Tour de France

Alberto Contador of the Discovery Team won the Tour de France Sunday.

OK, get the doping jokes out of the way. I, too, was disappointed by Rasmussen having to be pulled out for not telling his team where he was during drug testing (Italy? No, Mexico. Really. Party in Tijuana) and Vinokurov (whose name I have butchered here) having a blood transfusion after that great ride when he had stitches in his knee.

As I tell my coworkers, I'm glad these guys were pulled out. It shows some attempt by the authorities to get the cheaters out of the race. I'm sure there will be more controversies for this race since the 2006 yellow jersey still isn't settled.

Anyway, I like watching the Tour de France and the Giro d'Italia and the races in Switzerland, the Netherlands and Georgia (U.S., that is) because of two main reasons:

No. 1: These guys are great athletes. Have you ever sat on a bicycle for 100-plus miles? Or how about just 50 miles? And for a week or two in a row? The riders are working all the time, unlike baseball, football, basketball and hockey, there are no breaks, no time outs or "half times" to rest in a day's race. They are pushing for three, four or more hours through rain, snow, 90-plus degree heat, winds and scorching sun (Sometimes in teh same day!). These guys are athletes, not entertainers.

No 2: Strategy and tactics. This type of road cycling takes an overall strategy (do I bank on time trials? The mountain stages? Sprints?) and an eye for seizing the moment (do I break away? Pass my competitor? Lay low and avoid a crash?).

What about the cheating? I call it bad, but ask Barry Bonds about cheating. Ask Sammy Sosa (funny how his home run numbers have dropped after the steroid talk) and Mark Maguire (Congress who?). Ask the football players why they don't submit themselves to random drug screening like all cyclists do? Maybe an NBA referee will lend a hand in all this.

Thought: And Lance Armstrong? If he doped, then he's a genius because he masked it like no other. He's the most tested athlete in world history and he's passed every one of those tests. You go, Lance!

Of good and evil

Above is Alyssa in her Harry Potter glow-in-the-dark glasses and homemade wand. She's actually not a Harry Potter fan yet -- her sister and mother are.

Jayne and Elspeth went up to the Holland Barnes & Noble Friday night for the book party and had lots of fun and saw lots of friends.

I've read the first book and that was enough for me, but I am aware that the story is about the struggle between good and evil. Let me tell you of another such struggle ... this one against the cable company (the company whose name must never be spoken).

Well, the epic battle started when the company whose name must never be spoken switched to high definition cable. Our TVs can't handle it so we had to get the box (talk about 1980s technology!).

We got the box and tried to hook it up. It didn't work because the physical cable connection had been damaged. Jayne called on a Friday the company whose name must not be spoken to come out. They said they'd come out the following Thursday between 9:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. A long time without service!

They never showed. They never called. I tried to call them, and after hours on hold, got a live human who said the company would call when they could come that day. They never called and never showed.

The Thursday night, I waited on hold for an hour while Jayne got online and finally got ahold of an online representative. He was Alan5343 -- the number of the beast's online assistant!

Alan5343 insisted that the problem was us. I protested. He said try this and that and the other thing. It still didn't work. I told him to send a tech, as was originally set up.

Alan5343 said no and that if I didn't cooperate, he'd charge me for the online call as a service call.

Oh, I was hot.

Finally, after an eternity online, Alan5343 and his supervisor Kim666 (or something like that) determined that something wasn't right. They set me up a tech visit for Monday between 2 and 5 p.m.

Duh!

On Monday, I called the company whose name must not be spoken to confirm the Monday appointment. No, they said after 45 minutes on hold, I was scheduled for Tuesday.

I blew a fuse and demanded to speak with Darth Vader, Hitler, Stalin, Bush, whoever was running this Evil Empire. I got Bob in Dispatching.

Bob in Dispatching was very nice and listened to my foaming-at-the-mouth ramble about missing the Tour de France and being jerked around, so Bob in Dispatching squeezed me in for Monday.

Praise Bob in Dispatching!

CableGuy Chester showed up about 4 p.m., but he pulled in the wrong driveway. No matter. My neighbors grabbed him first because they were having similar problems with their cable and couldn't get the company whose name must not be spoken to respond.

Well, to make an epic tale longer, CableGuy Chester checked out everything in our house and determined what we knew from Day 1 -- the cable box was bad!

Hah! F--- you, Alan5343 and Kim666!

CableGuy Chester replaced the box -- the same thing the tech would have done last Thursday!

Geez!

My maniacal laughter scared CableGuy Chester who had me sign the work order as he ran from the house. He then went back to the neighbor's house, realized we all had a similar problem, climbed up the telephone pole and again fixed another (yes, another) glitch in our cable.

