A new beginning

My summer is now officially over. Unlike the rest of my fellow Caldwell County educators, I start school tomorrow. This is no great sacrifice given the position and school that I will be teaching in. It is a little bit daunting to now have to face Sophomores in high school rather than the middle schoolers I am used to. This is a welcome change and a breath of fresh air. I will readily admit that I was beginning to get a bit toasty if not fully burned out.

Well, le Tour will not go away. Mayo has tested positive for EPO. Wow, dope your way to 16th place in the Tour why don'tcha? Idiot. And now the big implications about Contador and his Puerto links are picking up steam. If Prudhomme thought the Chicken shouldn't have started, what about "the kid" Contador?

To: Shawn
From: Eddie

Damn;
This Tour just will not die! Check this out, and now there seems to be even
more proof coming out to link Contador to Puerto. I still can't believe that
Valverde is still racing. I mean how hard is it to figure out a code name
like Valve?

I sure love to watch bicycle racing, but I just don't know what is real
anymore.

Take care and good luck with the job.

Yep, those good ol' cryptic code names. Jorg Jaksche copped to the fact that he was, indeed, "JJ". Good thing he admitted it, 'cause nobody could have figured that out. Now, who could possibly be tied to all those bright, ruby red bags of high test blood marked with the code name "AC"? You better believe that teams of cryptographers from Scotland Yard and the NSA are on the case...

Rejoice in the fact that Team Slipstream has signed David Millar, Christian Vande Velde and David Zabriskie. They have also, rather coyly, announced that they have signed a former winner of Paris-Roubaix. Current favorites from our group ride discussions of who this signee might be are Maggie Backstedt and Stuey O'Grady. Whoever it is, these guys are serious about a wild card selection to the '09 Tour. Hell, with their testing protocols, they might be there next year...

finis

Cadel tried valiantly, but Contador felt the jersey slipping away and managed to keep a grasp on the hem. Levi rode with the vengeance of what could have been and layed down the 4th fastest TT in TdF history. How different would this podium look if Rasmussen had not been allowed to start and his vicious accelerations in the mountains had not made their withdrawals from the other riders energy stores. Leipheimer, the consummate nice guy, selflessly rode for young Contador and setting him up for the win. Evans looks to have regained the confidence and promise of his early career to ride with aplomb and tenacity. Contador, recently cleared of the Puerto implications, has managed a win of both the yellow and the white jerseys.

I will not be one of those hysterical and histrionic people who says they won't watch pro cycling anymore or that all riders are doping. This is the only sport I have loved and I have been in love since I was 14. This sport is changing and change can usually be painful and this change is no different. I believe that we are going to go back to a pro cycling like that that existed up until the very early 1980's. Lemond is often credited with a great influence on American cycling and on the use of technology and equipment in the European peloton, but he also did much to elevate rider salaries and usher in a more modern expectation of prize money. Prior to 1984, the winner of Paris-Roubaix received about $2000 for winning the greatest one-day bike race in the world.

The big money corporate sponsors are going to pull back their support for pro cycling. I think we will see the rise of trade teams once again, as the only ones with a vested interest in professional cycling are cycling related companies. As the money shrinks, the large team budgets will disappear and teams will have to run leaner staff numbers. I hope we don't reenter the days when domestiques were true to their title and were in charge of laundry and fixing meals and serving the needs of the team stars both on and off the bike. I remember watching Rabobank Directeur Sportif Theo de Rooj racing for the Panasonic team in the 1985 Paris-Roubaix. He had made the winning break early in the race, riding in horrendously muddy conditions on cobbles slickened to a glass-like polish. This was in the early days of cycling coverage in the states, and it was a taped and edited race that CBS showed with a dramatic narration/commentary by Phil Liggett. In the midst of de Rooj's break, CBS showed a human interest piece on him. It showed him waking up Panasonic team captain Eric Vanderaerden, making breakfast and washing team kits. The most striking thing was how the rider's had their names on their respective room doors. Vanderaerden's name was literally written on a large foil star, presumably to insure that he was treated with the proper deference. Theo crashed out while riding in a straight line on one of the many crowned cobble paths, thus ending his dream of winning the race. By the end, de Rooj's breakaway companions (the enigmatic Patric Versluys and the Daehnens brothers) were caught outside of Roubaix by Panasonic team star, Eric Vanderaerden. Reportedly, Vanderaerden caught the break and said, "I'm here boys, now what are you going to do?" Vanderaerden smoked the sprint and took the win from his domestique competition. de Rooj was interviewed in his team car. He was nearly unrecognizable with head to toe dried, caked on mud. He said, "You're out here riding like an animal." When told that his team captain had won, pain flickered across his demeanor at the thought of what could have been his. He then stammered, "I know I'll never... I know I'll never be the captain of... I know I'll never be the leader of a team." Let's hope that our new cycling era will be able to insure the dignity of every rider, at the very least.

