Tour de France ping!
Please FReepmail 'Aeronaut' if you want on or off the Tour de France 2007 list.
Go Lance!
The doping is about to begin......
Tour de France ping!
Please FReepmail 'Aeronaut' if you want on or off the Tour de France 2007 list.
Please tell me I should care. Who is star quality there for the USA?
Sadly, as many athletes in tremendous shape are in racing, I fear Americans will be more interested in the World Series of Poker going on at the same time.
After last year’s sabotage of Floyd Landis’s blood samples, I refuse to watch any of it. If France wants a winner so badly, maybe they should ban everyone but the French from the race.
Running from Saturday July 7th to Sunday July 29th 2007, the 94th Tour de France will be made up of a prologue and 20 stages and will cover a total distance of 3,550 kilometres.
These 20 stages have the following profiles:
Distinctive aspects of the race
Bring it on!
Thanks for taking over the list!
I was involved in a bike race when I was a kid about 14 years old. Well, it wasn't a fancy kind of race with spectators standing on the sidewalk drinking champagne and cheering me on, no! It was a race to escape a serious beating at the hands of three punk kids who wanted to increase their self-esteem at my expense.
It began in a church parking lot as I was confronted with these neighborhood toughs in a church parking lot as I was making the rounds on my Huffy, collecting my newspaper route money. The local toughs knew this and desired to relieve me of it.
It was a bright, sunny Saturday morning sometime in June or July as I pedaled through the parking lot of the St. Anthony's Church on my way to collect the $1.35 (plus tip) from some old lady who never seemed to leave her kitchen table who lived across the street from the church rectory and never seemed to miss a morning mass.
I am stopped by these hoodlums, each of whom own fancy 10-speed bikes that they most likely stole. You had one ringleader and the other two were just stooges who went along with just about anything the ringleader said. One of the stooges was a tiny midget-type punk named Joey who by himself would be the target of bullies himself. But in the company of his ringleader, he assumed a comically tough posture. Those two were inseparable and I don't think I've ever seen one without the other. Sometimes, you would see this little punk ride the same bike with the ringleader, with his arms around him like some little "girlfriend." How sweet.
Anyway, the three of them, mounted on their bikes, surround me and force me to a stop. The ringleader starts with his basic tough-guy repertoire and it is made clear to me that if I want to survive the morning in good physical condition, that I ought to turn out my pockets and hand over whatever money I have over to them. I had something like $20-25 in my pocket. A small fortune back in those days and most of it earmarked for the newspaper delivery service that employed me. I did not want to hand over this money.
When I resisted, the ringleader told me that if I didn't cooperate, he wouldn't only take my money by force, but he would force me to get on my knees and suck his...well, you get the picture. His little punk sidekick Joey let out a laugh and a sneer at this proposition.
For some reason, this really set me off me and without thinking too clearly, I pointed at his little punk friend who was still smirking at me and I asked the ringleader, "What, are you giving Joey here the day off?"
Absolute silence. The ringleader and the other sidekick looked at me like I just insulted their mother. "Joey" looked like he was about to cry. I knew that if I stuck around any longer, I would get the beating of my life. All I could logically do at that point was exploit the moment of shock and vacate the scene just as quickly as my 14-year-old legs could pedal.
The three punk kids were right behind me, howling in indignation and telling me over and over again that I was "dead meat."
Through the neighborhoods we went, across yards, across the VFW parking lot, through an alley in between two storefronts in which an old man walking his dog shook his fist at us for disturbing his morning stroll and scaring his dog.
I started pedaling up a steep hill getting very tired. Lance Armstrong tired. I thought for sure I wasn't going to make it. But at I rounded the top of the hill, I stole a backwards glance and saw that my three pursuers, winded, were barely making it up the hill behind me. One of them even appeared to have quit the pursuit. Maybe it was the pint-sized Joey, struggling on his oversized stolen bike. I didn't look back long enough to find out.
I triumphantly tore down the other side of the hill, knowing that sooner or later I was going to have to deal with offending the three bullies but for now I was blissfully free for now. But my moment of glory was shortlived as in my rapture at having escaped a beating, I drove my bike directly into a telephone pole.
It was one of the only times in my life that I went unconscious. The last thing I remember was blackness and seeing stars. Next thing I knew, I was splayed out on the pavement, bleeding all over and in severe pain as about a half dozen housewives and a few kids crowded around me.
One of them asked me if I needed an ambulance. I told them that I didn't think so. After about 10 minutes of being poked and prodded by the local housewives and covered in bandages, I had recovered enough to retrieve my mangled bike and make the long trip home, being sure to stay off the main roads lest the bullies find me and finish me off.
No more bike racing for me.
