Posts Tagged ‘tour de france’
Busy Morning
It’s the time of year when my mornings get jumbled up by live broadcasts of the Tour de France bike race. No time to play my usual morning word games. Conflicts with trying to write blog posts. And this morning, I need to prepare for the potential arrival of a crew from my asphalt company, who will be filling the cracks that appeared last winter and sealing the pavement overall.
That means I need to get the mower out early, and Cyndie needs to get her car down the driveway before they show up and keep us off the surface for a couple of days.
Enjoy this photo Cyndie captured last evening on her last walk of the day with Asher. I gotta go…
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Wild Morning
Weekend mornings get hectic for me during the Tour de France because I find it hard to take my eyes off the action. I make an exception when it is time to walk Asher and feed the horses. The sky reflected some of the action going on in the atmosphere but it wasn’t a complete surprise. We had a clue of what was coming from radar views I’d checked before heading out.
We were back in the house eating breakfast by the time the lightning and thunder arrived and the bike racers reached the finish line at the top of another mountain stage.
I’ll toss out a couple of images from yesterday’s handiwork. I used the mower and the trimmer to clean up around some edges after the pasture mowing the day before.
The place is beginning to look civilized again after having been gone for those ten days of uncontrolled grass growth while we were up at the lake.
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Record Win!
It may be Independence Day in the US today but my attention is on the greatest bike race in the world, the Tour de France. Yesterday, there was a historic sprint finish on Stage 5.
Mark Cavendish beat some amazing sprinters to the line for his record-breaking 35th Stage victory in the Tour de France. At 39 years of age and after overcoming illness, injuries, and depression, Mark came back and achieved what most thought was never going to happen. I had long hoped for him to reach this milestone but I figured it would never come to be. It is so cool that he has proved me wrong.
What a spectacular accomplishment. Bravo and congratulations Mark! I will forever remember how thrilling it was to witness this fabulous sprint win.
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Self Soothing
There are days when Cyndie and I put our energy toward helping our dog, Asher, learn to calm down on his own. Yesterday felt like a day I needed to practice a good dose of my own self-soothing. Between the US Supreme Court rulings and news of current early-season hurricanes, I put myself through unnecessary trauma by watching the US Men’s National Soccer Team’s futility in their crucial elimination loss to Uruguay in the COPA America tournament.
These are not the kind of warm and fuzzy inspirations that one prefers to be basking in while on a vacation at the lake.
If I wasn’t trying to eat healthy as a general rule, I’d binge on a too-large serving of our favorite ice cream from West’s Dairy in town to assuage my angst.
Has there been any encouraging news related to the SCOTUS in the recent past? From ethics disasters to blatantly political rulings that defy legal logic, it’s as if they are in a contest to see how much faith in the institution from average citizens they can destroy.
I’m not sure how much more news from the nine Supreme Court Justices I can take and still maintain my happy lookout on life.
I’d like to meditate on the beauty of a golden sunset but then I start thinking about Hurricane Beryl being the earliest category 5 Atlantic hurricane on record and my happy place gets blown away.
Breathe, John. You don’t need any ice cream.
The wind screaming across our lake yesterday didn’t help much in providing a calm and soothing atmosphere. Still, Cyndie and I got out for a walk around the properties in our association which soothed my nerves some after having watched Portugal eke out a victory over Slovenia on penalties after finishing extra time tied 0-0 in Euro 2024.
My exercises in self-soothing will get a fresh workout this morning after I watch the 4th Stage of the Tour de France which is already climbing mountains in the Alps. Oh boy.
Oooooommmmm.
For the record, I much prefer the stress of spectator sports over that of politics or climate catastrophes.
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Vacation Mode
A few days into our stay at the lake we are beginning to get the hang of not stepping out first thing every morning to tend to our animals. Thanks to our friends, Pam and John, we lounge around like a couple of retirees at the lake while they are taking care of life on the ranch. Yesterday, I responded to an innocent query about tricks for cleaning up under the overhang at mealtimes. It’s almost embarrassing, the amount of detail I can provide to describe my technique as an Equine Fecal Relocation Engineer.
Alas, I get to focus my attention on all the excitement happening in Europe. Between the Tour de France cycling and the Euro 2024 football/soccer tourney, I can almost fill an entire day entranced by spectator sports. Luckily, I stepped out for a breath of fresh air after England’s overtime victory and got invited to join in another pickleball game. That gave me an excuse to miss the Spain v. Georgia match and got me off the couch before the day disappeared into night.
I only had enough shoe left to complete two games before needing to retire. The surface of our old tennis court is pretty rough and my shoes might be as old as the court. These Adidas have served me well for decades, so they don’t owe me any money. After many, many games of futsal on the basketball floor at the health club, I retired these shoes to the lake place for any pickup soccer games or activity on the tennis court.
Yesterday, they suffered a fatal flaw that even my duct tape patch technique that covered the toe won’t fix.
Game over.
Time to switch to the next oldest pair stashed up here for just this situation. You can never have enough old shoes stowed away as backups at the lake. It’s where I keep shoes that are past their “best if used by” date but not yet tattered enough to trash.
The left shoe shown in the photo above has now officially earned its credentials for being tossed in the trash. The right shoe may still qualify to be kept in storage for emergencies in case the next failure happens on the other foot.
It feels like we are on vacation when this is the only level of concern demanding my attention in a day.
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Finishing Touches
Mornings this time of year get a little hectic for me because I find it so hard to avert my glance from the live coverage of the Tour de France while carrying on with all the rest of life’s details. However, afternoons are wide open for work or play and yesterday Cyndie and I were able to apply some finishing touches to the project we started back in mid-May when I got sick with COVID.
