Stage 14 - Milwaukee

Met up with Darin and The Boss for today's 61 miles. We decided to head into the city for a change of scenery. Not that anyone is sick of cornfields and cow pastures, it's just that Sheryl Crow said, "I think a change will do you good". Since Sheryl was smart enough to dump Lance I'm willing to take her word for it.

I've concluded that there is one cardinal rule in cycling; Ride with one other person and the pace can be rational. Ride with two or more people and the speed and pain will increase dramatically. There is no valid reason for this to be - it simply is. And so it was as the three of us sped over to Lake Michigan and then down into the City of Milwaukee. There were lots of other cyclists out today and one by one, we picked them off. The sweat was spraying off of The Boss' head, Darin was drooling and I was doing everything that I could just to hang on. We rode all of the way down to the hip and trendy Alterra Coffee House at the Marina. We pulled in for a quick break only to find the line at the counter stretching for about fifty yards. While I've been known to drop three and a half dollars on a cup of chai at one of these post-modern coffee houses, it's beyond me why someone would wait in line for half an hour for the priviledge. The Boss suggested that the people did it so they could impress their frineds by talking about how they hung out at the place on Sunday afternoon. I suppose that makes them Cool, or Gnarly, or Bitchin, or Bad or Rad, or maybe even Groovy. Whatever. We certainly weren't going to hang around to find out.

City riding

On the ride home a wasp went down the front of my shirt and before I could get a hold of him I'd been stung four times. A bee sting hurts. Four stings from a wasp makes your eyes water and your head go dizzy. We arrived home safely but about six hours later I began to feel ill and the knuckles on my hands were swelling up. It got to where I could not bend my fingers. Since I'm doing this Tour clean, i.e., no drugs of any kind, not even an aspirin, there was not much for me to do but ice my hands and go to bed. Thankfully I didn't go into anaphylactic shock.

A cycling product that I've been testing is the Garmin Edge 305 cycling computer. It's a cycling computer with all of the regular functions, a heart rate monitor and some useful yet limited GPS functions. Interfacing this thing with Google Maps will provide you with an overlay of your route on a map or a satellite view. After the Tour is over Elvis Kennedy will provide you with a full review of this nice item. In the meantime, take a look at a sample of the satellite view with part of our route (in red) below;

Alterra Coffee House, upper right, Marina at bottom, Lake Michigan. As seen from an altitude of 2,986.

Leipheimer rant for the day: I pointed out in yesterday's post how Levi Leipheimer was lecturing other riders for not working hard enough (his opinion). During today's stage Cadel Evans was working his arse off trying to chase down the lead group. At one point Evans, obviously totally gassed, sat up and waved his arm, motioning Leipheimer to the front. In typical Leipheimer fashion Levi simply stayed on Evans' wheel. I'll point this out again and probably not for the last time; if Leipheimer has any chance of winning this thing he will need to stick his nose into the wind and do some work.

And did you notice this small item? On the climbs there comes a point where it is against the rules to take any more water from your team car or from the neutral service vehicles. This is done for safety reasons as the roads are narrow and the fans are unpredictable. The riders are smart enough not to take bottles from the fans who offer them because you don't know what's in those bottles. Anyway, at one point I noticed Levi falling a bit off the back and I thought, "He's finally cracking". But then I saw him ride to the side of the road where an extra large U.S. flag was flying. Levi rode right to a particular guy who handed Leipheimer a bottle. This was clearly a set-up to get extra fluid (or whatever) to Leipheimer. The flag was the signpost, Levi dropped a little off the back, rode to the left, grabbed a bottle and then went right back onto someone's wheel (that, at least, was typical of him). Not only is this guy a Nancy-Boy for refusing to work, he's a cheater too. Last week he had his team car pull him at 45 mph and this week he's breaking more rules.