1.
No, I'm not doped up. You don't have to be on EPO to watch Tour de France, but it helps.
It's early in the morning on July 4th. The world is waking up and I'm in Monaco to enjoy the First Stage of the greatest race on earth. A few hours later I'm surrounded by 180 skinny men on bikes. They all look wildly anorexic.
At one point I'm almost run over by last year's winner Carlos Sastre. And I'm so close to Lance Armstrong that I can smell his deodorant. By the way, he doesn't wear any.
But still it's a dream come true being at the center of the universe. I've watched the Tour on TV since I was eleven, but now I'm here with 80.000 fans, an obese Prince Albert, and a few of my nephews and nieces.
By the way, I'm rooting for Andy Schleck.
First of alle, Andy Schleck is from Luxembourg, the only country in the world that's smaller than Denmark. Second of all, he's riding for Saxo Bank, the Danish team.
Needless to say, Lance Armstrong has more followers than Schleck. As always, Lance divides the French into two groups: 1) the people who hate him a little and 2) the people who hate him a lot.
One of the reasons is envy - a Frenchman hasn't won the Tour since the fall of the Bastille. That was in 1789.
2.
For the record, I actually like Lance; I just think he needs a crash course in humility. Hopefully, not on the bike, just in real life.
And by the way, throw in a course in anger management. Lance Armstrong is a brilliant and charismatic man but he seems like such an angry dude. Maybe it would help if he stopped dating George Bush?
3.
However, I still follow Armstrong on Twitter, but so far the only thing I've learned is what he puts on his iPod.
Once in a great while there's a gem though. So here are some of Lance's best tweets (status) taken from his Twitter profile:
*Listening to Ryan Adams and the Cardinals on my iPod.
*Coldplay is on my iPod
*Greg Lemond is on my iPod.
*Called Greg Lemond and told him, I love you, man, but get the fuck out of my iPod.
*Getting a massage.
*Getting a rubdown.
*Getting a blow job.
PS
If you're shocked by any of this, you should see the pictures Lance put on Facebook of Sheryl Crow.
5.
Monaco is surprisingly sedated on the day of Le Grand Depart, but then again there's always something sedated about Monaco. It's a place where people don't work for a living; they just down their cognacs and come on to their housemaids.
They also throw gifts at you. At least from the caravan preceding the stages in Tour de France. Gorgeous women toss caps at the spectators - plus key rings, magazines, t-shirts, crackers, vibrators.
Sometimes the pretty girls hit the odd spectator with their junk, but no one cares because you can always brag that your jaw was broken at the biggest cycling event in the world.
6.
My nephews and nieces are sitting in the harbor watching the time trial. They're bored out of their skulls. They want some of the riders to crash, but everybody stays on their bikes. It doesn't bode well for this year's Tour.
Fabian Cancellara from Saxo Bank wins the race, Lance Armstrong comes in as number ten.
On his Twitter page, Lance claims he's pleased with the result. But we all know better. Lance won't be pleased until he's won Tour de France 25 times and saved 200 billion people from cancer.
I truly wish him luck on the latter, but not the former.
Four hardcore cycling fans from Denmark with some of the junk that was thrown at them from the caravan.***************
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