Paris-Roubaix was epic as usual. 'Nuff said. Boonen eases up for a half minute to try to get a drink and convince the rest of the lead group to work to stay away from the peloton, and bang! Cancellara goes and it's all over but the crying.
Versus screwed me. Or maybe Verizon did. The P-R coverage was listed in the online guide at 2 hours, starting at 6:00 PM. So I taped it and dutifully began watching at 8:00 PM, right after Son of Rouleur went to bed. I watched it right up until the end... 32 kilometers from the finish. WTF? Seems Versus was actually doing three hours of coverage, though the listing only said 2. Way to go, guys, lovely. Thank goodness for sites like Steephill.com, which archive streaming video of the races online. The slavic voiceover wasn't exactly awesome, but at least I was able to watch.
Got in a couple nice rides this weekend, with about 25 miles Saturday and 55 miles yesterday. These aren't real long by any standards but considering the two month layoff from doing anything physical, they were pretty taxing. The short ride was just fun; most of the way home, I was overwhelmed with a positive feeling about riding generally and found myself riding with a stupid grin. Sometimes, you just switch on in the cycling season, and that's what happened yesterday. My new attitude is "yep, I can do this. It feels good." It wasn't a spectacular ride or anything; it was just a ride across a mental threshold.
In contrast, yesterday's ride was pretty good up to about the 40 mile mark. At that point, I was overwhelmed with a tidal wave of poo. My legs felt like poo, my head felt like poo, and I was riding like poo. It had something to do with a stiff headwind but more to do with it being the longest ride for me since last October. I slogged it out though, finishing the last 15 miles at a very slow pace - like 17.5 average up to that point, 16 the rest of the way in, but I finished. Things got desperate enough that I stopped about 10 miles out from the finish for a 20 ounce Coke. That bit of rocket fuel carried me home, with a constant reminder that it's not all smiles and happy days. You have to work through the bad days to get to the good ones.
Shit I saw on the road:
- A strawberry cheesecake (WTF?)
- Integrated Trek tail bag that was no longer integrated. I was three miles past it before figuring out what it was or I'd have picked it up and given it away as a prize.
- Skyye vodka bottle, crushed
- Canadian Club bottle. Intact.
- Sloe gin bottle. Who the hell even drinks Sloe gin?
- Dead racoon, 3/4 upside down/legs up pose. Either dead, or we found out who drinks the sloe gin.
- Flat squirrel
- Dude driving convertible oncoming in my lane, nearly killing me
- Guy in a pickup truck making the "hey faggot!" call. God, that never gets old, does it?
6 comments:
Tune in to today's episode, where The Rouleur discovers the "spoiler alert." Loyal fans will fondly remember how many combinations of their most visceral pieces of profanity they used to describe the protagonist before they watched the Ronde van Vlaanderen.
"King Cancellara," indeed.
I, too, was screwed by Versus and/or Comcast. I saw it coming, though. I knew there was no way the little pointer on the DVR had enough room to make it 50 km. I was therefore able to get ready, and bellow out a thunderous curse when the race ended at 32 km.
Today's captcha -- "oveatr." How do The Internets know about the Lay's Classic Potato Chip Incident? I had to do something to ease the anxiety that the little pointer would hit the end before Fabian did, though!
according to Kiss, Cold Gin is the way to go. It "Always wins."
:D
As I booted up my computer yesterday morning, I was thinking to myself "DO NOT ruin the PR result for yourself..."
With a cup of coffee, I pensively opened my RSS feed reader with the confidence that the major outlets would treat the event with the same respect as the Olympics and Wimbledon - hide the results AFTER the jump, not IN the jump. More to the point, I was going online to read up on the Ovechkin/Crosby/Stamkos race. Oh well, not like the race was really THAT dramatic. "Oh look, no one is pulling through. Oh look, Fab jumped when Tom was feeding. Oh look, no one in the race has the balls to go for the win."
Steve, the post in question was titled, "Spoiler Alert." I think what you meant to write above is, "Faithful reader of the Rouleur discovers the true meaning of Spoiler Alert."
Anon - I generally turn to KISS for wisdom, ever since "Beth" turned out to be the answer to a thorny legal question at work one day.
Pete - yeah, I know, I saw your comments on it earlier. After that, I figured you needed your balls busted some. You're only going to get more of those spoilers with the profusion of live web feeds of these races. FWIW, I find the TdF weeks to be hell - can't turn on my intarwebbs connection at all for fear of having a spoiler rammed into my optic nerve via my Google home page, any given news outlet, or even ESPN.com. As 97% of Facebook users know, there's such a thing as too much connectivity.
Oh, it hurts to have your jumblies rightly busted.
Er, uh, maybe it was the Velocast named, "King Cancellara?" I may have a hazy recollection of looking at my iPod and thinking, "thanks for nothing you Scottish ... er ... fellas." Oops.
This is not the first time I've spewed invective at the wrong target. Thankfully, my theoretical outburst was directed at the pale glow of a computer screen, and my screed was heard by no one else. In that way, it was exactly like the rants I issue when listening to WTOP, Pacifica Radio, and reruns of the New Yankee Workshop.
Too much sloe gin in my juice this morning.
No worries RTW. You know, they have ways of treating Tourette's now...
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