Pro cycling will survive. We must also keep in mind that cycling is doing far more to combat doping than any other major professional sport. Every sport has its complimentary performance enhancement products, just take a look at the IOC's banned products list. I have to be honest and say that no matter what, I'll be right there glued to the monitor or the tv, soaking in the racing coverage.

le grande finale

I believe in Cadel. Cleared or not, Contador is hinky given the reports that there have been phone calls about his reports to Dr. Fuentes of Operacion Puerto fame. And what to say about Levi? I want to see an American do well, but Discovery is dirty somehow. There is something up with that program...I just don't know what it is. Oh well, tt showdown, should be a good one.

The sky is falling...

no more Chicken...

Damn

Disappointed and dejected.

28:50

I am a partisan no more. Hoping against hope for the rabbit to come out of the hat, I admit that I had unreasonable expectations to see Alexander Vinokourov rise like a phoenix from the ashes and seize this Tour de France as his by rights. After today's stage, Vino' has shown the limits of his superhumanity and has revealed that he is but a man. Now, I am free to watch this Tour without that aching glimmer of hope for a comeback like I had in 1988 when Greg Lemond lacked just a few seconds to take the maillot jaune going into the final stage time trial against Laurent Fignon. Now, I can just watch this fantastic Pyreneean showdown.

Today was amazing with riders attacking again and again, never gaining until they were able to break their competitors. I think that now you get a good idea of who the true contenders are: Rasmussen, Contador, Evans, Leipheimer and Kloden. With two mountain stages and a time trial left, a grand game of cat and mouse is solidly afoot. And now that there is (theoretically at least) no doping, the riders seem to suffer more and to recover slower, paying for their efforts with huge chunks of time in the subsequent days. This makes the fireworks today seem all the portentious for the efforts to come. This could swing favor to someone like Levi Leipheimer who, as Shelly put it, is a "steady Eddie", not capable of matching the accelerations of the pure climbers, but not losing huge chunks of time either. Both he, Evans and Kloden would have to be ranked as the best tt'ers in the bunch at the top and this could spell more swings of fortune for the top 5 come time trial time. At this point, it's a crapshoot.

"You tell'em I'm comin' and hell's comin' with me!" - Wyatt Earp, Tombstone

Tomorrow is looking to be the day that Astana sets the world on fire. After today's tt, the peloton has definitely been served notice of the hard times to come! Vino' uncorked a huge performance today and let it be known that he plans on attacking in the Pyrenees. And remember, this guy doesn't throw down an attack, get caught and then play shrinking violet with the lead group until someone else attacks. No no no, this guy attacks, get's caught and then attacks again. And again. And again. As Golden put it so well this evening, "that guy's not a shit talker, he's a shit doer". (Ah, just a glimpse at one of the many reasons why we're married)

I spent today tubing the New River with my new colleagues at the Early College High School. We had a sort of floating faculty meeting. It was great, much better than I had anticipated. Even though the water level was way down, we were able to float most of the time with only minimal amounts of pushing. I remembered the sunblock, so I am not currently looking like a lobster!