We whipped up some mud and applied grout coating around the stones we set on “Cabin 3” at the lake.
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After we completed that phase, Cyndie painted stain on the unfinished edges of the trim on the sides and we proclaimed the project complete.
Before dinner of Coop’s pizza, I found a spot on the court for a couple of losses in pickleball matches with other Wildwood Lodge Club members.
This morning we have plenty of sunshine but the temps since we arrived have hovered in the “chilly” category. Quite a contrast to the temperatures being reported on the roads of Italy where the first stages of the Tour de France are being ridden.
Time for me to give my full attention to the finish of Stage 2 today.
Ride safe!
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Unfortunate Crashes
This year’s Tour de France bike race has been entertaining but I do not enjoy the added drama of nasty crashes. The worst is when an incident is triggered by the carelessness of a fan as happened this morning.
I love having access to watch from home but it is sad when the motorcycles with the camera operators get in the way of a racer trying to break away from a competitor.
I’m soaking up the race while enjoying fresh-picked wild black raspberries on my yogurt with eggs and toast spread with Cyndie’s blackcap jam.
We are enduring the latest onslaught of dangerous air quality from Canadian wildfires that turns the splashes of color in the woods to an eery shade of orange.
You can see speckles of it on the fresh dirt Asher has thrown as he created a new canyon in a matter of seconds yesterday. He and I spent much of the day alone together while Cyndie attended a funeral in the Cities and then met with a group of her gang of high school friends who got together for lunch to celebrate a series of birthdays.
When Asher wasn’t napping, he demanded constant attention that had me kicking him a ball to chase and then I would need to retrieve it from beneath furniture where he pretended to “bury” it.
He’s almost a year and a half old and shows little indication of growing out of puppy energy any time soon. During this phase, I find I am much more inclined to ‘crash’ long before he does throughout each day.
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Watching France
For the ninth day in a row, I find myself mesmerized by the broadcast of the Tour de France bicycle race and their excellent helicopter views of the greater countryside beyond the roads of the race. I am of the mind that the vantage point of watching the riders fly past from the side of the road can’t hold a candle to the ability to see the many angles provided by the camera operators riding on motorcycles.
Combined with the overhead views from helicopters, which pan across 13th-century architecture and fascinating chateaus, I am left feeling like I have not only been watching racers but I have been watching the fabulous scenes of the country of France.
This morning’s rockin’ climb finish with a (currently as I am writing this) breakaway group over 10 minutes ahead that appears to be threatening the yellow jersey-wearing Jonas Vingegaard’s chance at a stage win on the brutal final ascent.
Jonas was looking all business as they paced along the official car toward the approach of the starting point.
I’m going to stop writing and focus on today’s race excitement for the next hour…
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Stage One
It’s baaaaack! The Le Tour de France bicycle race is grabbing my attention for another year. Too bad broadcast marketing geniuses have their coverage primarily hidden behind a pay-to-view provider to which I am not subscribed. At least the opening stage was teased out for free this morning on NBC.
Yesterday, I gave Asher an extended car ride for his first trip up to the lake. Cyndie came up a couple of hours later with her mom. We face the challenge of introducing Asher to the many other dogs that run loose around the six-family compound.
Fingers crossed that we achieve a comfortable normalcy without incident. I walked Asher down to the lake where he demonstrated a profound disinterest in getting wet. It will be interesting to see how long he maintains that behavior.
I’d say we are at stage one of familiarizing the pup with our lake life. It would be nice if we had a team of 8 to help guide us like the cyclists racing in the Tour de France. In those terms, I suppose Asher would be the leader and we are his domestiques.
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Missing Out
Now that we are back at home, I don’t have access to television coverage of the Tour de France bike race. I decided to focus on other projects yesterday and headed outside to move lawn furniture in preparation for mowing the grass that is overdue to be trimmed. The dew point temperature was high and the grass was very wet. I was going to need to wait for dryer conditions later in the day.
I decided to fill the time by cleaning up the two sections of asphalt that didn’t get removed by the excavators. Between the shop garage and the house, the old asphalt was still in good enough shape that they can overlay new on top of it. I spent much of the day pulling grass and weeds from the cracks and cutting back the sod away from the edges.
I also did a deep sweeping with a push broom to remove all debris.
While working on all that, thunderstorms started blossoming almost directly overhead. When it thundered nearby I pulled out my phone and checked the radar. Sure enough, the green/yellow/red blotches were materializing right on top of us.
Delilah and I headed back inside just as the intensity of pouring rain started to peak. The lawn was not going to dry out any time soon.
Being stuck indoors, I could have easily checked out the bike race online, but I didn’t even think of it. I finished reading the news and closed my eyes for a ten-minute nap. When I came to again the sun was shining bright. That allowed me to take Delilah out for her noon walk, where we stop by the barn to give Mix a little mid-day feed of extra nutrition.
The dog and I only made it part way through the woods when it started to rain again.
Back in the house we went. I ate lunch and waited until I could get back outside to finish putzing around the upper driveway.
It took until 2:00 in the afternoon for the weather to stabilize and the precipitation end. At the end of the day, around the time I was turning in for the night, I thought to check on the race. I missed out on several incidents with the Jumbo-Visma team, including the yellow jersey crashing.
I can just imagine the heightened alarm of commentators Phil Ligget and Bob Roll describing the drama as it unfolded.
At least I won’t miss anything today as it is a rest day for the competition. My attention will be on a certain paving company’s expected arrival and whether the grass is drying enough for me to mow.
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Relative Something 