Guess who's still winning the Tour de France?

Yup. Colombian Santiago Botero won today's stage, the longest of
the Tour and the first of three days of serious climbing in the Alps, but
Lance Armstrong still retains the overall lead. American Levy
Leipheimer (I love that name) also moved up one spot overall, up to
eighth.
Tim
The Dark Squire

And Botero jumped from 18th to 7th.

I find it amazing that on the Monday rest day, 7500 regular cyclists
participated in the annual "L'Etape du Tour." This year it was 142 km
(about 115 miles) from Aimes to Cluses. It featured climbs of the
Roseland (3700 ft), the Saises (3168 ft), the Aravis (1878 ft) and the
Colombière (2333 ft) and then a 21 km, 3568 ft descent to the finish.

Wonder how many actually finished this.

Sort of like stopping the Indy 500 at mile 400 and having 7500 cars
doing 10 laps and then restarting the race. Or having the British Open
pause saturday, so a few hundred duffers could play the 16th hole.

Indeed, that's one of the things I love about cycling as a sport in
general, and Le Tour in particular-- what other event allows
the "average" person the opportunity to be so close to being a
participant?

I have only climbed one actual mountain in my cycling career, out in
western Massachusetts-- don't know what the grade was, but I know it
damn near made my lungs explode, and my legs burned for days.
And that was just one lowly American mountain-- these guys are doing
that several times each day! But my climb was briefly halted when
some hillbillies in a ratty Mustang pulled up alongside me, called me
several things which I will not repeat here, and proceeded to ease over
just enough to force me to hit the guardrail. You just have to love this
country and its tolerance....
Tim
The Dark Squire