You'd better get up early and watch the stage tomorrow at 7:30 'cause you just don't know what is going to happen! I predict Astana will use the Vino'-Kloden one-two combo to maximum effectiveness in the next few days. I can't wait...

Now it's gettin' spooky...

OOOOOOOOOh, Vino's maaaaaaaaad. Was today a prelude for a wreaking of vengeance upon the peloton, Kazakh-style? When Astana went up to the front and drilled it in the crosswinds, they were throttling everybody for a good 20k at 29 mph. Think about their situation for a moment. Astana hasn't had to do any work to defend or chase anything for the past week. With Kloden riding well and a Vino' wild card to throw, they could potentially put the other contenders into a serious spot of bother.

Saturday's tt is the beginning of the weeding out process of the hopeful and the pretenders. I think after Saturday, you'll have no more than ten guys with any legitimate shot. The Chicken has got to have the tt of his life to stay in contention.

Then after Saturday, Sunday's Pyreneean jaunt will whittle down our little bunch of hopefuls to a solid group of 5 riders who can even dare discuss the maillot jaune with any confidence. The Pyrenees should prove to be epic.

Luna socks should arrive next week. I'll post some pics, so if you aren't local email me if you would like to purchase some. Waterbottles are in the works also.

We've started the expansion and remodel of the shop, so excuse the disarray when you stop in.

Don't forget the new Saturday ride time is 8am to beat the heat!

and now a few for the sprinters

Okay, time to look like a hyper astute sports know-it-all. My predictions for the next few stages are as follows: a few guys attack early and stay away for a long time, just when you think they could stay away the sprinter's teams make the "professional catch" and setup for the final 2 or 3 kilometers. Everybody goes really fast and then this one really fast guy crosses the line first. There. Now watch and see if I'm right.

The real days are Saturday's time trial. The Chicken better have his A game for that one 'cause it has some descending and we all know how well he has handled those types of tt situations in the past. Kloden could become a real giant killer on such a stage. And then on Sunday we hit the Pyrenees with a vengeance the likes of which haven't been seen since the K-T boundary event that wiped out the dinosaurs. (Sorry, trying to get back into teacher mode)

I hope that Linus Gerdemann has coughed up the 5 cents that Lucy charges for psychiatric counseling since he lost the white jersey to Contador. Oh yeah, and his T-Mobile teammate Sinkewicz managed to hit a spectator coming down the mountain after Sunday's finish which left him with injuries that forced him to withdraw from the tour and then just happened to test positive for testerone with a 25 to 1 t/e ratio. Remember that Landis' t/e was 11 to 1 at last year's tour, but Matthias Kessler came up positive earlier this season with a t/e ratio of 85 to 1. Due to this positive test German TV has ceased airing coverage of the Tour.

On the lighter side of the Tour, check out this article on the superfan phenomenon at the Tour:
William Fotheringham essay

For those of you without VS. network coverage who can't make it by the shop to watch each day's stage, check out the Euro play by play call by the boys at The Guardian by clicking on the Tour de France - Live! link.

Pardon the mess at the shop right now, we're doing some demo work and remodeling. We'll put the hammers down and hang out when you come in though!

In Vino' veritas

My hope against hope that Vino' was playing possum just a little bit was shown to be false. The man is human after all and I don't know if he can put in the herculean effort needed to put himself to rights in this year's tour. The one thing that is for sure is that he is going to have to be forcibly pried from the bike to give up. I don't so much think that it is pride or hubris, but determination to see the thing through that is keeping him going.

The good news for Astanais that Kloden seems to have had his tether cut and is free to make his own race now. He looked pretty comfortable today and could prove to be a threat in the Pyrenees. Cadel Evans came to the fore today and rode like a man who has confidence in himself. He actually went on the offensive, something I have never seen him do. Contador put in a spectacular attack with a huge, mind-boggling acceleration. All of that is well and good, but the bloom comes off the rose a bit when you can't make such an attack stick and even with the aid of Popo', they were unable to stay clear. Alejandro Valverde is losing massive street cred with the Luna tifosi. Is insistence on riding wheels and attacking out of the group at the end to pick up little time bonuses is the style of a man trying to recapture the halcyon moment when he was touted as the next "big thing". His feeble attacks today were quickly and succinctly nullified and he was left to go for the snatch and grab time bonus at the line.

