I BELIEVE, Part Deux

A different take on the "I Believe" theme:

Enough said.

The weather that I've been anticipating with disgust every since we moved down here is setting in. High temps in the 90's and enough humidity to make it sticky and nasty. Everyone says that those awful few days we would get like that every once in a while in a mid-atlantic summer will be the only thing you get down here in Greenville all of July and August. A couple of other observations about Greenville (proper pronunciation is Greenvul). People call it G-vegas but I've yet to ask anyone who can tell me why they call it G-vegas. People drive fast down here, they all must have hard-ons for Dale Earnhardt or something. The city of Greenville and Pitt county have apparently never heard of shouldered roads. There's a couple of roads with what I think of as "Pennsylvania" shoulders. That is they've come along as an afterthought and added about a foot of tar/stone on the side of the road, which immediately separates from the proper asphalt of the road and starts to break up, making it almost impossible to actually ride on the shoulder. Once you're a few miles from Greenville the riding is OK as long as you don't get on one of the "major" roads connecting the surrounding towns. "Major" is only defined by the amount of traffic, as all the roads are just two laners regardless. Once you get around and into Greenville these two-laners become treacherous as the traffic buzzes by you at 55+ mph. Lots of guys down here actually ride out in the road rather than as far right as possible so that overtaking traffic has to slow for them if there is oncoming traffic. That's enough whining about how shitty the riding is here.

I'm picking der Kaiser for the Tour. Seems to me it's a two-man race between Ullrich and Basso. Ullrich has always seemed like a regular guy. Case in point:

That is if he doesn't get the axe in the Spanish Puerto affair. The official report is suppose to be released today. Just in time for riders to get yanked from the Tour. I guess that's better than doing it after the race starts.

I started composing this message this morning but I'm just getting around to finishing it. Doesn't look good. Probably no Ullrich, Basso, Mancebo and about 20 other riders scheduled to start the Tour. Damnit to hell! This sucks. I could care less about the doping. I've been pulling for Ullrich for the better part of decade to beat LANCE and while that's no longer a possibility I think he had probably the best shot of anybody of getting to Paris this year in yellow. No mention of Landis yet, maybe I'll pull for him despite that dorky looking time trial position.