A day late and a dollar short....

A day late and a dollar short - or the heat's getting to me - or the brain is on summer vacation - or I'm getting old - but somehow the Blick just didn't get written on time this week.

Maybe it is a sign of my age (or should I say, advanced maturity) that I seem to have more interest and more of a heart for the "losers" of the Tour.  "Losers" in quotation marks, because none of them are losers.  But people like Dave Zabriskie and Jens Voigt, the two CSC yellow jersey winners, both of whom have had to leave the Tour. (And doesn't that make Ivan Basso nervous about his future plans?)  Or that cute blond Spaniard who broke his collarbone in the feeding zone, how he cried in pain and disappointment...  Tom Boonen, in pain from his crash but struggling to continue and defend his green jersey... Jan Ullrich, first crashing into his own team car during training and then somersaulting in a ditch... and so many others.

And then there's one I find it difficult to find much sympathy for.  As an American I believe in the "innocent until proven guilty" routine, but it's getting harder and harder to believe that Dario Frigo is and always has been as innocent as a lamb.

Oh, and the Tour itself?  Lance has things firmly in hand, despite all the dire predictions to the contrary and the desperate hopes of the Ullrich-Vinokourov-Klöden-Basso-Mayo-and everybody else fans. It only remains to hope that the rest of the stages can be made interesting - and that I can stay awake to watch them. The new leather sofa is surprisingly comfortable in this summer heat...