Tour Time Again

Mornings are back, for me, to going to the official Tour de France website and following the agonizingly slow feeds of the day’s stage, live. This is only televised on OLN, a cable channel, a channel we don’t get because we don’t have cable because we don’t have a TV. But just occasionally I wish we did.

Lance Armstrong is up for a record-breaking sixth Tour de France win, and also a record-breaking sixth consecutive win. He is neither as likable as Miguel Indurain, the quiet Basque who dominated the Tour in the early 90s, nor as brilliant (or crazy) a cyclist as Eddy Merckx (nicknamed “The Cannibal”), but he is OBSESSED with the Tour de France (detractors would say to the detriment of cycling in general). He is so obsessed that he’s turning it into a race that cannot be won without this level of obsession. The next two and a half weeks will be full of our contemplation of this obsession.

(You’ve been warned.)