Category: Activities

Tour de France Stage 10

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.

Tour de France Stage 9

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.

Tour de France Rest Day

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.

Tour de France Stage 8

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.

Rest of the weekend’s flying

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.