A Visitation

Last Friday evening, guess who rocked up to my place? It's pretty obvious if you've read the previous post. Yes that's right: My dear mother!

This Visitation was Planned from the beginning of course. Why she chose to arrive on the Friday before the Tour finished I dunno, but anyway it was good to see her again. Even if a little late. The connecting flight got cancelled by the baggage retrieval system they've got at Heathrow. I'm...so...worried about etc. So 6pm turned into 10pm.

The next day, she took it into her head to clean parts of the place. I am not sure why, as my apartment is always spic and span at all times. There is not a skeric of dust anywhere except perhaps under the couch. <hastily moves couch>

That done, Ma also took it upon herself to cook me dinner. Luxury. I have been living off instant rice for 2 weeks while the Tour has been on - not even any of my famous Kylie Kwong stews! So a real meal with vegetables and stuff was most welcome. Thanks Maw!


What's cookin' maw?

On Sunday, Ma saw Brugghe while I stayed home and did the Tour. That was fun.

But on Monday, being an official Day Off (well, half a one), we partook of the festivities in town. It was the last day of Gentsefeesten and there were still a whole lotta people in Gent Centrum, generally milling around, drinking beer and carousing. So we joined them. Had a ride in a boat for fun and saw bits of Gent that I hadn't seen before. Then we had a fine meal in a very good Chinese(?) vegetarian restauraaaaaaaaant on the water. And wandered around a bit more.

The highlight of the evening was probably the band playing in the Korenmarkt. Appropriately entitled Kinky Afro, the band members were all attired in shiny silver disco suits with afro wigs, except in the case of the lead singer who had a shiny magenta wig thing. We were most entertained with tracks such as Crying at the Discotheque, Disco Inferno, She's a Maniac, We Are Family, I Will Survive etc. You get the idea, non?

It was very fine indeed!

The Minion

Yes, once again I'm watching Dolph Lundgren do his stuff in a fine piece of comedy called The Minion. Dolph plays a templar who looks like a vicar and has to stop the Minion from re-entering the world and causing brian damage. He failed, because I now have brian damage.

Speaking of minions, le Tour is over and we can all rest. The best man won again, but will he be back? It was not a boring race but the race for the GC was pretty much over by the prologue. Lance put 15 seconds into Jan in 6.5 bloody kilometres. For Jan to get that back? Dreamin'. The other two were ok, but Jan was the only one who dared to attack Lance (stage 15).

Speaking of stage 15, I will invoke Jones' Theorem 2 which I made up recently: Whenever Jan Ullrich does anything interesting, my TV doesn't work. Yes that's right, just a few hours before the stage started, my faithless TV blew a valve and the on/off button stopped working. I tried to get it to work by unscrewing the whole thing and fiddling around with some pliers.

I'd unplugged it but of course you can't tell if you're doing the right thing unless it's plugged in, so I did that and fiddled around with the pliers a bit more and lo! There was a mini-explosion, a puff of smoke and I was now dead sure that the TV wasn't working any more. The pliers, which were rubber handled, are now somewhat shorter.

It's always good to be certain. You see, it's like Schrödinger's cat in a box. You don't know if the cat's dead or not until you open the box. But I reckon you can get around that by not feeding the cat for about 8 or 9 months. Then you're sure that the cat is dead without having to open the box and putting up with the smell. I always thought the poison vial/radioactive isotope thing was a bit too Heath Robinson. I mean, there's gotta be easier ways to do that experiment.

Anyway, having put my electrical know how to the best possible use, I decided to get a new telly, so I trundled down to the Fnac about 4pm (as Jan was doing his mighty attack) and bought the cheapest TV set I could find, which was a damn sight better than my existing blown up one. I then realised that I couldn't ride back home with it, so instead of catching the tram right outside the front door of the Fnac to almost right outside my door, I decided to hoof it along the canal back home, carrying the TV and looking like a right crim. Don't ask me why but I think I shortcircuited my logical thought capacitor with the pliers as well.

Oh well, got to see the replay.

I also had a Visitation from Ma over the final few days of the Tour, but that will have to wait until next time. Have fun in Madrid Ma and don't get stampeded by a bull.

What day is it?

The Tour has congealed into one long day, and for the past two months it feels like it's been going on for longer than that. Even. I like the new Blogger Interface^®, it opens up a realm of possibilities. You can upload pics and stuff without going through the convoluted Picasa/Hellobot processje.
 
