When I was in high school I actually watched the tour de france a couple of times. The whole idea of these guys riding thousands of miles through the mountains, day after day, made me cry even then. It’s just the most amazing damn thing I’ve ever seen. And have you seen the legs on those guys? They are insane.

But then I forgot about the tour for a long time. In college I never watched t.v. (except northern exposure) and sports weren’t even on my radar screen. Once again it took Mitch’s interest to bring me back to the excitement of the tour.

Nowadays there’s not only the spectacle of these guys riding all that way, there’s also the homegrown enthusiasm of an american winning the damn thing. Yes, I know, I’ve always hated those people who are only interested in a thing if there is an american involved. It’s so damn americentric. But what the hell, an american team had never won the tour de france in its entire hundreds of year history until last year. And even though i’m not typically a rah-rah-rah america kind of person, Lance Armstrong and the U.S. postal boys made me into one. First you’ve got lance himself, as tall as the day is long with looks like a cool drink of water, and then you’ve got those hard working postal lads, all teamwork and no play, with good old george hincapie himself sending trip reports out to the web so we can all see how the race is going.

If you don’t know much about the tour you may be asking yourself, what the heck is this and why is it worth getting all worked up over? Well some people have called the tour de france the hardest sporting event in the world. While I’m not sure about that (how are you supposed to judge these things? I’ve never ridden the tour de france, but I’ve never competed in the World’s Strongest Man competition either...who the hell knows?), it clearly is DAMN HARD. In three weeks these crazy guys ride their bikes about 2000 miles all over france. They get two rest days but other than that it’s around a 100 miles a day, up and down mountains, around lakes, etc. The race has been going on since 1903 and until recently it has been dominated by Europeans. For any of you who have seen Breaking Away, you know that cycling is about as american as communism. But these days an American named Lance Armstrong has been kicking some serious butt in the tour. He won it last year and he’s looking to make it two this year (there are four days left in the tour as I write this and Lance is 5:37 ahead of the field).

Not only is Lance Armstrong a hell of a good bike rider, he also seems like a hell of a good guy. I say seems like because I can’t say that I’ve had the pleasure of personally interrogating Lance on all his finer points (if you know what I mean) but I have seen him interviewed after almost every damn stage (a day in the race is called a stage). I swear the guy’s been off his bike all of 30 seconds before someone is asking him inane questions or trying to get him to brag about how great he is. Lance is sort of a fairy tale story because he had testicular cancer in 1998 in a crazy advanced way (he had a heck of a lot of tumors, some in his brain in fact) and beat cancer and came back to win the tour in 1999. It seems like having cancer has really changed his life and given him this sort of wise, big picture, kind of feel. Every time words come out of his mouth I get this warm fuzzy feeling and I just think, "what a swell guy." You should watch him yourself, I bet you get the same feeling. He just gives off this vibe of someone who is trying to not only do something very well (ride his bike) but also see the bigger picture and be a good guy. Of course we all have confusion over how to be such a person and what it all means, but somehow I think Lance Armstrong is going to end up being a hero for all ages, and I’m not just saying that because I think he is dreamy as hell and every time he smiles I want to jump his bones.

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