Maybe I Should Rename the Blog

At Least For the Month of July

Spent the morning watching the Tour de France, again. The team time trial. Totally awesome!!! Once more team Astana under the coaching of Johan Bruyneel had the course and strategy planned to near perfection.

Apparently, when Lance Armstrong and Bruyneel were working with US Postal and Discovery teams to win seven tours, Bruyneel had innovated the concept of studying every piece of roadway and stone along the way. I can recall during one of the more famous victories how Armstrong and the coach had gone out the morning of the individual time trial and ridden the complete course, memorizing every tweak and turn. Jan Ullrich, Armstrong's main opponent stayed inside on the rainy morning, studying a map. (So the story goes.) That afternoon, Ullrich crashed on a slippery corner. Armstrong, rode more carefully on the wet pavement--well aware that the white lines in the roadways got especially treacherous in the rain--and ended up sealing the overall victory that day.

Today, Astana worked like a precision machine, perfectly placed at every dangerous turn on the tricky course, and riding flat out with four of the fastest men in the race taking turns at the front to lead the way to an 18 second victory. 18 seconds may not seem like a lot, but in cycling on this level it is a big gap. That put Armstrong into a tie for individual first place, but Cancellara still holds the leader's yellow jersey because he had a .2sec advantage in the first day's time trial.

To say the race today was exciting is almost an understatement. I was totally absorbed.

Thus the cool of the morning slipped by into a hot afternoon. Then, I as I thought about heading off to the pool, the skies darkened again, and....well, surprise!! It began to rain. Hard.

That took up another bit of time. When I went out to feed the Boys, it had cooled off in a strange sort of way. But the sun finally came back out, so I went for my swim. It was postively delightful.

Came home, had supper, and that was that.

However, when I went out to give the Boys their midnight snack, it was cool and refreshing.

I might be able to discipline myself to get up, ignore the Tour for an hour or so and ride.

However, I am a little concerned about Chance. He had two raw rubs on his face and when I was putting medication on them, I realized he had bumps all over his neck and parts of his face.

Bug bites. Same as last year. Or hives. The raw spots were probably where he had scratched trying to stop the itching. I thought I still had some Azium from last year, but if so, I'm not sure where it is. If I can't find it in the morning, and his bumps are not better, I will call the vet to get some. Poor kid. I sprayed him with flyspray for now as there isn't much else I can do.

I don't know if he suddenly reacted to the mosquitoes or if some kind of fly has just shown up, or what. Last year, both he and Tucker had the bumps, but so far, Tucker looks fine.

I'm going to look on the Internet to see if there is some kind of natural remedy I can use to at least make him feel better. I'm itching just thinking about it.