Vive le Tour!

And Happy 4th of July! The Tour de France started today with an individual time trial in the beautiful seaside principality of Monaco. This is the event we look forward to all year long and it's finally underway! Lance Armstrong came out of retirement and is racing again this year on a very strong team. For anyone unfamiliar with "the Tour", it is basically a race around the country of France, sometimes crossing borders with neighboring countries like Spain, Italy and Belgium. Each year's route is different but it always ends on the spectacular Champs-Elysees in Paris. Heinous mountain climbs, fast flat sprint stages and tense time trials (both individual and team this year) all combine to make up this amazing event which takes 3 weeks(!) to complete. It's considered by many to be the hardest sporting event in the world; Lance Armstrong holds the record for the most wins, winning it 7 times in a row from 1999-2005. You have to be a very capable, strong and adaptable cyclist to even finish the Tour, much less win it! This year has many strong riders and teams and it's exciting to see who will prevail and be on the podium in Paris. If you're interested in following it we recommend the sites Versus, Cycling News or VeloNews. On Versus you can read and hear the expert and entertaining commentary of Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen, longtime commentators of the Tour, as well as create a fantasy cycling team. You'll also see amazing photos of the beautiful and historic countryside and cities that the route follows.

This month is my and Steven's 10th anniversary and last year we had decided that as a present to ourselves we would finally go to Europe and watch some stages of the Tour. Unfortunately that plan had to be postponed once we got the bad news of my layoff this past December. But we get to watch it this year in High Definition on Versus and we'll definitely be going to see it in person, hopefully in the next few years!