The week that was ...

It's been quite a week, Happy Bastille Day to all those francophiles out there.
To recap briefly some highlights, last weekend we were honored to attend the Robert Tour de France Party which was, in the words of Will Ferrell impersonating Robert Lipton, ... a DELIGHT. Unfortunately though, the performance of the Disco boys rained on everyone's picks, maybe i snuck off with the prognosticator award, getting Rogers in my top 3, have to defer to Jeff on the call there. Photos soon on the Ryan Blog.

Saturday night, we babysat Ryan's girlfriend Sierra, then had supper with Jen and Mike. LPM's apron should have been burning as my menu featured the Cuke, our new favorite, and Adobo. The dessert was also quite nice, though i just assembled it, raspberry sherbet (as in sure bet) topped with blueberries.

Tuesday, i made it to my first training race in 4 weeks or so, with work and vacation getting in the way too much. Luckily, my vacation spent exercising at altitude, served me well with a bit of blood-doping au naturale, and i enjoyed a nice no-chain type training race. It was fun, rolling off the front a bunch with Sebastian and Steve on his tt bike. Also along was Brian "inbetween trips to China" Darby who was really cranking. He and i got way off the front before the left hand turn with Steve, and try as we might, we couldn't talk him into riding the rest of the way with us. From that point, it's probably 5 miles to his house as opposed to 30 roundtrip otherwise. So there we were, me and Brian with a big lead, trying to do our best TTT. On this day it wasn't to be however, as the remainder of the group caught us, after about 7 miles of hard work, with just-back-from-high-altitude-himself Tim D. at the front, in aerobars. It was fun, lots of attacking after that.

The tour has been great to watch, Floyd looks to be the strongest, but who knows this year, there's still a lot of racing to go.

Also, after two attempts to scale this book, i've decided to retire it. Ranked by Outside magazine as one of the top 100 adventure reads of all time, it's pages are perhaps as hard to scale as the mountain itself. Maybe something was lost in the translation, cause Herzog ain't no Krakauer that's for sure. Next up, maybe a reread of Banner, to get ready for our Salt Lake City visit or this Lenny Bruce bio i've been meaning to read.

One other tour note, i've been listening to the eurosport feed on race days and it's pretty nice, good commentators including the smooth brogue of all-time mack Sean Kelly.

To all a good weekend.