Speaking of Le Tour, looks like LA has got it in the bag again after a couple of days of Pyrenean undulations. Or ungulations if you follow our live cowerage. Der Kaiser didn't have it this year at all despite having slimmed down a bit. Oh well, I thought he was too out of condition in April, even though he was good in the Tour de Suisse. Basso and Klöden look like being the runners up du jour. I think Lance'll have to retire before someone else wins el Tour.
 
I dig Voeckler though.

Vandaag jarig

I made it, and as of today I am a number that is divisible by both 3 and 11 years old. Those of you with half a brain will work out that I am 99, although I don't look a day over 124. I place all the blame on Britney Spears. There's only so much a sane person can take. Maybe I should watch more cartoons? The cartoon network is good and I sometimes see Snagglepuss, Top Cat and Tom & Jerry. They have a cat thing going there I see.

I'll keep this brief as my brain cells are limited. I did get out for a ride this morning in the beautiful summer weather, i.e. 13 degrees and raining. I don't understand. I demand all my weather investment money back now.

Along for the ride we had Mario De Clercq, the "retired" Johan Verhagen and one of his mates, who is built like a tank. It was the usual Sunday parcours, which has a few hills in it but is not as hard as Saturday. We did the 58 km in 1:26 which I reckon is not too shabby. The three aforementioned were the ones mainly responsible, and it didn't surprise me that we only had 10 riders left on the Trap Op. My left crank came loose towards the end which was a tad annoying, but it didn't fall off. I must try and find a socket spanner tomorrow.

Thanks all for the birthday wishes! Allez.

End of le Tour pour moi

Tuesday was the final day of my rather brief excursion to le grand boucle this year, as I finished off in Wasquehal at 7:30pm and proceeded to miss the 9pm train from Lille Flandres to Gent. There was a wormhole in time in the press room while I waited for my esteemed colleague to file le race reportage. I later learned that Wasquehal was one of the stops en route. Quelle blow. But anyway, I wasn't in that much of a hurry to get home.

Today's third stage wasn't that bad, although we did get stopped 5 km from getting to the start by the Belgian equivalent of a gendarme who did not know her job. Green sticker on l'auto means we can get on le bloody parcours. Nous sommes le droite dammit! But although we tried, there's no point in arguing with a cop and we eventually turned back and went along via the totally stupid deviation and arrived at the start with only an hour to go, a tad ruffled. That meant there was no time to hobnob with VIPs in the village depart, which is mainly what we are paid to do of course.

We did get enough done in limited time and I had a good chat with Patrick Lefevere (Quick.Step) about today's stage which contained two Paris-Roubaix style cobbled sections (3.8 km at 65 km to go and 1.1 km with 25). Lefevere didn't think that they would have much effect by themselves, but the complete panic that they instilled in the Spanish teams caused a big crash just before the first secteur pavé with 70 km to go and guess what? Aupa Iban Mayo fell off and lost four bloody minutes(!), despite the best efforts of his team to drag him back. The yellow jersey dude Thor Hushovd also ended up with hold the Mayo, but that wasn't as important for the final overall results. Mayo's going to lose another 2'00 in the team time trial tomorrow so that'll put him at 6'00 behind Lance and co. and it will take some pretty spiffy riding in les Pyrenees and les Alpes to pull that back.

It was a really hard stage and a very interesting one as the US Posties, Phonak and T-Mobile (mainly) drove the rest of the bunch very fast right to the finish in Wasquehal, which Roger Hughes described as "a not very interesting suburb of Roubaix". Quite. A French dude won (JP Nazon), same guy who won the last stage in Paris last year. And Robbie took the yellow, which was good for the Gallant Aussie Lads, who have been suffering of late.

Press room was in Wasquehal tennis centre, which had the advantage of being big but the disadvantage of being stifling hot. Oh well, no more complaints as I'm on me way home now and have to do production for the next 2.5 weeks. Being actually on the race is a bit of hassle, but it's miles better as you actually get to write all the stories rather than just produce them. And also it's good to say g'day to people every day, make new contacts, and drink gallons of coffee and beer.


Le magnificently appointed press room in Wasquehal.