Thank you, CableGuy Chester! We neighbors are going to build a statue in your honor!

As a footnote: The company whose name must never be spoken did e-mail us an apology (which was nice) and we received $20 off our bill, which was also nice.

All I wanted was to watch the Tour when I got home from work.

Thought: Where's Lance Armstrong when you need him to vanquish the forces of evil?

The Curse is Broken

I finally participated in my first Holland Hundred bicycle tour.

Hooray!

I've been trying to participate in this event for years, but work and injury prevented me. So, I made it my quest this year to complete the 36-mile portion of the ride. And I did it Saturday.

The ride lived up to everything I'd heard about it. The scenery was fantastic, the food at the rest stops superb but, most importantly, the people were great.

We started off before 7 a.m. in the parking lot of Holland Christian High School and it seemed like one giant family reunion (not the bad ones where married cousins exchange stories about meth, but the good ones). Folks of all abilities laughed and encouraged each other.

I saw a few people I knew, but, I must admit, everyone kind of looks the same in a helmet, Spandex and sunglasses. I was glad many of them looked like me -- flabby and frazzled.

The picture above is of some of the people I crossed the Kalamazoo River with on the chain ferry in Saugatuck. They were verbose and funny. Many of them were making good-natured jokes with the ferry captain (she's in the back of the photo with the orange hat). As the ferry pulled away from the dock, a lone rider with long blonde hair and black Spandex appeard on the shore. The ferry wouldn't return for her because it was full, but several of the gentlemen protested because that rider "was really good looking."

Anyway, jocularities aside, it was a great ride. Next year, I'll hit the 67-mile route (100-k) and see what happens.

Thought: The ride has helped keep my mind off my cable TV issues -- more on that later.

Mission accomplished

Look at this.

It's the enemy.

I have been fighting this beast since time began and I know the epic struggle will not die. But there is a respite. Even if just a day.

I have taken a page from the book of George Bush and declared Mission Accomplished.

The epic struggle began long ago. I tried to fix this upstairs monster, but it rebelled. Water poured from the upstairs bathroom through the ceiling below, flooding the downstairs bathroom.

Defeat is wet and stinky.

True. I won small battles. I replaced the float so the water would stop flowing into the tank, but the beast struck back. The flap would not close because the bar holding the float blocked it.

For months I manually reached into the tank to close the flap.

Finally, with the help of a Jedi Master at $75 an hour, the apparatus inside the tank was replaced. But wait. ...

The new setup became plugged. For days I struggled in hand-to-hand combat with the devil in porcelain. ...

Finally, just yesterday in a desperate bid for sanity, I again took pliers and screw driver to task and cleaned out the flow valve and ... it worked!

The tank filled.

The float rose.

The water shut off.

The toilet flushed again.

The tank filled.

The float rose.

The water shut off.

Oh, the sweet sound of success.

Thought: Success can be fleeting, I know, but should be enjoyed.

Quick family visit

We all piled in the family truckster Sunday and headed out to visit my family in New York State.

The trip itslef went remarkably well considering we had the potential for so many problems with our traveling crew (two young children and three of us who aren't exactly spring chickens). Also, throw into the mix that I worked into the morning the day we left, so my sleep time was limited and that I never got the car serviced before we left.

Well, the travel went well despite being brought to a dead stop in heavy traffic in Toledo and Cleveland. I didn't realize that July 8 was still considered part of the July Fourth holiday. And our only driving issues on the way back was heavy rain just entering Cleveland (I hate driving in Cleveland in the best of weather) and the uniterrupted construction in the entire state of Michigan.

I wish we could have stayed longer to visit, but I had to be back to work today. We also spent much of the time in air conditioning because it was hot. Africa hot. Tarzan couldn't have taken that kind of hot. We didn't go Niagara Falls or the zoo because we would have dropped from heat exhaustion.

So, we stayed close to home and forced my family into buying us lunch and ordering out for Chinese or pizza.

Our oldest daughter discovered real Buffalo wings and loves them (can't get them in Michigan).

Our youngest finally gained enough confidence to swim underwater in the hotel pool (we don't have hotel pools in Michigan).

A photo of the girls is above on my mom's garden frog.

Here are some useless trip facts:

-- One way route: 475 miles

-- Hours one way: About 9

-- Number of stops for pottie breaks: 4 or 5

-- Best rest stop: Vermillion on Ohio Turnpike

-- Worst rest stop: Indiana (the smell of urine is great in 90-degree temperatures)

-- Gas prices: High $3.39 in Michigan; Low $2.97 in Pennsylvania

-- Number of times I used the "F" word: 475 (mostly in Cleveland).

Thought: There are lots of people in Western New York and I really do live in a small town.