Bastille Day

Vive la France!Our home improvement project today included a second coat of paint on the front door. The door had to be left in an open position to allow the paint to set up. One or the other of us had to stay home and watch the paint dry. I drew the right straw today so I watched today's extended coverage of the first mountaintop finish stage of le Tour live. It was extremely exciting.

France tonight will be celebrating a Tour de France triumph by Frenchman Rémy Di Gregorio of the Française des Jeux team. Di Gregorio rode away from an early break to lead the race over the penultimate climb, the legendary ascent of the Col du Tourmalet. The Frenchman was not able to hold the lead. Italian climbing specialist Leonardo Piepoli claimed first place on the stage but a Frenchman as the first rider over the Tourmalet on Bastille Day is going to be a good enough reason for many toasts this evening in France.

Today's TdF doping news: "Riccò rides right into questions." VeloNews Tour correspondent Neal Rogers opines that in this environment, unbelievable rides are treated as if they really are unbelievable. Young Signore Riccò has raised many more questions than he has so far answered with his dominating performances. He was clearly much the best in Sunday's first true mountain stage and today in the first mountaintop finish he easily hung with the race leaders before eventually nipping past them at the line to claim first place in the King of the Mountains competition. Many are finding his results to be just a little bit suspicious. Riccò has declared quite publicly that his personal hero is the legendary Italian climber, Marco Pantani. Pantani, of course, was found dead in an Italian hotel victim of a drug overdose. One hopes that young Signore Riccò intends to emulate only the bicycling exploits of Il Pirata, not the other bits.

My personal prime dope suspect, Schumacher, flirted with the head of the peloton on Sunday and even attempted at one point to break away. In a failure of his doping program, however, he faded and only ended up first in the second group on the road, losing 40 seconds to Tour leader Kirchen and the other GC contenders. Today he never threatened the front. He did ride well enough to lose only about 40 seconds to the new leader, Cadel Evans.

After I spent the morning watching le Tour, TOPWLH returned to take over the paint drying watching in plenty of time for me to get in a nice ride. The weekend wind has much diminished while the sunny skies and the warmish temperatures hung around for another day. It was a fabulous July day.

Happy Bastille Day to all. Vive la France.