All in all it has been a productive few days, and we have already gotten plenty of kudos so far. Tim's royal faux pas made it onto Belgian radio today. Hehe :-) Even better, Lance's girlfriend Sheryl Crow (of singing fame) gave us a nice plug on USA's OLN Tour coverage this morning: "Lance and I have gotten into a habit of getting up in the morning, making coffee and getting online to read Cyclingnews.com and others like ProCycling and Velonews etc."

Thanks Sheryl! Quelle notoriety. It's all achieved through smoke and mirrors and a seriously overworked set of servers.

Here's my final GC prediction after today. I reserve the right to change it at any moment:

1 Lance
2 Jan
3 Hamilton
4 Heras

Damn, I'm going to lose all my fluency in French now.

I, Royalty

Today was my second last day on Le Tour 2004 and it wasn't so bad. Monsieur Tim and I are into our rhythm now and are pumping out le TOUR news like it's going out of style. We get by with a little help from our friends.

Today the start was in beautiful downtown Charleroi, which is a downmarket and more industial version of Liege. It looks as though it hasn't been washed for 30 years, kind of like Tim and I on Day 3 of Le Tour. But there was one good bit in the middle where the stage started - a large square in front of the Beaux Arts Musee or Opera, I can't remember which.

Charleroi, being named after King Charles, set the scene for a rather royal day ite and abite in Belgique. Firstly the Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt rocked up at le depart and was wandering around alone, no minders or anything, appreciating the atmos. He was being interviewed by Belgian radio and I thought I'd have next crack at him, but to be honest I couldn't think of a decent question to ask so I talked to Matty Wilson instead. He had to tow Brad McGee to the line yesterday after McGee buggered his back gardening two weeks ago. That's nearly as bad as Jalabert slipping off a ladder changing a lightbulb!!

Thankfully it was only a short hop to the finish in Namur, which is a much more pleasant city than Charleroi, being at the junction of the Sambre and the Meuse. The press room was good and there was a great buffet which was taken advantage of by two members of our staff.

There was more fun to come as during the stage, the one and only King of Belgium rolled up and strolled through the press room!! This time there were many minders and securite, but Tim still managed to commit a big royal faux pas and ask the King a question without being spoken to first :-) He was put up to it by a couple of Gazet van Antwerpen journos, but hey, we were the only ones in the press room to get a quote from the King of Belgium today!

One of our other people, John Trevorrow (Iffy) managed to slip the King an Aussie badge or something, and when he met Robbie McEwen (who won the stage) he had made a great Royal Joke about kangaroos and such like. Guy Verhofstadt and Eddy Merckx were also there so it was a pretty good photo op. I was busy doing other stuff but.

The last bit of royalty for the day was when we visited the US Postal hotel for a very modestly sized press conference with Lance himself. Tim went in but I had to sit outside out of respect for the 5 other journos there, as otherwise we'd outnumber them ;-) That was ok, as I didn't have to transcribe it at dinner so I could enjoy my supersized glass of Hoegaarden followed by a less gigantic Leffe blond in relative peace.

I also got to watch Lance's security staff throw out an overly keen fan who decided to wander in through the open window. That was fun. Lance's personal bodyguard is a big guy.

How did it get to be this late again?

Tour blog 3

Bloody hotel phones don't ever work. You'd think it would be easy to get online in a Novotel, but for a still unexplained reason I couldn't. Grumble. At least we left the high class establishment in Liege. I don't think I'll be staying there again, although the cold shower in the morning was really such a welcome variation.

Today was the first road stage from Liege to Charleroi, a real dingy industrial town in south-central Belgium. In typical Belgian style it rained off and on for most of the day but dried up at the finish. The start was OK as I got a brief interview with Eddy Merckx, who is looking rather svelte these days but a bit worn. He was on the France 2/3 show for about 3/4 hour before I managed to get hold of him, as you can sort of see from the pic below. Unfortunately someone must have jogged Mitch Clinton's arm when he was taking the shot, 'cos he got the wrong bloke! Anyway, one for the record.


Eddy Merckx (R) clearly from a bad angle.
Photo © Mitch Clinton

What happened in the stage? Don't ask me as I was writing some news and freezing my fingers off in the press tent, which was scenically placed in a fruit marché somewhere near the finish line. It rained and there were crashes and the French got really excited when Nicolas Jalabert went down in the last 20 km. Oohlala.

