View From the Bushes

I biked in again today -- it may have been a mistake. I went biking on Friday evening (18-20 miles) and then stayed up late to buy my copy of Harry Potter 6 (I went to Smith's. I was the first in line at 11:45 and I got my copy at 12:01). I slept a fair amount Saturday night and Sunday, but last night I didn't sleep very well, particularly after 4 am. Given that I was tempted to postpone my ride until tomorrow, but I had everything laid out, I just went ahead with the original plan. Now I'm having a really hard time staying awake. I probably need some caffeine.

Tour-wise there were a couple of huge mountain stages over the weekend. Lots of big names lost huge time and are basically out, like Heras, Beloki, Mayo, Botero. The big surprise was that Hincapie won Sunday's stage, widely regarded as the hardest of this year's tour. There's even talk that Hincapie rather that Popovych will take over as team captain once Lance is gone. That would be interesting. It's actually looking a lot better with respect to my Tour bet: I said Armstrong and Ullrich on the podium. Ullrich's still in fourth but a lot of experts expect him to pass Rasmussen in the final time trial.

I finished Harry Potter Saturday evening. This was a pretty good installment, though I'm still trying to decide how I feel about the plot. The longer it goes, the more I like it, but initially I felt pretty used. I've probably already given away too much, but I will say one other thing: I think J.K. has bitten off more than she can chew with respect to book 7, or in other words, I don't see how she can wrap everything up in just one more book. My prediction is that it's going to end up being over 1000 pages or two books. I'm sure the publishers wouldn't mind breaking it into two books.

Cycling is tiring...
Ross