If given the choice between playing in the Super Bowl and riding in Le Tour, I believe I would choose Le Tour.

One of the notable events to unfold while I was off pitching tents last weekend was the start of that annual enigma known world-wide simply as, LE TOUR. Those long-time readers of The 'Puke might remember last year's posts chronicling my Tour-mania; my passionate 3 week affair with The Cyclism, made possible by the schedule of a man with nothing more pressing to do than prepare sweet slushy refreshments for high schoolers each morning. Indeed, it was a seemingly rare set of circumstances which enabled me to immerse myself in hours of stage by stage coverage and re-coverage and prime-time extra coverage of Le Tour. Shameful really. Luckily, I am decidedly more busy this summer, certainly too busy to watch every stage 3 times, but not so busy that I can't catch various bits of the quadruple coverage offered by OLN (soon to be Versus? WTF?) and puzzle together one whole viewing of each day's stage. I don't know if I will get to hear quite as much from those snappy British OLN broadcasters, Phill Ligget and Paul Sherwin, as I would like, but I'm not complaining.

What I am mildly complaining about is that there is no Lance in the 2006 installment of Le Tour, and so no superhero to fix my Americentric cycling jones. To top it off, the slick Italian grease-puppy (yeah I don't know what the fuck that is either, but it can't be good), Ivan Basso, whom I had anticipated rooting for turned out to be a doping cheater... Or at least a doping cheater dumb enough to get caught, which in a sport as dirty as cycling is perhaps even more disappointing. Sigh, such is my cynicism. None-the-less, Basso and many of his colleagues, including possible favorites Jan Ulrich and sneaky-fucking-kazak Alexandre Vinokourov (not personally doping, but the rest of his team was) are now MIA, leaving me scrambling to find new favorites and to re-evaluate my feelings on whether I'm an awkward Belgian supporter or more of a punk-ass Aussie kind of guy. Do I stick with the home-growns, at least a couple of which are probably assholes, or do lend my enthusiasm to the likes of slow old Spaniards? Maybe I should stick which native english speakers. Time will tell, I suppose. Still, after 3 years, I remain entranced by this crazy topsy-turvy Frenchy bike race, and if they bring back the team time trial stage, I might even make out with it again. Who am I kidding? I'm making out with it right now.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go tempt Internet Karma and play the Trek Scratch and Win Sweepstakes like 8 billion times with 4 different accounts.

.