This morning when you were tossing and turning in bed, you may have wondered why you had such a lack of serenity, but deep, deep inside you knew.  You don’t know how I feel about this year’s Tour de France.  Don’t worry, here you go.

Some people have described this year’s TdF as “exciting” which could only be true if they are completely unfamiliar with bicycle racing and the phrase “boring as hell.”  Close racing does not equate exciting racing,  because after all, if everyone road every day in the pack and never did anything, and if there were no time bonuses, everyone would finish every stage race tied.  Wouldn’t that be awesome!

It’s no secret that Cadel Evans, should and, unless God strikes him down for being so boring, will win the tour during tomorrow’s time trial.  I doubt he’ll win the stage, but he can put two minutes into Sastre with his eyes closed, and judging from the number of small crashes he’s been in, he’s probably been practicing.  However, he’s not alone.  Virtually every favorite has hit the pavement in some stupid little crash that impacted the race.  Valverde crashed.  VandeVelde crashed out of contention.  Schumacher crashed out of yellow.  Cunego crashed out of the race.  The Schleck’s crash so much that they ride afraid of crashing.  Hincapie looks like a Pinata.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, more favorites got popped for doping.  I can overlook some of the older Spanish riders as being members of a doped generation.  EPO is mother’s milk to those guys, but Ricco (and Piepoli, because he’s a stage winner) was a huge disappointment, although as I told friends, I’ve never felt guilty like this before at being excited that someone tested positive for dope.  At least the ability to test for CERA shows that WADA and drug manufacturers are serious about developing good tests, although as the recent study on EPO testing and an interesting article in Bicycling (can’t believe I just wrote those words) about Cristian VandeVelde’s blood values confirm, testing isn’t a black and white thing.  The tests have remarkable variability and more than that, it sounds like a great percentage of the labs suck worse than Cavendish on a climb.

Speaking of VandeVelde, isn’t he lucky his breakout year happened on a team with longitudinal (passport style) independent dope testing?  If not, the scenario of aging, American, ex-Armstrong lieutenant, with little in the way of previous results sitting in contention for yellow would be a little bit suspicious, no?  While I’m happy for him, and maybe this is what Garmin-Chipotle is capable of, it’s still kind of a strange strategy.  No one remembers fourth or fifth place in last year’s tour, so even with a great ride, VdV will at best be a footnote in the tour.  Other than that, a couple of close calls is all the “Argyle Armada” has to show.  Not bad mind you, but I’d trade the whole package for a single stage win or jersey.

Truthfully, only two teams and one country have had a good tour.  As a country, shockingly, France has done pretty well with Chavanel, Dumoulin, Dessel as stage winners and Feillu in yellow.  French riders have dominated most breaks.  Top team spot goes to Columbia for snagging yellow with Kirchen, then not working too hard to keep him in yellow, getting four stages from Cavendish (who might go down as the Gary Payton of ProTour trash-talking), and picking up scraps with Burghardt.  The other team of note is CSC, who especially if you throw out tainted Saunier Duval results, has done well.  However, for all their tactical praise, and yes, they know what they are doing, and have the riders to do it, they’ll probably lose this tour with only a couple of stage wins, the young rider’s competition and a few days of yellow to show for it.  For a team of this class, anything less than outright victory is a disappointment, and they should have been more aggressive in the mountains to get it done. 

They’re not alone.

The big problem with this tour has been the lack of aggression.  The excitement of the tour comes down to time trials, the Alps and the Pyrenees, and so far I’d say that the first time trial was tainted with a suspect winner, and the mountain stages were a strange mix of detente and few summit finishes.  The worry is that this style of riding is characteristic of a post-drugs peloton.  The helpers can’t help, the attackers can’t attack, and the decent time trialers are more than happy to sit in.  Sastre is the only GC favorite to actually make an attack stick, and for that he’s branded a hero, when he didn’t gain enough time to put Cadel out of reach and he didn’t attack again to try and gain more time.

Unless we find some aggressive, attacking riders tours will be less fun to watch, and again inferior to the Giro in excitement.  In my mind that’s even the big difference between Indurain and Armstrong.  Both were dominant, but at least Armstrong lit some fireworks in the mountains.  Whether that was a sign of times past, we may not know for a few years, but regardless it made for good television.  The tour without talented agitators, is, well, boring.  Racing not to lose isn’t the same as racing to win.

But since you haven’t been watching, you already agree.

IF you have been watching, or following, what have you taken from it?

Right now, somewhere in a Seattle University classroom, Leah is finishing her final assignment, on her final day of class, for her ultimate MDiv course.  Considering the campus chapel is only a few yards away from her building, the clergy may want to assure that all communion wine is accounted for and under lock.  She’d be excited to finish under any circumstance, but after a particularly long few weeks, including last week’s stay in Chicago for a Covenant class, the feelings will border on euphoric.

She’s tired, she’s beat and she’s under considerable stress to get everything done, and not drop any balls while crossing all the ‘t’s’ and dotting all the ‘i’s’ (nice use of cliches, huh?).  For a week she’s been saying how much she’s looking forward to being done, and I can’t blame her.  I’m pretty confident she’s been counting hours and minutes remaining in the classroom.  I bottomed out personally in an ungraceful fashion somewhere during my last quarter of grad school, so I can hardly be anything but empathetic.  It’s rough.  The burnout combined with a near lethal load of work and the expectations of upcoming changes make for powerful exhaustion.

