The light at the end.

Well it's almost over.
Le Tour that is, which means time for my last EPO jab.

Day 23. EPO shot 12/12. "Tlaking si ettging hrader. Oot mnay durgs. Cna't cnotrol ym jwa."

That's gonna have to be the last jab to the gut for a while me thinks. A shot every 2 days is probably overdoing it. Not to mention that every time I go to the toilet now it's like shooting a flare to attract all drug-testers in the area, and all I leave is an acid-burnt bowl in my wake.

So this tour, if we're being honest, and let's be honest, come on guys, let's all be a little bit honest with each other right now. And ourselves. Honest. Not a great tour. Not the best. Bit dull at times. Nibali proved too strong for anyone to mount a serious challenge and with the Froome-dog and Contador gone, so too went the excitement of the mountains. Sometimes it just didn't seem worth the early mornings, I had to be up at 4am the other day and managed to stay awake through until the stage finished that night at 2am. That's 22hours of dedication right there. All to watch Nibali saunter his way to a mountain-top win, with 0% threat of snapping a hamstring. 

For those reading outside Australia, channel SBS (our tour broadcaster), normally shows European movies that double as soft porn late at night, (the channel is notoriously known as Soccer Before Sex, or maybe it's the other way around), but during July this gets bumped so that they can show a different sort of porn. Bike porn. No protests from my corner.

Pinarello for example, a bicycle brand that I've never been a massive fan of, have provided me with untapped visual joy within the Dogma F8. What a bullet.

Image source

At the other end of the spectrum, I sincerely hope that somewhere in the world a primary school student won a 'design Nibali's bike' competition. His nickname's 'The Shark', I get that. I don't get the Bad Boy brand inspired shark eye and mouth decals at the front of the bike (see below). Does he get teased in the peloton riding this thing?

"Cool shark Vincenzo, you geek."

"Shut up mate, I'm winning Le Tour."

"Who cares? You look stupid."

And with that the grand tour win is empty, because what's winning the biggest bike race in the world if you're always gonna get picked last playing T-ball?

Image source

In other news, I went for a ride the other day [award for most exciting start to a sentence goes to me], and saw some fantastical things as is so often the case riding around Melbourne.

Pretty sure the pic below speaks for itself.

Church posters never seem to disappoint in my area, this one's no exception…

An extraordinarily dramatic and somewhat ambiguous view of the recently finished Football World Cup. This brilliant church also gave me great joy approximately a year ago when they had this poster up…

Whatever the marketing department's getting paid, double it.

And whatever the following marketing department's getting paid, halve it. The Commonwealth holiday of Boxing day is celebrated on December 26, this photo was taken July 27, making this poster 207 days late coming down, or 152 days early in going up. Looks like the lights are on but nobody's home. 

Hey hey 'BaDoomChsh'. That's my poor attempt at the drum joke sound.

So until the next round of happy days and fun times keep enjoying whatever it is you do.

Thanks for reading,



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