I felt sorry for Brad who had a bad back and lost 6 minutes. He was in such good condition too, but his Tour may come to a grinding halt. And Nick Gates lost half an hour after a crash halfway. The race jury decided he was too slow and eliminated him later. So the gallant Aussie lads are down to eight, with Brad teetering. Maybe Robbie or Stuey or Cookie or Alby or Scotty or Dodger or Matty will win one.

Finding the hotel was significantly harder, as they did not know how to give directions. "We're coming from Namur, which exit do we take?" "Exit 9 sir to Wavre".

We took exit 9 sir and ended up tooling around in a parque scientifique which did not look like the Novotel. Rang 'em back. "Which exit do we take? We just took exit 9 and we can't find you." "Oh no, you should have taken exit 6 which is Wavre 9." Or something like that.

Nous had le dinner buffet style next to two thirds of the SBS crew (Mike Tomalaris and Honi Rowley) and chatted for a bit. Well, I mostly exclude myself from this apart from "yes", "no" and "that's terrible" placed at strategic intervals while Honi told us of her near leg amputation after a skiing accident in Aspen earlier this year. Ouch.

Then the phones didn't work again. Only a coupla days and then I'm back home :-)

Tour blog 2

Allez le grand depart. Yes, today the Tour de Tour finally kicked off from downtown Liège with a 6.1 km time trial against the prologue. Er, clock. Wind. And stuff.

Anyway, after a truly sumptuous breakfast in our chic Hotel Metropole (right opposite Liège Guillemins station - you can't miss it although you might want to), we headed off to le press room to mingle with les autre journalistes. See I'm quite getting the hang of this French lingo. I reckon I'll have it down fluent like in the next few days.

The first test of my new found French skills was le conference du press on le measures anti-dopage given by five of le big Tour bosses. I conclude that my French needs a little more work, but you can read about le test on Cyclingnews if you so desire. It's cool that the Aussie blood test finally got accepted after four years. This could be interesting.

Matt White crashed before the start! The boy is seemingly not destined to ride Le Tour.

I moseyed on down to the actual race about 4pm to have a bit of a look and do some stuff, and I met Kim from Helmond (literally) and caught up with all the goss after a year and a half. Thanks for the bikkies! Then I just soaked up l'ambience and took a few happy snaps for le reportage live. I'd only worked out how to do that less than an hour previous, so I was quite impressed when it actually worked.

The next six hours passed rather quickly. Dunno why. Did some work and stuff and met a few new people. Lotta Anglos on Tour this year which is rather good.

So FABIAN (nice kid) won the prologue! Nice going dude. He was the only guy we got a quote from yesterday so I feel vindicated. Allez Brad wasn't quite up to it but he reckoned it's because he's thinned down a bit. Good thing too, as he's such a lard arse. And Lance showed them all by finishing second - he's got his racing legs on again and he's going to be bloody hard to beat this year. But it's won in the third week. We shall see.

Finished off with a very late dinner in the same restauraaaaaaaaant as we went to last night. This time we had the photogs with us, Jon Devich and Casey B. Gibson and the Sunshine Band. That was quite fun actually. It's very good, not so expensive and they (meaning le management) are nice and friendly. Even offered us a drinkypoo on the house but it was apres midnight and nous sommes pooped. Then it was back to our low joint opposite le gare. Oohlala. Quelle bon etablissement.

Tour blog 1

Well, I'm officially at Le Tour in Liege - in body at least. I got up at some heinous hour on Friday morning to catch the train and didn't miss it, but the accumulation of non-sleeping hours this week really took its toll. I hooked up with Monsieur Maloney and spent the rest of the day in the press room trying to locate my brain, missing press conferences and generally starving. Un jour sans, as they say.


The lovely smoke-free press room. *cough*

We finally got out of there around 9pm and had a nice meal containing frites and stuff at a local restauraaaaaaaant. Then back to our lovely hotel. We are staying at the "Hotel Metropole" opposite Liege-Guillemins station. It can best be described as a horrendously priced low joint. It reminds me of the inaccurately named "Hotel Adjacent Casino" where I stayed for the 2001 Tour Down Under (before Cyclingnews was persona grata). My room was conveniently located next to the lift shaft, ensuring my beauty sleep was kept to a healthy minimum.


The Hotel Metropole in Liege. Classy.

Today is the prologue. Allez McGee!