Unfortunately, that’s also where I’m at right now.  I’ve been taking it to the limit for what seems like months and months on end, slurping an unsatisfying concoction of extensive training and racing, house remodeling, work and what passes for both a romantic and social life.  A push to make progress on the house results in a bulging out of eliminated time with Leah, decreased fitness or a lost recollection of my friend’s names.  A push to train more takes everything else to a standstill.  I haven’t helped anyone with anything in as long as I can imagine and I preparemore for sleep than I do for most of the church meetings I help lead.  When I’m tired mentally, and to an extent physically, I lose any social graces I might have under the best of circumstances, and become more ugly, blunt and direct than I ever should.  I’m half-assing at best.

Going back to my school days, if there was one thing that annoyed me to no end, and still continues to do so, it was when people continually remarked how busy and tired they were.  First off, we’re all busy and tired, and your self-inflicted busyness and tiredness is no more important or honorable than anyone else’s.  And second, get over yourself.

The problem is that I’m rapidly becoming the kind of person who talks about being “busy and tired.”  For both Leah and I it’s true, but it’s a place we need to move beyond.  For the moment however, we’re a little mired in stress and tiredness, and while I’m sure better things are around the corner it’s not much fun right now.  We haven’t seen much of each other in the last two and a half weeks, and even then we’ve been misfiring.

I race tonight and tomorrow, then make my last training push towards next weekend’s national qualifier race.  If I qualify, hopefully things quiet down.  I hope I can make it that far. 

Any good life and marital strategies for minimizing stress, maximizing rest and still getting things done?  I’m beat.  Actually, as you should know, I’m really, really busy and tired.

Keeping in line with this week’s theme of automotive-related posts, this is an ‘08 Honda CBR600RR (see I told you I didn’t hate Hondas), or as I like to call it: sex on two wheels.

Wait, wait, I’m sorry, that’s what people call ME when I’m riding my bicycle.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot about motorcycles as a potential commuting vehicle over the past few weeks.  On face value, there are some real advantages:

• High gas mileage, sometimes topping 60mpg
• Lower emissions, and high efficiency
• Ability to use carpool lanes, especially on SR-520 during rush-hour

Honestly, it raises the question of why anyone should be driving a single-passenger vehicle weighing 4,000lbs when they could be riding a 400lb bike and tripling their fuel economy.  Furthermore, motorcycles are inexpensive and simple mechanically.  They’re small, compact and easy to park.  For someone like myself who likes the feeling of speed, nose out front in a prone position, it’s easy to understand the attraction.

Of course it’s not that simple.  They aren’t the size of a Nissan Armada.  They do only have two wheels.  Storage is limited.  Oh yeah, then there are these factors:

• SUVs being driven by cellphone talking, distracted people
• Falling over and the seeing the ground rising at you quickly
• Impending death

On top of that, there are weather concerns, and although the northwest is pretty mild, most people seem to think that riding in a downpour, even properly dressed isn’t anyone’s idea of a good trip.  As it turns out, an unbelievable number of racing cyclists also own motorcycles, a fact I did not realize until I began this process of discovery.  With a large pool of advisers, I’ve been asking questions in bulk, and so far, people’s opinions are evenly split.  When I outline my ideal plan of using a motorcycle as a freeway commuting vehicle for an 11 mile commute, several people have said things to the effect of “that’s exactly why I got my bike, you’d love it” while several have responded, “well… it’s great in the summer, but you’d really want to have it as a hobby instead of something practical.”

And what I want is practical.  If it’s not  economical, if it doesn’t save time and if it’s not reasonably safe, it would be a no-brainer to decline.

The topic of reasonable safety is a good one, especially now, because one of Leah’s friends, an expert motorcyclist, died this past weekend in an accident on I-5.  Stories like this one are all too common.  Most non-riding parents would rather have their kids get into heroin than buy a sport bike for this very reason.  When my dad bought an old Indian as a teenager, grandma quickly decided either the bike, or dad would leave the house.  No one knows what happened to the bike…

According to NHTSA data (found here), during the 1990’s 24,495 motorcyclists died on US roadways.  Slightly less than half of the fatalities were in single vehicle accidents.  Not shockingly, the data shows that motorcycle accidents are heavily tied to certain factors, including alcohol consumption, riding at night, speeding, improper licensing and riding without a helmet.  Regardless of the causes, the data suggests that a motorcycle is 3.6 times as like to involved in a fatal incident, and 18 times as likely to be involved in a fatal incident based on miles traveled.

Since I would be riding sober, well protected, mostly during the day and generally not like an idiot, I wonder what my risk factor would be?  I want to be around for Leah for decades and decades to come.  Many of my motorcycle-riding, bicycle-racing compatriots have suggested that since we’re so used to avoiding cars on our bikes we’re much more alert, safer and saner than average.  However, when airplanes have something go wrong at 35,000ft it’s always a problem, and similarly when you’re on two wheels and things go pear shaped, you’d long for a second set of tires for balance. 

But gosh darn-it, it sounds and looks like fun, and the allure of saving money and having fun at the same time, while even potentially reducing the environmental implications of driving is substantial.

So, weigh in.  What do you think?  Does this sound reasonable?  Am I an idiot?  Is it even possible that riding a motorcycle could be 10% as dangerous as entering turn four of a crit at 30mph for the final sprint, five riders wide?

You’ve got to admit though, as good as I look in spandex, it’d be even better in leather.

Hot sex on two wheels, baby.