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21
Jul 22

Pogačar and Vingegaard on Spandelles

We’re 18 stages into the Tour de France now. It’ll wrap up in Paris on Sunday, but it was decided today.

Let me set a tiny bit of the stage. Tadej Pogačar, the two-time defending Tour champion, rides for UAE. He won his first Tour championship on the final time trial in a shocking fashion over his countrymen and rival, Primoz Roglic, who rides for Jumbo-Visma.

Primoz left this year’s Tour a few days ago after he suffered, and struggled through, a shoulder dislocation. Which is to say that, on Stage 5, Roglic crashed, put his own shoulder back into place and continued riding for nine more days. One of those days where he suffered and struggled was critical. Roglic and his Jumbo-Visma team laid out a plan to break Pogačar on the Col du Granon in Stage 11. It was powerful, beautiful and the first time in his three Tours de France (or anywhere else, of which I am aware) that Pogačar has been overwhelmed.

On that 11th stage Roglic’s Jumbo-Visma teammate Jonas Vingegaard stormed his way up the Granon climb and claimed the yellow leader’s jersey. For the last week, then, Vingegaard has had a two-minute lead on Pogačar. (Pogačar is now wearing the best young rider’s white jersey. Despite his immense success, he’s only 23 years old.)

Which brings us to today. The Alps are behind them. They’re leaving the Pyrenees. It was Pogačar’s last real chance to reclaim the yellow jersey, and, thus, Vingegaard’s last challenge. Both of their teams have been reduced because of Covid and the attrition brought on by a difficult Tour. And with about 40 kilometers to go, Pogačar began his attacks.

Vingegaard was there for every desperate turn of the pedals. By the penultimate climb, the two of them were alone. On the descent Vingegaard almost crashed in a turn, but he somehow saved a stoppie. Almost immediately after Pogačar overcooked a turn and found himself in a shallow ditch.

He was back on his bike before he came to a halt in the crash, but Vingegaard and his yellow jersey were down the road. Now Pogačar had to storm back. He had to take even more risks on this risky descent. His Tour was slipping away from him.

And then Vingegaard sat up and waited on his rival, allowing Pogačar caught up to the race leader. Here’s the capture.

They played it safe the rest of the way down, their race would wait until the final climb, the legendary hors catégorie Hautacam. There Vingegaard, using the wings provided by the yellow jersey, dropped Pogačar once more, extended his lead to an inevitability.

The Tour has shown us great racing for three weeks, but the image above is the one to remember. It’s a wonderful moment in a Tour that longtime viewers and experts are coming to agree just might be the best ever.


12
Jul 22

Two points

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.

One last point. They’re in the Alps in the Tour.

Click through that mini-thread and you get four little photos that the world feed used as cutaway shots.

The Alps get more intriguing all of the time.


27
Jun 22

Two cats and a book

It has been three weeks since we featured the most popular part of the blog — hey, we’ve been busy. But now we can catch up with the kitties. They’re both doing well, thank you.

Phoebe has been having a lot of cabinet meetings of late.

I’m sure there are many important policy decisions are made in those meetings. Where to map, what to scratch, how to stretch.

Probably the cabinets are a part of her routine to try to create distance between her and Poseidon, seen here showing of his regular charming nuisance.

No breakfast is safe from this guy. Mine certainly wasn’t yesterday.

Can’t say he didn’t warn us. Here he is, warning us.

“YOUR BREAKFAST IS NOT SAFE!” — Poseidon, probably.

I don’t know when I wrote the nerdiest thing I’ve ever written, but it occurred to me early this morning that this is a thing we should chart. I wrote this.

The book is News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media.

It is a good book. It is, unequivocally, an important book. It was when it was released in 2011, and remains so today. But these little problems are compounding. Maybe it is a function of the editing process when they created the Kindle version.

Look, I’m not an expert in this area. Far from it. The first error, I knew a tiny bit about the man involved. The second was revealed as a chronological inconsistency one page, and a few paragraphs, apart. The third is an obvious error. The fourth I found because now I’m googling every name and publication in this book. I’m enjoying the book and learning a great deal. It’s just slowing me down, from the continued learning, is all.

