Summer, Interrupted

For the first three weeks in July, every year, we are up at 5:00am almost every morning.  We love to relax in bed and watch one of our favorite things:  Le Tour de France.  Ahhhh, guilty pleasures are good to have.  Right? 

I remember the first Tour that I watched that totally sucked me into the sport. 

It was 2001 and it was specifically the climb of Alpe D'Huez.  At one point, Lance Armstrong turns to make eye contact with Jan Ullrich and then works to drop him in the craziest attack ever.  If you haven't seen it, you have to watch this video.  Some of it is just training and shots from the race, but at 1:40 they show the look for the first time and then again at 2:19.  Chills. 


It doesn't hurt that cycling has tons of eye candy, in my opinion.  One of my favorite pieces of eye candy is George Hincapie.  Let's take a moment, shall we?

The view is nice.  N'est pas? 

My tour fanaticism isn't helped by the fact that I married a cycling enthusiast.  At one time, my sweet husband had 4-5 different frames:  2 road bikes, a mountain bike, and a cyclocross. 

Talk about eye candy!  Here is my own personal hottie in one of his cyclocross races.  (René is wearing an orange jersey.) 

In this shot, he is off the bike and going over one of the obstacles.  What a man!  :)

Now, with the kids, he tends to ride his mountain bike most of the time (even on the road----yes, sacrilegious in the cycling world).  My super-nice and streamlined Bontrager has turned into a thick-wheeled Beachcomber.  We still have tons of bike frames, but they are mostly kid-sized.  *wink*

Yes, cycling has certainly changed focus in our family, but we still have fun. 

 AND, we still live vicariously through the hotties, I mean athletes in the Tour.  :)