Ok, so I was impressed with Foo and Turtle...but maybe you can help the, well, bike-adverse I guess I'd have to call myself (just supremely untalented, bicycle-wise), with understanding the whole Tour de France thing. Is the point simply that they ride a whole long way for a whole long time or is there some larger purpose served? And is France particularly important to it, or could it be relocated to, say, Latvia, and still be just as exciting for people?

Ooookkk...not sure what's questionable there, but apparently you don't like the phrase moved followed by the word to. So um...let's try relocated.

Beth: as long as I'm here and was going to comment on Le Tour anyway, here's my 2¢ worth.

Prior to this past year's race, I had spent a total of maybe an hour thinking about the Tour de France (TdF), and that was only because other people were talking about it on some of the forums I read. Last year, though, OLN had all kinds of coverage, and we had recently acquired OLN, so I thought... yanno... "Why not?"

It turns out that the measures by which the question "who's winning?" can be answered are varied and complex. The overall leader at any given point in the TdF-the guy wearing the yellow jersey-is determined by which individual rider has taken the least total amount of time to complete all the stages up to that point. However, there are all sorts of stages: individual and team time trials, long distance, mountainous... and individual riders who may not be strong enough in all those types of stages focus their efforts on winning the ones that play to their strengths.

So, in addition to the yellow jersey, you've got specialists competing for the green jersey (sprinters), the polka dot jersey (climbers), and the white jersey (rookie leader). Each of these has a high falootin' French name, as well, but really... who cares?

Meanwhile, you have all sorts of mind games and team strategy involving drafting, breakaways, and the fact that everyone riding in the peloton-that great mass of general category riders who tool along and let the specialists kill themselves, while they safe their strength for the right moment-gets the same time in any given stage. So as long as you're in the peloton, the only riders to whom you give up time are those who broke away and won the stage. If it's a hilly stage, the peloton will allow the climbers to break away and win the stage, because they know that those willowy guys don't have the motors to win enough stages to take an overall win.

It's like a chess match.

But that's not what I came here to talk about. I was going to comment on RAAM. Eric, if you think Turtle's tough, sneak a gander at what that Austrian handcycle team is doing in the Race Across America. It's mind-blowing to realise that they're actually up with some of the solo traditional and solo riders.

Also, I don't know if you were following or not, but Jim Kern really was burning up the road on his recumbent until he had to DNF because of pulmonary edema. Can you imagine going into something like RAAM knowing you're going to have to fight your asthma the whole way? Amazing.

All your posts are classic, man.

Foo - thanks. :) Hmmm...maybe I'll have to give it a looksee...sounds kinda cool.

Beth, ever seen the movie, Breaking Away? I attribute a lot of America's interest in cycling to that movie. More intelligent minds may differ. ;-)