what the...

ok, now the tour is really wide open... jan ullrich and ivan basso - arguably the 2 favorites for this year's tour - have both been suspended by their teams (t-mobile & CSC) after being implicated in the operation puerto doping scandal. i'm sure the americans (hincapie, landis, leipheimer, maybe even bobby julich) are feeling like their chances just got a little better but i think this might be the year for vinokourov if he can stay disciplined and ditch the crazy & pointless attacks that characterized his riding at t-mobile.

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last laugh...

so i'll finally allowed to ride a mountain bike again and a freak monsoon sets in... mother nature trying to get the last laugh? did a wet philly group ride on saturday, and then a wet road ride by myself on sunday. the first race of the cranky monkey was postponed untill late july, so i'll at least be able to race that whole series and the wakefield races are on hold for a while untill the course can be repaired from the damage suffered over the weekend.

for now it's back to the apartment hunt...

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got jitters?

steve, pre-show, at the austin grill open mic...

stopping to fix a flat in manayunk

t-minus...

got the all clear to mountain bike on monday - so long as i'm careful - but car trouble reared it's ugly head on the way back from the doc's and i wasn't able to get out to dirt monday or tuesday... the car's fixed now (new thermostat) and i'm going to head up to schaeffer this afternoon to see how my shoulder feels off road. wednesdays at wakefield starts today, but i figured it'd be a good idea to get a couple of rides in before racing so that i'm no more of a menace than usual...

chugging along...

not much to report lately... i've been riding a lot on the road -- good hard workouts thanks to josef. monday i've got an ortho appointment and they'll x-ray my shoulder to see how the healing is going and i'm hoping he'll give me the green light for mountain biking. there will be a mountain bike in my car on monday, so if all goes to plan i'll be heading out to schaeffer after work. wednesday might be a little soon to start racing, but you never know...

heather and i will be making an assault on the dc rental market this weekend, check back later for war stories from the front lines.

the break on lemon hill

we managed to see the race from a bunch of places along the course... we rode from the house to brunch near rittenhouse and then over to the race just in time to see the womens race finish, then headed backwards around the course to the top of lemon hill where we saw the breakaway before they were reeled back in. after that we headed out towards manayunk and saw the pack come through main street and the bottom of the wall and made it back to the art museum in time to see the finishing circuits and finish.

waiting for the womens finish with baited breath...

csc riders schmoozing with the sponsors...

near the end of saturday's group ride i saw a group of riders in CSC gear riding towards the art museum -- no surprise since i'd seen a couple of pro teams riding down kelly drive, but then i realized they were riding a motley collection of bikes instead of matching cervelos, and then i took a 2nd look at the riders and realized that they were mostly middle aged and a little more generously proportioned that the typical european pro racer. for a second i thought they were just a group of overzealous fands, but then towards the back of the pack i saw a CSC team car and some rider that looked like they were actually on the team and realized that the team must be taking out some bigwigs from the sponsors for ride...

friday afternoon

Pierce mill

waiting to start our segment...

bega working the media...

diet coke + mentos...

you've probably seen the videos on youtube - a couple of dumbass college kids dropping mentos into 2-liter bottles of diet coke and turning them into fountains or crude bottle rockets - but what happens when a couple of more creative guys get into the act... the bellagio fountains recreated in diet coke

moblogging...

i noticed that there haven't been many pics on the blog recently, so i've got flickr set up to do a bit of moblogging. the old buzznet moblog never worked well when i switched phones back in february and just sort of died out. the pics from the new phone (see the last couple of posts) look really good compared to the ones from the old phone.

awakening...

tuesday evening...

let me get this straight...

...this is beer?

back from a weekend in florida for my brother's high school graduation... nothing to do but sit on the beach, relax, eat, and if you're feeling really energetic: wander around a museum...