Today is a rest day for the riders, but as mentioned in yesterday’s blog they still get on their bikes and ride. No rest for the wicked blogger either, I’m afraid. A day off from blogging might have an adverse effect on my typing fingers; swollen knuckles, aching joints, that kind of thing.
Actually, the truth is I’m suffering from TdF withdrawals. In our household, OLN is on pretty much nonstop for the three week race. My husband introduced me to the Sport of Professional Cycling last year. He has been a cycling enthusiast most of his adult life and his knowledge of the sport puts me to shame. We have been known to watch the same race in its entirety as many times as it is shown. Our excuse? You can miss things the first (or second) time around. The truth? We both love bike racing.
None of the professionals post on rest day, so I took a trip over to Google to see what other bloggers have written about this year’s tour. I typed in the most obvious search term (Tour de France blog) and found quite a few listings, most of which were general blogs with a link to this blog. There is a lot of great content there and I highly recommend it for the Tour enthusiast. I was pleasantly surprised to find my own TdF blog listed on Google. What a world, eh? Obviously Google only determines content, and not quality.
My Google search also turned up this little gem, and I was struck with a serious case of “writer envy.” It happens to every writer when they read something and think, “Gee, I wish I would have though of that.” Very clever concept. I suppose it’s too obvious to grab the idea and do a daily post from Lance’s bike seat.
Do you ever wonder what Jan Ullrich is up to this year? He’s been very quiet, did not participate in any of the spring classics save the Tour de Suisse. It must have been a real blow to have lost T Mobile teammate Alexander Vinokourov in that race. Vinokourov was one of my favorite riders in last year’s tour, where he took third place. OLN reported on it’s pre-race show “Road to the Tour” that Ullrich was spotted riding the L’Alpe d’Huez in a training session. Stage 16 of the race is an individual time trial up the mountain. Now THAT will be an interesting stage.
Tomorrow’s stage will be 160km with a couple of climbs, presumably to get the lads in shape for what is to come. I’ll be up at six friggin’ thirty in the morning to watch the pre-race show and see what the announcers have to say about the rest day.
I didn’t see a Tune to the Tour contest word today. I opened the link anyway to see if any of the obvious choices would work. I tried, “Mayo”, “Voeckler”, and “Rest”. If I hear of a contest word later, I’ll edit this post, but it will be after 8pm eastern time before I’m able to see what OLN has in store as far as programming for rest day. If anyone reading has today’s word, send it to me and I’ll post it. Best of luck to everyone who is entering!
The big surprise of the Rest Day came in my morning email. The International Tridiot Rating Governing Body (ITRGB), informed me that the transmission that contained the Tridiot Rating drafting allegation has been reviewed. The ITRGB apparently received a barely legible but heart-rendering plea from an undisclosed youth to review its decision. The communication from the ITRGB states that “In a more thorough review of the drafting transmission intercepted by the ITRGB, it is concluded that an assumption was made that the intent of the transmitter was to take a free bandwidth ride on the back of the CKS Tridiot Rating. Our review determination is that it could have been a coincidence, and it is possible that both transmissions were sent into cyberspace concurrently. We have reinstated bl’s privilege to post a daily Tridiot Rating, but impose a 5% added penalty to each day’s rating for a one week period of time as a warning to be more careful.”
Well thank goodness for that.
Today’s CKS/bl Tridiot Rating was calculated by figuring the total number of team uniforms in this year’s race, divided by the number of times Sheryl Crow has washed Lance Armstrong’s uniform, plus the penalty 5%, for a result of 108.008%
(A short history of the Tridiot Rating can be found here and here.)
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