LE TOUR!

Ok, first things first - Le Tour de France has started and I am fascinated as usual. The difference being that, this time, I have someone to be fascinated with. Andy and I have been watching avidly even if it's not terribly exciting so far. Andy feels (as do others) that Lance is going to take it all. While I agree that that is his plan, I am not so certain that he'll be able to do so. Until we get to the Alps, nothing is certain. But, in exciting news thus far, my favorite obscure French cyclist won a stage! Thomas Voeckler, who no one has heard of, was a national hero for a day! Yay Thomas! Plus, his team needed the morale boost after a terrible team time trial. If you click through to that video, the commentar says, essentially:

Oh, the first rider goes down, followed by his teammates trying to break behind him. There was nothing they could do. This early in the Tour, it's a small catastrophe for Bbox who already had the worst time on the road of those teams who had already started. They were already off to a bad start. It's here we can see that this route was not really ideal for a team time trial - there were many arguments against it and it seems they may have been right.

So yeah, not a good day for Thomas and his friends. But Voeckler did save the day a bit later on, yay! I may have stood up and cheered when I watched it on TV. :-)

In other news, I had a weekend full of non-televised biking myself. On Friday, Andy and I took the 5 Lakes, Creek, River tour with a small detour into St. Paul. My dad is right - the path IS better on that side of the river. Some photos (warning to Mom - you may want to look away. I know how you feel about the Lock & Dam):

It was 20 miles, about an hour and half or so. Not too shabby, but not even my longest ride of the weekend! You see, I just acquired some new bike gear that required extensive testing:

Everything was on sale, I promise! So after watching the Tour on Saturday, we went for a 25 mile ride in VERY WINDY conditions - seriously, I was pretty knackered at the end. We headed out west then looped aroud back towards downtown before heading home. It was lovely. Finally, today, we took an extended Lake/Creek/River tour. I had a small falling-completely-over-while-at-a-complete-stop moment, but nothing serious. We made it almost all the way over to downtown St. Paul before heading home. A good time was had by all - and I went 30 miles today, bringing the weekend total to 75 for those of you playing along. I'm a little sunburned but I am happy to report that the shoes and pedals are AWESOME. My knee doesn't even hurt at all after all that biking 3 days in a row, yay!

Ok, back to a terribly exciting evening of laundry and watching le Tour replay. Happy Sunday, all!