Stage 12 - Born From Jets

66 miles in the heat of a Friday evening with my good friend Russ. It's hard to beat that.

We rolled out of Germantown, north through Jackson and west into Slinger where we stopped at a filling station for fluids. The old man behind the counter at the filling station talked about, "That American guy with the broken hip", doing that race in France. See, I was right in my Stage 9 post, Floyd Landis' camp is doing a good job promoting the enormous pain that Landis is dealing with. If an old guy working the pumps at a station in Slinger, Wisconsin knows about Floyd's hip, everyone does.

Russ' medical issue seems to be resolved and he's enjoying his time back on the bike. We had a great ride, shared many laughs and had a long conversation regarding the merits of wearing an undershirt on long, hot rides. Do you wear one? Do you tuck it in? Do you cut off the bottom three inches to make it a shortie shirt?

The theory behind wearing an undershirt on hot days is that a quality base layer can keep moisture off of your body. While sweating is your body's cooling mechanism, if the sweat saturates your clothing, the heaviness of the fabric can stifle your skin. So a base layer is supposed to keep your cycling jersey dry, which will keep you cooler. One company, in an effort to justify their $115.00 undershirts, claim that the fabric that they use can actually reduce fatigue by, "enhancing blood circulation through the stabilization of your body temperature". Are people really falling for this? If you've got $115.00 to blow, order one of these shirts HERE and then let us know how it worked for you.

But the best advice that I could find on-line for trying to keep cool on hot days was this, "Avoid cycling on the hottest days".

Russ enjoying a summer evening

On another Tour related note; are you getting as sick as I am of those Saab commercials? The, "Born From Jets", ads that run every three minutes? Thanks to having those pounded into my brain too many times I will never buy a Saab. Ever. There is such a thing as over-doing it. No matter how cheaply the commercial time was.

I'm trying to decide what is worse; these Born from Jets ads or those, "Things are looking up for Bob" ads about the guy taking some 'male enhancement' pill. Are people that watch the Tour de France on television, you and me, in need of male enhancement? Why do the advertisers think that this target group needs the help? Discuss amongst yourselves.



Back to Saab - Can there be any real application of turbofan technology to piston driven automobiles? Rhetorical question since Saab was not born from jets anyway. Saab was organized as a company in 1937 to make airplane parts. In 1947 they turned out their first car. While the German Messershmitt was the first production jet built in 1944, it was years later that Saab built jets. So the correct thing for Saab to do would be to run commercials for their jets that say, "Saab jets, born from cars". And lastly on this subject, General Motors owns 100% of Saab so jet propulsion technology has very little, if any, connection to the car that you see in the commercial.


To read a short but interesting article about Graham Watson, the best known cycling photographer, click HERE.


Today's Mileage Goal: 65.41. Miles Ridden: 66.