torn

Le tour starts in six days, and I'm really anxious to see who's going to win now that the mighty Texan has bid his farewell. Is it gonna be Basso who already took third and second place in the last two years and who won the Giro earlier this year? Is it gonna be Valverde who showed a few nice efforts last year before abandoning because of knee problems? Is it gonna be Vinokurov, my favorite Kazakh, whose team is deep into a doping scandal and has just lost its main sponsor? Or is it gonna be bulky Jan who does the Giro as a training ride and wins the Tour de Suisse with less kilometers in his legs than I get riding to lab every morning?

These are all good questions, but it's a bit early to contemplate them. The decisive stages will take place late into the race - around my birthday to be specific, and around Grenoble, in a nice coincidence. Alpe d'Huez and La Toussuire are both only a short ride away.

But before I plan a few days off for le tour, I'll get myself high on soccer. I'll take my camera, my two square meters of Germany that have traveled with me for the last eight years and a lungful of yelling and dive into the madness in Frankfurt towards the end of this week. Reading BBC, the Spiegel and le Monde, I can't wait to be "zu Gast bei Freunden". But at the airport in Lyon, I'll buy the latest Velo and read about le tour and make plans.