KRUSHING THE TOUR: Stage 12

Ferdinand Cheval's Palais Idéal. You can all thank me for not using an image of earwax sculptures.

Did anyone see where I put my shotgun? I want to shoot myself.
Remember when I said yesterday that today's stage was being run backwards? And that anything interesting that could happen in the early climbs would be over by the time the stage ended? Well, even I, with my perpetual negativity, could not have predicted just how BORING this stage turned out to be. The grupetto caught back up with the peloton 80 kilometers out! 80 kilometers left to ride and the sprinters were back in the main field. WHY ON EARTH BOTHER WITH THE TWO CLIMBS THEN?

The stage was SO boring, the highlight of the Eurosport broadcast was Carlton Kirby and David Harmon discussing earwax sculptures on matchsticks and Ferdinand Cheval's Palais Idéal. I don't even want to think about what Liggett and Sherwen were talking about! Wait, they were probably on a commercial break or some stupid, useless segment sponsored by SRAM. Never mind.

Anyway, do you think the topics of Naïve art (earwax sculptures) and Naïve architecture (Palais Idéal) would have come up if the Col de Grand-Cucheron and the Col du Granier, had been in the LAST 80 kilometers, instead of the FIRST? Of course not.

Tomorrow's stage is going to suck, too. It has a cat 3 "climb" with 23k to go that may provide about 10 minutes of excitement. It does, after all, climb to a WHOPPING 159 meters! I can spit farther than that.

I hate the ASO and they can kiss my ass.

217 kilometers of pure, unadulterated boredom. Woopty friggin' doo!!!