Of course, I’m also picking up tidbits here and there about the people and their work that weren’t included in the book. When the world wide web is your footnote database …

I don’t know if this is the nerdiest thing I’ve ever written (Not by a longshot. — ed.) but it is somewhere on that list.

Come to think of it, let’s never chart the nerdiest things we’ve written. Never, ever.


23
Jun 22

The wizard as a crazy, younger, man

Just some quick Twitter stuff to fill your time today. We wrapped up the new Obi-Wan series tonight. The quick review: worth watching. I say that as a person who wants Disney to explore any other part of this universe beyond the Skywalker saga. But it is good and this is might be the one legacy deserving an exception. Ewan McGregor and Alec Guinness always needed a fifth act and here we are.

One nice thing about this being on the app is that the whole catalog is right there. Watching the big dramatic confrontation in the last episode of the miniseries brought me here.

It was the walking Jabba version. And I think that, now, Greedo and Han fired simultaneously. I don’t care about that, not really, but purists do. I only have one strictly held Star Wars belief: the whole series is really only good when Han is on camera. (Much as it pains me to say.)

This could mean he’s forgotten, or he’s sand crazy or he’s lying. The latter doesn’t make a lot of sense based on the rest of Guinness’ arc. He doesn’t seem like he’s less lucid after all of those years in the desert. Similarly, forgetfulness doesn’t make a lot of sense. So I’ll blame the modern writing, here, for not being able to overcome the old Lucas writing.

You could make the same argument as I tried above about the way we’ve seen and thought about Guinness’ Kenobi. But we should also give Lucas’ writing a nod. It’s important to remember how cinematic storytelling can change over 40 years. We didn’t see the whole Kenobi-19-year-old-Skywalker dynamic. Maybe some off-camera things shaped Kenobi’s choices. Maybe I’m giving too much credit to Lucas, but as we know he’s doing a lot of homages here, so why couldn’t that be one?

Hayden caught a lot of grief for his Anakin Skywalker, but if you’re going to create the galaxy’s scariest monster there has to be some rage in there somewhere …

I suppose it is owing to the 1970s vision of the science fiction future in a time long, long ago. But doesn’t it seem odd that Kenobi spent all that time wandering about the Death Star without anyone seeing him? I hate myself for looking this up, but Wikipedia says that

According to Star Wars reference books, the population of the Death Star was 1.7 million military personnel, 400,000 maintenance droids, and 250,000 civilians/ associated contractors and catering staff. The Death Star was defended by thousands of turbolasers, ion cannons and laser cannons, plus a complement of seven to nine thousand TIE fighters, along with tens of thousands of support craft.

… and there’s not a bank of security cameras looking for old guys strolling around in robes?

Which leads us to the big confrontation, and where we stopped the movie, because … the outcome of the Vader-Kenobi confrontation on the Death Star.

Look, it has been 45 years. No one has been working on the Kenobi miniseries that long, but when they wrote the six-episode plot for the series they refreshed their memories of what happened here, and in that last prequel. Between all of that, and this new series, there is room for them to continue working.

So, again, worth watching.


20
May 22

Riding into the weekend

Finally, we were able to get in another bike ride this week. The two extra days off did my legs no favors. But someone didn’t seem phased. I was playing catch up for 90 minutes.

At the very end of the ride I caught her.

Or, seen another way …

Even then, it took a well-timed break — near our pre-selected turnaround point is the home of a few friends who were out in their yard so we stopped for a chat — and a desperate chase just to stay in sight.

She’ll get faster before I do, probably, which is the real concern.

Did you know I am still putting dive videos on social media? I am still putting dive videos on social media. Here’s today’s dose. I’ve got about five more weeks worth of clips, I’m sure.

That’s it for now. See you Monday. Until then, check out my Instagram. And did you know that Phoebe and Poseidon have an Instagram account? Also, be sure to keep up with me on Twitter as well.