhead break for runway 22. It was an F-15. Very cool. I timed my touch down so that I landed almost exactly the same time as him.

It was after I taxied to the customs shack that I discovered a disasterous mistake - in my haste to get to the airport, I’d forgotten to bring my green card and passport, which were sitting in my laptop bag back at my dad’s house. And worse luck, I got the same customs guy I got two weeks ago. Last year every time I came back from Canada, it was always the same guy, and after 2 or 3 trips he started recognizing me and just asking for my CF-178 (US Customs Arrival Report form) and then leaving. But this new guy seems like a real stickler for the rules, and gives me quite a thorough questioning each time. So this time, the fact that I’d forgotten my id, combined with the fact that I was using a CF-178 that I’d pre-filled and printed out a pile of them two years ago so it had my old address on them, and he was threatening to call the Border Patrol and have them haul me off in handcuffs. Eventually he relented and let me go.

I picked up Laura and flew back to Buttonville. I got the same route as I’d been given on Friday, so it was programmed into the GPS already. And once again, I was given direct to Buttonville long before I got to LINNG, although the controller suggested that I go direct to the NDB KZ instead of the airport CYKZ, because that would put me on downwind for the runway in use. That worked out pretty well, and this time I managed to get slowed down well in advance so I didn’t end up running up on the guy ahead of me and landed with no incidents. The tower called me out as traffic saying I was “over the cathedral” and sure enough there was a very odd looking cathedral-like building in the middle of no-where.

Customs was another pain in the ass - I’d tried calling CANPASS for my arrival from my cell phone, and the call kept getting dropped while I was on hold. So I went into the FBO to call, and Laura, because I had to get her to get out of the plane so that I could get out (stupid Pipers with their only door on the passenger side), followed me in. I wasn’t thinking, and I should have told her to wait by the plane, although since they send somebody out so rarely, I figured it didn’t matter. So I called CANPASS and got told that they were going to meet me. Oh oh - I told Laura to get back out to the plane. I followed her after establishing where the customs agents were and making sure they knew where I was.

The customs agents were annoyed at me for letting Laura leave the plane, and for not having my id, but they were still friendlier than the guy in Rochester.

We got on the road, and discovered that we’d have time to meet Vicki and the rest of the group to travel to the concert together.

Today was the return flight. Leaving the restaurant after breakfast, I noticed my pulse racing, and I started to worry that the waitress had given me regular coke instead of diet coke. But then I wasn’t sure if the racing pulse wasn’t because of worry that I’d gotten the wrong drink. But confirmation that I *had* gotten the sugar came when I suddenly got a massive headache. Well, good thing it’s a short flight.

I got the same route clearance as yesterday, and events unfolded much the same. We climbed up through some clouds on the way up, and then at the south shore of the lake we had to descend through a lot more - a scattered to broken layer of cumulus that went from 9000 all the way down to 5000. The turbulence in the clouds combined with my blistering headache gave me some motion sickness. Fortunately by that time I’d been cleared “direct Rochester” and we only had 10 minutes on the ETA on the GPS.

We made it home without me having to use a barf bag, much to my relief, and met the same customs guy as yesterday. And while we had all the documentation (and I’d remember to cross out the incorrect home address but forgotten that my pilots license number had changed too), he grilled us pretty heavily. I’m sure he was hoping to catch us out on some inconsistency in our stories. He also opened Laura and Vicki’s bags, but not mine. Eventually he cleared us, and Vicki and Laura went off to the Corn Hill Festival while I put the plane away.

It’s been 4 hours since I landed, and I still have the headache and queasy feeling. Man, that sucks. One of these days I’ll learn and only drink bottled soft drinks.

The first individual time trial. And what a day! Full of personal ups and downs. I was out of town and really busy, so this will be a short one.

Heart ache for Bobby Julrich, the leader of CSC since Basso was suspended - he crashed on a corner and was taken to
hospital with a suspected broken wrist. His Tour is over. I guess CSC will have to rely on Sastre to carry their flag.

Disappointment for most of the “big men”, especially the big Americans, who did badly on the day - Levi Leipheimer way, way, way down, Zabriske not showing his normal TT prowess, Hincapie down about 25th or so.

