Landis Lands one

Congratulations to Floyd Landis for winning the inagural Tour of California. Once he grabbed the leader's jersey with an incredible come from behind time-trial performance, he and the Phonak team defended it perfectly. He appeared to be cool under fire as threats emerged and then were neutralized.

The first year of this event was an unmitigated success, with enormous crowds, fabulous weather, and a world class field. My only disapointment was that the latter part of the race wasn't more selective. After the time trial it pretty much played out like a procession to the finish with no change whatsoever at the top of the General Classification. Next year I hope they squeeze in a really tough Stage 7 climb, and maybe even move the time-trial to Stage 8.

Snowing on My Parade

I'd been very excited to attend the innagural Tour of California and sign books, but we couldn't work out a deal. That's disapointing. The race starts tomorrow but I'll be here in Yew Tah watching the snow fall down. It's been an interesting winter with a little bit of everything including, record breaking cold, record breaking heat, a great ice skating rink in my dad's back yard that survived both, and a couple of wonderful ski days.

My money is on Dave Zabriskie to win the big race. Set your TIVO's because ESPN2 is running a one hour summary show each evening, but it's on at about 1 a.m., depending upon your time zone. It's going to be fun to watch!

I'm big in Ghana. Well... at least among the criminals.

You know that Jerry Lewis is big in France (my question is, why?), and you may have heard that Donny's little brother, Jimmy Osmond, is huge in Japan. Well, for a brief moment my turf was Ghana. I got several orders for books from that West African country this morning. Unfortunately, when I ran the credit cards they came up with errors such as "Reported Lost or Stolen," and "Not a Valid Credit Card."

The good news is, not long ago I also learned of a legitimate deal in the Czech Republic. This one makes more sense because cycling is big in Eastern Europe. My wife and I visited Prague years ago and we have wonderful memories of the place. Not only is it absolutely gorgeous, we found ourselves in the middle of an amazing parade from the Prague Castle. One group of partiers even carried my wife down the hill above their heads. It was unforgettable! I'm very happy that my first foreign translation will be in that wonderful country. So, instead of trying to figure out what Third World identity thefts want with my books, I'm going to head out to the mailbox and check if my checks from the Czechs have arrived.