Lance Retains Lead, NTodd Retains Lameness

Leader Armstrong cruises to Marseille; Piil wins stage:

Lance Armstrong retained his overall lead at the Tour de France after the tenth stage Tuesday, despite losing time to protesters who blocked the route.

Armstrong finished in a large pack of riders who completed the 219.5 kilometer (136-mile) stage from Gap to the southern port city of Marseille more than 21 minutes behind the winner, Jakob Piil of Team CSC.

All of Armstrong's key rivals finished with him, meaning they did not gain time on the four-time champion who is aiming to tie Spaniard Miguel Indurain's record of five successive wins.

Despite my plans to hit Buck Hill again, I couldn't bring myself to bike today. I've been low energy all day, and I'm cutting myself some slack after a couple good rides. To compensate, I did make myself mow part of the lawn. Big deal, you say? Unfortunately, while I was gone in June the lawnmower gave up the ghost and I have yet to repair/replace it. So today I made a lame attempt to cut the grass using one of those old fashioned, totally manual thingies. It's hard work!

"Mowing" the lawn with that thing is about as effective as trying to remove my winter beard with tweezers--maybe if I had an infinite number of monkeys, armed with an infinite number of tweezers, and an infinite amount of time it would work. Mostly what I did was comb the lawn, matting down most of the grass save those few defiant blades that yet stand tall and proud. I at least made a reasonable effort and thus can maintain the fiction of being a semi-responsible homeowner. Thank goodness we live in Vermont, where there aren't too many neighborhood covenants that would get me into trouble. I can always claim that I'm just being natural. Technically that's accurate...

ntodd  ¶ 3:47 PM