What's Green and Yellow with Polka Dots All Over?

There are a lot of things I'm thankful for every day. Our health and that of our families, two good jobs, Pippin and his cuteness and awesome personality, a house to call our own-even on the days it hates us, two cars-even though we could easily get by on one, etc etc. And many, many days out of the year I am thankful that I am not married to a sports guy. The thought of being married to one makes me vomit a little in my mouth. I can't imagine having a room in my house devoted to the Orange (UTK's colors). Or spending every weekend in the fall/winter glued to the TV, or having to watch people spit constantly all summer. Sure, we watch a couple of Titans games each season because that's "our team" - but more often than not we're only reminded of the fact that they're playing because of the fighter jets that fly over our house pre-game and increased traffic in our 'hood.

So what's the point of all that, you ask? This year we've decided to watch the Tour De France. Since I can't even tell you what channel ESPN is on I can't say that we've ever known much about the Tour. All I know is Lance won it a billion times - 7, I believe. And that the winner wears a yellow jersey. And bikes for a lot of days, through some massive mountains. And that's it, that's the full extent of my knowledge of the TdF. We came across coverage of it last weekend, so I set TiVo to record it each day on Versus. I think Versus used to be OLN, and I've recorded quite a few marathons on OLN over the years. They have 3 hours of coverage of the tour each day, which is way more than we have time to watch. The first day we watched quite a bit of it, skipping over the slow, flat sections. Now we've decided all we need to watch is the first 20-30 minutes of the show each day because they give a full recap of the previous day, show all the "important" footage, and discuss the day ahead and the course. In effect we're always a day behind.

But here's the thing - this race is SO much more complicated than we ever knew! There are green jerseys and polka dot king of the mountain jerseys and designated sprint sections with various points. And there's leaders and the scary Peloton who is coming after you and will suck you up in their mass of crazy geometric configurations. I had no clue there were points in this thing, and a random series of things you can do to get them. I mean, did Lance ever win King of the Mountain? A Green Jersey? All these things I never wondered about, but now I do.

And some of the finishes over the last few days - INSANE. The way the teams work together to set up their sprinters, and the way some of these guys come from so far back to finish 1st is crazy. And the crashes - WOW! Anyway, it's all been very fascinating to us and we're going to have to spend some time online to figure out how this massive tour really works, because it's a whole lot more than a guy with skinny legs and a yellow jersey.

And here's my other question - where are the women??? Will the women's edition be starting next week?? Is there a pink jersey?

I guess since I am talking cycling I should talk about my cycling. We weren't motivated to work out Sunday but we knew we should ride since we'd been wedding riddled all weekend and had not gotten to bike (although we did run and swim early Sat morning). We went out late Sunday to attempt to avoid as much heat as possible. The plan was to "toot" around and get 5-6 miles, nothing fancy. We decided to head out and hit some of our fab East Nashville bike lanes. SO AWESOME. I love bike lanes. It helps me get used to traffic without the beasts being up on me. But I swear, all we did was uphill!! The way we turned and rode through various roads we pretty much never got a nice downhill. It was going well until I almost hit a person. Right outside the Rosepepper this guy walked right in front of me, totally looking at his fat wife, with his back to me. I jingled my bell and yelled out "Excuse Me" but had to come to a stop to not hit him. Then the idiot looks at me, then back to his wife and says "OH, we're parked in a BIKE lane, that's what those skinny lines are for. It's meant for people like HER, she's going to need to ride back on that one in a little while." Well no duh Sherlock but MOVE-OUT-MY-WAY! Honestly, who is so dumb that they don't know what a bike lane is??? It's obviously a LOT smaller than your car!!

Well, I guess that's all I've got for the moment! Happy Thursday!