Check out Morgan Spurlock Watch. You probably know Morgan Spurlock from his documentary ‘SuperSize Me’. He also has an upcoming show on FX (I think) called 30 Days. In any case, I’m not a fan of his. If I eat fast food exclusively, become an unhealthy lard ass, and experience health problems, I don’t think I should blame anyone but myself. Anyway, this website provides a well thought out counterpoint to Morgan’s statements. The author is Radley Balko of The Agitator. He’s a libertarian advocate who works at the Cato institute. Anyway, check out the site. It’s good shit.

Robbie McEwen wins the sprint! I think it’ll be really exciting if he and Tom Boonen trade stage wins. Robbie has been known to come back from disaster to win the Green Jersey. He crashed in a bad way a couple years ago and came back to win it. This year he got sent to the end of the line for head butting Stuart O’Grady. Can he come back from that and win it? It’ll be tough, Tom B. is on point.

Other than that the only drama was Lance refusing to wear Yellow to honor David Z. There is a tradition in stage races in Europe to not wear the leaders jersey if the guy who had it before you crashed. Lance was going to honor that tradition but the director of the tour basically told him to put it on or pack your shit! Pretty harsh, so Lance put on the jersey, but the point was made.

Tomorrow for stage 6, another sprint finish, but there will be 4 category 4 climbs out on the route. My prediction, we’ll see Thomas Voeckler break away to capture some more points for the KOM competition. Maybe he’ll even get his polka dot jersey back?

Wow! Today’s race kicked ass!! It all came down to the last 5 minutes. Team Discovery started off the day easy and cranked it up towards the end. The team they needed to beat was CSC who started 5 minutes after them. Team Discovery finished the course with the best time and CSC was ahead of their time by 2 seconds. It was coming down to the wire and all of a sudden BOOM, crash! David Zabriskie, the yellow jersey, went down. His team did the right thing and left him. They still lost by 2 seconds, so he would have given up the jersey to Lance anyway.

It was hard to watch David Z pick himself back up. He was crushed and humiliated to give up the jersey by crashing. I think he was even crying. But you can’t blame him. I hated to see him give it up, but Lance was going to get it eventually.

Tomorrow, another sprint stage.

Not much to report on the Tour today. Tom Boonen continues to kick ass as he won another sprint finish today. Robbie McEwen got himself slapped on the wrist for head butting his arch enemy Stuart O’Grady on the sprint finish. That made for some excellent TV. David Z kept the yellow jersey, but Thomas Voeckler lost his king of the mountain jersey thanks to a long breakaway by Erik Dekker and a couple of other guys.

Tomorrow is the Team Time Trial. The drama of the day will be watching Discovery try to get the stage win over CSC. Both teams are excellently managed, but Discovery is riding the last chance to win a TTT with Lance. Also, if they win, Lance will get the yellow jersey. I predict a Discovery blowout!

A good quick stage with no carnage. Tom Boonen took the stage away from Robbie McEwen. David Zabriskie maintains his advantage and keeps the Yellow Jersey. And little Thomas Voeckler stepped up and won the polka dot jersey for King of the Mountains. If you remember, Thomas V wore the yellow jersey for 10 days last year and showed major heart in the mountains. He is like France’s favorite rider. I hope he can keep the KOM.

Tomorrow, more of the same.

My personal goal during the Tour de France is to ride my bike each day the Tour rides. So after watching the stage today I hopped on my bike for a 10 mile tune up ride (it’s been a month since I rode). It fucked me up. I shouldn’t have taken that long off. I had to spend about 10 minutes sprawled on the floor in the bathroom with a wet rag on my face. But hey, that which doesn’t kill me….hopefully tomorrow i’ll feel better on the bike.

I’ve been thinking about bicycle rides lately. I’m using the Tour de France as motivation and I’ll be starting to permanently commute to work by bicycle this coming week. My goal has been to get ready for the Brasstown Bald Buster Century ride next spring. But I need more rides! I can’t just do one. So I’ve made the decision to ride in the Bicycle Ride Across Georgia.

This is a 7 day ride that will be next June. I’ll have to take a week off of work, but so what?! It looks to be about 60 to 70 miles a day, with a 100 mile option on one of the days. It’ll be quite a test.

Now I just have to find some one day rides to sprinkle in my calendar.

Charlie, you up for BRAG?

The Tour de France began today in a pretty spectacular way.

The first stage of the tour is called the Prologue, and it’s traditionally a short time trial. Today it was a little longer than usual. The Americans in the race did a great job, but the real drama was Lance Armstrong. As the winner of last year’s tour, he was the last to leave the starting gate. Jan Ullrich, his arch nemesis, left one minute ahead of him. Jan is a pretty good time trialist, but Lance has The Hunger. He actually caught Jan on the road and passed him. If this were Mortal Kombat, you would hear the dreaded “Humiliation!”.

Basically Lance dominated all of his rivals. He’s got a good one minute advantage on everyone and it looks like it’s going to be a race for second, barring any disasters. David Zabriskie won the opening stage over Lance by 2 seconds. I personally think that Lance let up at the last second to avoid having to defend the yellow jersey over the next few flat stages. This puts Team CSC in the drivers seat, and therefore they will have to expend more energy. But David Z is so far ahead of everyone that he’ll likely hold the yellow for a long time.

It’s shaping up to be a good race. I don’t see Lance losing, but the battle for the podium will be intense. There are a lot of good competitors. I am hoping for an Ivan Basso, Levi Leipheimer podium, but I’d be happy if Floyd Landis got his too.

Whew. Three weeks of this is going to be intense.

OK, I made it through the week. An awesome weekend awaits me. Right now though, I’m about to watch the Last Starfighter and take a nap. Then sushi and beer.

In the meantime, prepare yourselves for the Tour de France by downloading the Bicycle Bingo card. I’m also going to be hunting the internet for Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen drinking games.

Thanks to Tim for the Phil Liggett quote page. I am getting super stoked for the TdF!