The two stars of the day where Sergei Gonchar who blistered around the course and won by over a minute, and Floyd Landis who was the best of the rest finishing second on the day and making it look more and more certain that he’s going to be on the podium in Paris.

Landis was told by UCI to change the position of his aero bars just before the start. I’m not sure if that was a factor, but his handle bars broke soon after out on the course and he had to change bikes, losing a good 15-20 seconds. What a machine to have a distraction like that, have to ride in a different position than what you practiced, and still end up second on the day!

T-Mobile is defying everybody who thought that the loss of Ullrich would kill them - they’ve got several people up near the top of the GC now, including Kloden who has finished second overall before. If he’s recovered the form he was showing that year (and hasn’t shown since), he could be back on the podium this year.

Discovery seems to have forgotten how to TT without Lance there, with their 3 top men all 2+ minutes down.

Another sprinters day tomorrow. Boonen worked too hard today, TTing more like a yellow jersey owner than a green jersey hopeful, so I expect Robbie McEwan or Thor Hushovd to win tomorrow.

As mentioned in an earlier post, this weekend Vicki and I were flying over to Oshawa.

However, it turns out that Oshawa doesn’t have customs service after 4:30 or something on Fridays, and none on the weekends. And while I’ve registered with Canpass, Vicki and Laura aren’t. So that means that we had to fly into Buttonville instead of Oshawa.

This was my first flight in the Dakota since we installed the GPS in it. That was cool. I tried filing direct, but they gave me V31 LINNG then direct. Ok, only one intermediate waypoint. And about 3/4 of the way to LINNG they told me to go direct. I guess they wanted us to clear one of the MOAs or the CYA on the direct route.

Man, what a difference in activity level at Buttonville as compared to Oshawa. When we were turned over to the tower, we were number 3 for landing. There was a Bonanza in front of us, and I never thought I’d have trouble slowing down to the speed of a Bonanza but this guy was in no hurry. We ended up crossing the threshold while he was still on the runway so I had to do a go-around. Next time around, and I was still #3, this time behind a Cessna. But I slowed the plane down slower than I normally go and hung out all the flaps, and he got off the runway nice and quickly, so this time we landed.

Customs cleared us over the phone (and why couldn’t they do that at Oshawa, I ask?) and away we went. The car rental place had big signs up warning of dire charges if we went on 407, so we struck off down to the 401 and got stuck in the Friday evening “rush”. It only took 50 minutes to fly to Buttonville, and 1:15 to drive from Buttonville to Oshawa. We probably should have just cleared customs at Buttonville and then flown on to Oshawa.

Tomorrow there is some big street festival in the middle of downtown, and also the Molson Grand Prix at the Exhibition. That’s going to make driving to Ontario Place utterly impossible, so I’ve had to move up all the schedules for flying back and picking up Laura. Vicki and everybody here are going to take the GO train from Pickering, and Laura and I will go from Buttonville to the nearest TTC subway stop and take the train in. According to the GO transit web site, there is going to be a special route they have to follow from the GO Exhibition stop to Ontario Place. Hopefully it won’t be too confusing.

Another flat stage again today. There was a huge break-away, but since it was joined by Thor Hushovd and Tom Boonen, the other sprinter’s teams had to chase it down, and they did. Then three broke away, and were allowed some free reign until they were inevitably chased down and caught a few km from the finish.

Looked like Tom Boonen was finally getting a good lead-out this time, but Robbie McEwan did his usual trick of coming out of no-where and winning. He’s won three of the first six stages, a pretty amazing result. And his time bonuses put him second on GC, but of course that won’t last with tomorrow’s time trial. Boonen retains yellow for another day with a 3rd place finish.

About the most interesting news of the day was that one of the riders had been fined because on Wednesday, in the middle of the peleton, he’d hauled off and punched another rider in the face. I would have loved to know what they were talking about. Jens Voigt said in an interview on a German web site that everybody started yelling at them both because they were in danger of causing a crash, and the guy who got punched went and complained to the race commissionaire. Kind of a different definition of “attacking the field”.

Tomorrow’s individual time trial should be where we see if Hincapie or Landis have what it takes to win. Can’t wait.