Poseidon is now very interested in this year’s Tour de France.
It seems Poseidon needs Tadej Pogačar, seen here in the white jersey, to be chasing the overall lead. Pogačar is the two-time defending champion, but yesterday he lost control of this year’s tour in some incredible bike racing. It’s difficult to encapsulate exactly what transpired across the French countryside in a four-minute clip, but here are a few highlights from the now legendary Col du Granon, a hors catégorie, seven-mile climb that goes up 3,474 feet, topping out at almost 8,000 feet above sea level.
The can-do-no-wrong wunderkind was finally hurt yesterday. All those attacks by the Jumbo-Visma super team paid off. It wasn’t quite tectonic, but close enough in road cycling. It took two-and-a-half years for the best riders in the world to exploit a weakness in Pogačar, meaning this was something really special.
That further means that, today, the final day in the Alps, the defending champion had to start chasing. In the photo above Pogačar was attacking his main foe, and current yellow-jersey wearer, Jonas Vingegaard, on Alpe d’Huez.
He could not pull any time back on the Danish Macaulay Culkin lookalike. It is a two-minute and 26-second race at the moment. This has our cat’s attention.
But this is not a new thing for Poseidon. Here he is last year, taking in the first stage of the 2021 Tour.
Maybe he hears the word peloton and thinks he’s going to get pets. Maybe the word bidon is too similar to Poseidon. Perhaps, because of his aggressive nature, he misunderstands the use of the word attack. Or it could be that the best joke is the one from the headline. Maybe he’s hors catégorie.
I photo my thumb accidentally took while idly fiddling with my phone and watching the news and waiting for The Next Thing of the Day.
Two points if you can figure that out. I know what it is, but I’ll be impressed if anyone here can take two points off of my hands.
The Next Thing of the Day proved easy and uneventful. Started on time, ended on time, everything in the middle was assuredly a smash hit. A Tuesday to be remembered! If you could make the normal Tuesday stand out somehow or another.
Two points if you can figure that out, too.
In my idle chatter I mentioned I had a tube going on my bike. I took it off and found just the tiniest little hole seeping air. I was tempted to slap some super glue on it and experiment, but, in another sign of my own maturity and wisdom, decided this was not a profitable experiment.
You can wrap a tube in a dollar bill to finish a ride in a pinch. (Two points if you get it right on the first try!) But I was already at the house, and not in that pinch. If you’re lucky, though, the currency can hold up for weeks. I can also buy another inner tube and just be done with it. We have a small stack for just such an occasion. I went to the room where we keep stacks of things and found that we have one spare inner tube.
This does not a stack make.
Opened the little box, pulled out the tube, prepared it for installation and …
So I had to put my spare on my back wheel. The spare is the one you carry with you, not the one from the room where we keep stacks of things. That means I don’t have a spare to carry on the bike. So tomorrow’s ride will feature a new back tire, and one with a tiny pinhole on the wall. I should throw a dollar bill in there, too. Juuuust in case.
I always carry a few bucks on the bike. (Two points to me for being prepared.) You never know when a ride goes farther, or takes longer, and you want to stop at a store for water or extra fuel. And, also, for emergency tire patching.
A quick shot from our Saturday bike ride. This is on the part where we go around a sharp right curve that’s almost a turn. It’s an uphill that’s almost a downhill, or a downhill that is an uphill, I can never decide. The part just before this you can really hammer it. And within just a few feet from here you’re in the Bermuda Triangle of gear selection. It never makes sense.
Immediately after that, though, there’s a left hand turn and she takes off. It’s a three-mile stretch that suits her strong, powerful style. I slowed down, too, because my rear tire was starting to feel a bit spongey and there’s a big downhill ahead that ends at a stop sign. I wanted to be conservative there.
But then you turn left and eventually it turns into a one-mile uphill.
There was another cyclist up ahead. We caught him. I jokingly cautioned him against letting me slow him down when he passed me on the bigger part of the climb. I heard The Yankee giggling at that as I went by her. And then he passed me.
But I caught him again. And then I got stung by some sort of flying insect, just above the knee. It only hurt when I pedaled, which I had to do for another 10 miles or so.
All of it was fun, except for the bee sting.
But I don’t want you to think that all of life is fun and musical and amazing. Today’s big adventure was trimming back a huge shrub in the back yard. It was long overdue.
And now back to your regularly scheduled cat update. No bush chores for them, but they had a big week nevertheless.
Here’s Phoebe enjoying her Sunday evening nap.
We’ve recently moved some furniture around and she has had no problem adjusting to that, as you can tell.
Poseidon is living up to his name, looking for a shower this morning.
I tremble in fear at what he might want tomorrow.
That’s it for now. Please check out my Twitter for more. And you can also see the (still-running!) series of videos I’m uploading daily from our Cozumel dive trip, over on Instagram, too. Speaking of Instagram and cats, did you know that Phoebe and Poseidon have an Instagram account? They do. Check them out.
The setup is this … and this is similar to something that I explained here last week, but also different.
