Gay’s mom came to Seattle last week and stayed at her cousins’ places in Seattle. Today, Gay took the kids over there for lunch and to bring her mom back here to stay the week. Havana is very happy to see her Grandma! Havana and Hudson also met Gracelyn who was born about a month before Hudson:
Havana came running out of the house yelling “There’s a penguin in the house!”. It was 80+ degrees today so we thought the odds of a penguin really being in the house were low so we humored her. Later, Gay went in the house with Havana and Havana showed her the “penguin”. It was actually a hummingbird. And Havana learned a new word.
Contador attacked on the final climb and no one could match him. He’s now in yellow with Lance in second by 1:37. It should be pretty easy to keep that lead over everyone until the final time trial.
Incidentally, Versus’ TV coverage is dominated by ads for Cadillac and Chrysler. I’m thankful that they support cycling and that allows me to see the TdF, but why are GM and Chrysler wasting our tax dollars advertising for products that the world has rejected and is very unlikely to buy anytime soon? They should make cars that don’t suck before they start advertising again.
Today’s stage turned controversial. George Hincapie, an American, was in the yellow jersey on the road for much of the race. He got in a breakaway that got out to an 8:50 lead over the peloton putting him in the yellow jersey by 3:25 had the race finished at that moment. Astana started leading the peloton to bring that lead down to something more reasonable and, apparently wanting to let their friend George get the yellow jersey, stopped driving when the lead was back down to 5 or 6 minutes. AG2R, the current leader, tried but failed to push any harder to maintain the yellow jersey so it seemed clear that George would get the yellow jersey.
After a surprisingly exciting first week, the second week has been uneventful. Today Levi Leipheimer abandoned due to a broken wrist in what seemed like a minor crash and “two riders were shot with pellet guns”:http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/tdf2009/news/story?id=4337158. In a week, there have been no changes in the GC and nothing interesting happening. They’re heading into the Alps this weekend so it should be a good final week.
Steve and Renuka and their kids, Owen (5) and Claire (3), came over for dinner tonight. We grilled beef satays and a salmon on the bbq, Gay made an orzo and cucumber salad and homemade ice cream for dessert.
It’s cute to see Havana playing with other kids, she starts off shy but has so much fun and has a smile on her face the entire time. Hudson had fallen off the chair in the kitchen minutes before they arrived and cut his lip, scuffed his nose pretty badly and there was lots of blood — the worst injury he’s had yet. He was fine and not crying 30 minutes later, but his fat lip sure stuck out and his nose still looks bad.
Cancellara cracked on the first mountain climb of the tour, not able to keep up with Astana driving the peloton. Contador attacked his own team, supposedly against the team’s plan, and leapt ahead of Lance by 2 seconds.
Back from her vacation, our architect came over today to look at the property and talk about our options for locating the house. It doesn’t seem practical to move the house very far north and retain the view due to the slope of the property. But we still may be able to situate it so that we have one yard instead of a front and a back yard. Gay and I don’t quite agree on the importance of this, though. The architect will have to be creative to mediate between us on this and still give us south-facing windows for good solar glazing.
The Roku (pronounced “Row-koo”, not “Rock You”, I’ve discovered) player we got 13 months ago, one month past the 1-year warranty, died last Friday. They wouldn’t replace it so I ordered a replacement. Good thing they’re only $100. I tested the power supply and it was delivering the correct voltage so I assumed it was the box itself. I was wrong.
I got the new one today and tried the new power supply and it does work. Hmmm. Maybe the amperage is wrong? I can’t test that. Well, with a replacement power supply, we will have two and can use the old one elsewhere. It’s a great device, otherwise.
Today was the team time trial and, as expected, Astana won by 40 seconds, exactly the time difference between Armstrong and Cancellara. So they have the same time starting Stage 5 but Cancellara is still in yellow by a few hundredths of a second. Four of the top 5 positions in the race are Astana riders. I’ve never seen a team so dominant. It’d be amazing to see all three podium finishers from the same team, I don’t think that’s ever been done before.
Ben Stiller is now hanging around Lance and was allowed to be a podium girl and put the yellow jersey on Cancellara after the stage.
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