Author: Paul Tomblin

Thoughts on the Tour

When they initially announced the route of this year’s tour, I knew that Andy Schleck wouldn’t be winning it. That was before Nissan-Radio Shack-Trek turned out to be the biggest disappointment of the entire season, never really getting any good results through the spring. Other than Fabian Cancellara’s prologue and winning the team category, they’ve really been a team in complete disarray and it’s shown. I have heard rumours that they won’t be around next year, and that isn’t at all surprising after all the bickering and infighting in the team.

I don’t know if Frank Schleck’s positive test was some sort of sabotage, or just the fact that with Bryneel occupied elsewhere, they made a mistake in their doping program. Schleck’s team mate Chris Horner wrote that when you’re not the biggest team in the race or not one of the top contenders, you *do* sometimes end up drinking from those bottles that spectators try to hold out to the riders – the guys you see on TV sometimes take them and dump them over their heads to cool off, but they never drink them because you never know whether it’s fresh water or water from the streams beside the road, which are probably half beer fueled piss by the time the riders get up there. And as the tacks on the road proved, there are people out there willing to sabotage the race. I could easily see somebody putting drugs in their bottles and offering them to riders they dislike. On the other hand, as I see stages being won by men who’ve served two year suspensions for doping, I wonder if we’re even yet seeing a clean race. I want to see an end to doping, but I suspect while we’ve still got team managers who admitted that they doped when they rode in the tour, I don’t think it’s going to happen.

I’d hoped that Cadel Evans less than perfect showing in the Dauphine was just him getting into form to peak for the Tour, but it was obvious when the Tour hit the Alps that he just wasn’t as good as he was last year. I wanted to see him repeat, but that’s racing for you. If you’re not perfect at the Tour, you’ve going to get beaten by somebody who is.

Even before the Tour, Bradley Wiggens and Sky Team looked like a team dedicated to and perfectly capable of being as dominant in GC as they ended up being. But I really wondered why they wanted Mark Cavendish or why Mark Cavendish wanted to be on Sky. We knew he wouldn’t get the lead-out train like he had for his winning seasons at HTC Highroad/HTC Columbia. He proved early on he could win as a scrambler like a Robbie McEwan, and be he also proved that not being a priority for your team can end up with you being in a pile of riders in the road with a broken helmet. Fortunately his team decided they were comfortable enough on GC that they could give him a decent lead-out on Stages 18 and 20. But I wonder if his reason for joining Sky wasn’t more about the Olympics than the Tour? Certainly not being the focus of his team’s efforts meant he wasn’t expected to get the Green Jersey, and it gives him a chance to ride with other British riders who he’ll probably be riding with at the Olympics. Wiggens and Froome could very well end up leading him out to a sprint finish in the Olympic road race.

No offence to Wiggens and Froome, but I miss the slashing attacks and mountain top finishes of the Armstrong and Contador eras. This year seemed more like the Indurain era, where everything was predicated on not losing any time in the mountains in order to win it on the time trials, and I’m sorry, but time trials are boring. Maybe next year they’ll have more mountains, and it will be Froome’s turn to win?

I was disappointed that Ryder Hesjedahl crashed out of the Tour. Nobody is ever going to win the Tour and the Giro in the same year in this era, but it would have been great to see how he did against Nibali and the others who did both.

Sure, I’ll get right on that

A guy I know has started a new micropayments web site called “Kachingle”. It’s a pretty cool idea – you sign up and install a browser plug-in, and they use that plug-in to allow you to say you want to “kachingle” web sites that you think need some money, and once you’ve signed up to kachingle a site, they track how often you visit that site. At the end of the month, they take $5 out of your paypal account, and distribute it to the owners of the sites you’re kachingling, divided proportionally to the number of times you visit them. I have firmly believed for some time now that the web needs a micropayment scheme that works, and if this hits critical mass it would be an awesome way to do it.

However, right now it’s in the growing stages, and there aren’t very many people using it. Which means that sites like this blog don’t exactly make enough money to retire on it. Here’s my latest statement.

I have to love the juxtaposition of the amount ($0.08) and Paypal’s glowing description of what I can do with that 8 cents. “Spend the money online at thousands of stores that accept PayPal”? I bet not many of them sell things that are 8 cents including shipping and handling.

Went for a paddle

This morning I went for a little paddle at Bay Creek in my Thunderbolt. Last week I went for a paddle at Dan’s in my surf ski, but it was too early – I had to stop paddling because my shoulder was sore. This time, I had to stop paddling because I’m a fat out of shape lump. I made about a mile, in about 15 minutes (so it took me nearly twice as long as it would have taken me when I was in shape). I didn’t actually feel any soreness except one little catch when I picked up my boat. And I’m still feeling ok now, 12 hours later. Fingers crossed that it stays that way. If I don’t have any contra-indications, I would like to try another paddle next weekend. (Yeah, I’d like to go earlier, but I’ve got to do this slowly and carefully.)

Am I the only person who thinks this way?

I have a hybrid car, which gives a constant read-out of your average fuel economy, as well as giving you little visual indicators while you’re driving of whether you’re driving it “right” (upshift/downshift indicators, and a big glowing ring around the tach which goes from green to blue if you rev higher or accelerate faster) and when you turn off the car, you get a bar graph showing how economically you drove it, as well as “achievements” and “levels” if you’ve been driving economically for a while.

But like all cars, your average fuel economy for the trip is going to be higher for a longer trip than a shorter one, because the first 5-10 minutes of the trip is warming up the engine and getting the cabin up to the right temperature, etc. So when I’m going for a short trip, like going out for lunch, and trying to choose between two destinations, I have this internal dialog where I first argue for the longer trip to keep the average fuel economy up, but then I have to forcibly remind myself that sure the average is higher, but so is the total fuel burn and it makes no sense to burn more gas just to get a better average.

Somebody told me a while ago that I have an “external locus of control”. I think I’m just a geek.

Fuck you, Officer McDowell, Parking Authority of Baltimore City “meter maid”

So last night I went out to dinner with JoAnne and her husband hPhil. They suggested an Irish pub down in the historic “Fells Point” area in the harbour area. There was a bit of traffic getting there, and lots more traffic in the area. But I lucked out with a parking space very close to the pub, in front of another pub. I quickly strode over to the pay kiosk and paid for two hours (although I found out later that I only really needed to pay for one hour because they don’t require payment after 8pm, but I was in too much of a hurry to look for any information about parking hours), and strode back to the car. I was probably away from the car a maximum of two minutes, and was never more than the width of the street away from the car. So imagine my surprise to find a so called “parking enforcement officer” (although I prefer to use the term “meter maid” because I don’t want to dignify this idiot with any sort of suggestion that she’s actually a trained officer) printing out a ticket. I showed her the paid ticket, and when she deigned to stop talking to whoever she’d been carrying on a running conversation on her cell phone to talk to me, all she could say was “once I’ve printed the ticket, there’s nothing I can do” and that the only way I could dispute it is if I checked off the “I want a trial” on the citation and came back in however many months it takes for it to go to trail. I pointed out that I was just over there at the payment kiosk if she’d bothered to look, and I’d left the car door ajar so it was obvious I was coming back. Even the people sitting at the tables in front of the pub verified that I’d just parked there, and that if she touched the hood of my car she could feel it was still hot. “I don’t have to look at things like that”. Well, fuck you. Is your job parking enforcement, or is it screwing the tourists and making sure they never want to come back.
The evidence