Tour de Farce

Did you know that they were still having a bike race in France this summer? It's called The Tour de France, which roughly translated means "The Tour of France." That's what those crazy French folks call a race: a Tour. It's already been up hills and down in valleys. It doesn't happen all at once either. It's not like the Indianapolis 500, where you go 'round and 'round a whole bunch of times in an afternoon to decide who is the fastest at going around in a circle without running into one another or the walls. This French Bike Race is done in "stages." That means they make their way around the country in little bite-size chunks that make it possible for the Tour to go on for weeks.
You may not have heard about this thing because it takes place in a foreign land and it doesn't require ethanol. The riders in bike races eat a lot of bananas and drink a lot of water. It's what keeps them going. That and performance enhancing drugs. That is, if you believe seven-time France Tour winner Lance Armstrong. He told Oprah that he didn't feel that taking these drugs was cheating. “I viewed it as a level playing field,” Lance told Oprah. We know he was telling the truth, because no one lies to Oprah, not with that golden lasso of truth she's got. Did he make his teammates take drugs? “Look, I was the leader of the team, and the leader of any team leads by example,” he said. “There was never a direct order or a directive to that said you have to do this if you want to do the Tour or you want to be on the team.” By "Tour," he means this fancy French race I've been talking about, not some relaxing ride in the Pyrenees.
This was back in the days when bicycling really mattered, around the turn of the century. It mattered because there was this American who had survived cancer and came back and took on the whole world in some two-wheeled, sweatier version of Speed Racer.That was back when there was an entire TV network devoted to all things Lance and Tour. People in the United States wanted their children to grow up and ride bikes for a living. Some of those parents were even willing for their children to get cancer just so they could overcome it by riding bikes for a living.
That was a long time ago. Now there are guys with names like Blel Kadri and Andre Greipel out there, riding around the streets and cobblestone paths of the European Republic Formerly Known As France. Somebody's going to win, but you can be pretty certain that it won't be an American. And you can be pretty sure that they've just got to be hopped up on goofballs. You can trust Lance on that one, right?