We ride bikes through a nearby neighborhood and the other end of that neighborhood ends with a T-intersection. We turn right, which is immediately into a little hill. It’d be fine if you just rode over it, but it’s just stiff enough to be unpleasant from a complete stop — as in an intersection. So when we go that way, which is often, I jump on up ahead so I can be the Stop or Go signal for my lovely bride. If the timing works out, she can just take the right turn and keep up a little momentum. And somewhere just after that hill I can catch back up to her because I have no momentum. But just after that hill we take another turn and work through another neighborhood, and there’s a particular road there where I had one good day and now I try to hit it with zeal every time. I am three seconds off the Strava segment leader. It’s a short sprint and I’m sure I’m only on the leaderboard because no one really rides that road, or rides it hard, anyway.
But now I do, because of that one good day, and so I attacked it again yesterday. I have come to realize that my average time is only three or four seconds off my best time on that segment. It’s short, and that, of course, means that even my fastest time wasn’t that fast there, but nevertheless. We get to that right hand turn and I do what I can for about 35 seconds.
I do both of those things each time we go out this way, now. And yesterday, just like last week, The Yankee passed me about a mile later. Last time I was taking a sip of water and she rode away from me. This time, she just put in one little turn of speed … and it took 10 miles for me to catch her again.
So here’s a photo from our Monday morning bike ride.
Did you know the Gin Blossoms had a Grammy nomination in 1997? Did you know they lost to the Beatles?
Had you forgotten that the Beatles were somehow still releasing music three decades after the band broke up? There’s been good money in nostalgia since the invention of surviving media, I think.
Anyway, this was that song for the Gin Blossoms. They were the feature act in a show with Toad the Wet Sprocket and Barenaked Ladies, a concert we caught last Friday night.
That record sold five million copies and stayed on the charts for three years. And all the old fans — we weren’t the youngest people there, but we might have been close? — still sing along.
Jesse Valenzuela remains the band’s true weapon. Here’s his standard solo on the Doug Hopkins hit.
Robin Wilson makes a joke
This one was an initial release on the Empire Records soundtrack in 1995.
Anyway, “Til I Hear It from You” was re-released as a single the next year. Billboard hailed it as “the closest thing to a perfect pop song to hit radio in recent memory.”
The soundtrack, by the way, is holding up better than the movie.
It’s a coming-of-age movie and most of those don’t age well after the desired audience ages. No one was interested in Gen X at the time anyway, so that film was destined to flop, which it did. (It doesn’t hurt that it isn’t any good.) It does have a minor following for two lines of dialog but is otherwise not as good as the soundtrack, which was fronted by that Gin Blossoms tune. At Variety, Ken Eisner famously wrote Empire Records was “a soundtrack in search of a movie,”
Anyway, that song was number one in Canada, and in the top 10 on virtually every American chart. It is frozen in amber.
Did a little showroom floor shopping today. That’s twice I’ve done that in the last month, not counting quick grocery store visits. I don’t blame the pandemic for this. I blame the small amount of shopping I do, and also the internet. I walked around Target recently looking for shorts thinking This is easier on the website. And, today, we started the sofa-shopping process. I’m sure it will be a process.
Today’s process involved going to one store and sitting on seven sofas, a few of them more than once.
There is, of course, a sale. There is always a sale at a furniture store. Some of the gimmicks more thoughtful than others. But the woman we met today explained, in some tedious and plodding detail, the renovation sale they were undertaking. One half of the store is being reworked. And later this month they’ll flip it. And in the fall the whole store will be open again. But! For now! Everything is too crowded and it all must go at these low, low, toe-stubbing prices!
There is always a sale. Always a gimmick. And the drop cloths were a nice touch, but I am skeptical. The furniture store in my hometown held a going out of business sale for at least five years.
Anyway, we might have found one. We’ll think about it. There’s an even bigger sale next Thursday.
There is always a sale.
We made it over to the amphitheater, with easy parking, just in time for a concert. Opening the show was Toad the Wet Sprocket. It took 30 actual years, including a two-year Covid postponement, but I finally got to see this set live.
The Gin Blossoms are still happily using their 1996 “Congratulations I’m Sorry” aesthetic. It’s just perfect. Robin Wilson sounds good. Jesse Valenzuela is still pretty amazing.
(I haven’t seen them since 1996-97 or so, sadly.)
And, of course, the headliner, if you’ve been around this space in the last two days, was Barenaked Ladies. Canadian Music hall of famers Barenaked Ladies.
We walked in while Toad the Wet Sprocket was playing “Crazy Life,” which was a personal treat. At the end of the show Toad the Wet Sprocket and Gin Blossoms came out to join BNL in a cover of Traveling Wilburys’ “Handle With Care.” I had no idea how much I wanted to hear that song, how … singular a moment that would be.
It was exceptional. The whole show was terrific fun; well worth the two-year wait.
And then we hopped in the car and drove to Nashville to see friends tomorrow.
The whole day has felt like getting away with something. Shopping! Eating in the car! A concert! An overnight trip!
