Category: Journal

In the early 90’s, me and my mate Colin used to watch the Tour de France avidly. We’d set off on our own mini-stages around our reasonably hilly area of Scotland, churning out a not inconsiderable fifty or sixty miles in an afternoon. We kept up a decent regime for a good two or three years – it was the fittest I’ve ever been in my life, or hope to be for that matter.

But somehow, due to several reasons, I kind of fell away from road biking. Colin injured his back and, well, training on your own is as mind numbing as it is gruelling. I just got bored with it and then gradually stopped paying attention to Le Tour, too.

However, with the 100th Anniversary of the Tour de France this year, I have been trying to keep an eye on things. With all the travel and events over the last couple of weeks, I cant say I’ve managed it too well, but the climax of the stage in the Pyrenees last night was simply awesome.

With only a few kilometres to go, a plastic bag in the hands of a spectator catches on the right brake lever of Tour leader, Lance Armstrong. Down he goes, slamming hard onto the asphalt and jamming his chain while rival Jan Ullrich swerves to avoid the spill and continues up the mountain with the rest of the small group.

Now, in any other sport you’d probably see the more fortunate man launch an attack at that moment, to capitalise on the misfortune of his rival.

Not in cycling. Ullrich backed off and slowed the break group down until Armstrong had caught back up.

Wow. This was cool stuff.

Then another rider in the group launches an attack, Armstrong goes with him and in the space of a hundred metres, Armstrong has dropped the other guy and continues on – charging up the mountain to win the stage by more than forty seconds!!

And at the end, Ullrich was actually smiling – happy to have finished fourth and limited the damage done. The german said he would rather beat the american on the bike than with the latter lying hurt on the road. That’s sportsmanship – something Ullrich’s countryman, Michael Schumacher could do with looking up in the dictionary.

The car sailed through its first annual service without any major defects coming to light. When I say “sailed through” I mean “cost ?208 for no apparent reason.”

Still, at least it has fresh oil and whatever else for another journey to Scotland at the weekend.

Also, in an amazing turn of events, the previously Wicked Witch of Kings Chrysler, Sue the Service Manager was actually very pleasant. Heck, she even smiled and joked with me when I went to pick up the car after the event. And this was on one of the hottest days of the year so far, I might add – she could have been excused for being a little testy when the temperature in the shade was a stifling 34°C. I’ll fill in the service questionnaire and give her a glowing report – all is forgiven. :o)

On the way home, Fliss and I witnessed what appeared to be a man in a silver Audi speeding away from a hit and run incident. He had a head shaped, spiders web of a crack in his car windscreen and was overtaking the long queue of traffic on the wrong side of the road with wreckless abandon.

I took his number plate down and when we got home we called the police to tell them the when, where and what, although according to Fliss they didn’t seem particularly interested. Ah well, you do your bit. The dude was clearly up to no good, though – I hope they hunt him down like a dawg.

After the sombre events of Friday were out of the way, the weekend turned out to be quite pleasant. Very low key compared to a year ago, though, when we moved house and had my birthday party the day after.

On Saturday night my mum treated me, Fliss, and family to a quality meal at the Dumbuck Hotel. Top food, although the service was lacking and we ended up waiting 20 minutes for a round of drinks.

Then on Sunday I spent some time in the scorching sun trying to get Andrew to catch a football. This is not an easy task, believe me – Andrew has hand-eye co-ordination that only Stevie Wonder would envy. Still, he managed to catch a few… with the emphisis on few… and was definately improving by the time we saught shelter from the heat. (No doubt he’ll be back to square one by the next time I visit – which is this weekend for Hazel & Ian’s engagement party!)

Sunday evening was taken up by the fairly smooth drive back home – I’m actually getting quite efficient at it now, although we did have to stop for fuel this time.

For Monday I had taken the day off work, which we filled with shopping and a visit to Argos to buy my birthday treats – a skateboard ramp and a weight bench. True to form, the ramp wasn’t in stock, but I got my weight bench for ?60.

The construction process took ages, though – and it’s not as if it was too complicated. Two hours of toil ended on a sour note when I found that the very final frickin’ pieces were missing! Two spacer/washer things required for the butterfly attachments were absent from the bag, so I have to call the manufacturer to get them sent to me.

Fliss had fired up a barbeque while I was building the weight bench, so we had some charred & uncooked food for dinner before retiring to play EyeToy for the rest of the evening. Not a bad way to end my birthday weekend, even if the rest didn’t go to plan :o)