View From the Bushes

Yesterday was essentially worthless. The power went out about 4 pm and didn't come back on until about 15 seconds before midnight. Which is great for all the digital clocks out there, but kind of counter-productive if you went to bed at ten and suddenly everything in the house turns on. I went to bed at ten because I figured that last night would b great opportunity to catch up on my sleep (since I couldn't do much of anything else, except possibly read by candlelight.) As usual, it didn't work out as well as I'd hoped. Not only was I woken up by the lights and what not at midnight, but without air-conditiong I had a hard time falling asleep in the first place. Mostly my rest consisted of dreams where I was in the tropics fighting off battleship-sized mosquitos, that literally dripped maleria with nothing but a hand blender and a copy of Gabriel García Márquez's Love in the Time of Cholera (is that ironic? I'm not sure...) with which to fight them off.

Of course, we were also watching my 8-month old nephew so I'm not sure how much work I would have got done in any event. For some reason the idea of being trapped in dark house with strangers while (my) four kids ran around, screamed and occasionally paused to jump on top of him in what they claimed was a hug, was frightening -- I have no idea why; I spent the majority of the evening trying to get him to go to sleep while my wife herded our kids. I'm hoping to do better tonight, and despite all my protests in the previous paragraph I'm feeling more rested than I have in a while and if we can keep the power on maybe I'll have time to put up a new NPC.

As far as the tour goes, one of the biggest disappointments stemming from the power outage was that I really wanted to see the TTT. I had caught a little in the morning, but I certainly would have injoyed watching the end when all the bigger teams finished. Oh well... Also I kept waiting for Tyler Hamilton to post his rider's diary since I was very interested to hear the story of how he ended up finishing with only five team members. I assume he'll post something later today. As for today's stage, there was a breakaway of five riders who ended up finishing over twelve minutes in front of the bunch, so Lance was only in yellow for one day. That's one of the fascinating things about stage races the way Lance can give up 12 minutes with virtual impunity since there are only about maybe 20 people in the race who could win even with a 30 minute handicap, over the rest of the field.

Carpe Diem Quam Minimum Credula Postero
Ross