Levi Leipheimer hopefully has a card to show in the Pyrenees because so far he is not riding like a man that has "it". Better make that a whole deck of cards...

Lastly, Linus Gerdemann better share his safety blanket with his teammates as the run of bad luck continues for his T-Mobile squad. Today, Marcus Burghardt nailed a yellow lab that had wandered onto the course. I got this email from Chris in Tally about it:

From: Chris in Tally
Re: The Yellow Lab incident

Yo. Click on the arrows and check out the Marcus Burghardt-Yellow Lab
collision. That's one solid effing dog.

link to Guardian Photos

There's still a lot of days left in this free for all!

I'm rested already, let's see some racin'

Sunday has just whet my appetite now. Come on, a rest day in the middle of the alps? Well, I know Vino' and Klodie needed it, so that's a bright spot in this dull shades of gray rest day.

Now tomorrow starts off in some serious no joke territory right from the gun. A note to the Chicken: now that you flew away on the first real mountain stage and then went and ran your mouth about wanting to win the tour, you're probably not gonna be given nearly as much freedom as you got on Sunday! Rasmussen needs to take some more serious time out of the other main contenders. Remember, there is still 100km of time trialing on tap in this race.

As for the in-betweens like Evans and Valverde, they need to show a willingness to go big in a do or die kind of style. The days of conservative racing to make the podium on a step below Lance are long gone my friends. I don't think someone is gonna have this tour by the scruff of the neck until the Pyrenees, at least. Remember that we will have the Tour on at the shop all day, so stop by and play hooky from life for a while.

Due to the incessant rise in temperature, the Saturday group ride will start at 8am instead of 9. Please help spread the word! Luna socks are on the way from DeFeet, we should see them in a week. Next up are waterbottles, new Luna t-shirt designs, and Luna jerseys and shorts (on the horizon, so to speak)!

Chapeau!

In a true edge-of-the-seat performance, today's stage was one of the most electrifying in years. Hats off to Christophe Moreau for showing more aggression and heart than any frenchman since Thomas Voeckler held the maillot jaune. You can definitely see who is a contender and who is a pretender at this point. Cadel Evans and Alejandro Valverde did not acquit themselves like men who think they can win the tour. Their insistence on merely following wheels and looking to others to do the dirty work does not bode well for them. A true contender has got to have the wherewithal to lay it out on the line and hammer a move home. By marking Moreau and working against each other in a potentially dangerous move, they showed a timidity that speaks volumes about their chances for the overall.

Hats off to Linus Gerdemann who rode with aplomb to lose the Maillot jaune by only 10 seconds or so to a positively unstoppable Michael Rasmussen. Linus must have cuddled his blanket last night because he truly rode beyond his years, especially given the soul crushing fall suffered by T-Mobile team leader Michael Rogers, who went from the virtual yellow to DNF in a blindingly quick flash.

Vino' lost time, but limited his losses and made it to the rest day. The bigger story was how Kloden worked so hard to keep Vino' in contention and even waited for him. Remember how much promise they showed together (along with Jan Ullrich) on T-Mobile? How could that team not utilize those 3 weapons against Armstrong? With three big guns like that, they should have blown Armstrong away...

Last but not least: Rasmussen has asserted himself as a danger man, but the big question is his time-trialing ability. Another big scary wild card is Alberto Contador. That guy was climbing like a scalded dog after his wheel change. Just remember the old adage: good days in the Alps mean bad days in the Pyrenees; bad days in the Alps mean good days in the Pyrenees. The one thing that is for sure now is that the shadowboxing is over. It's put up or shut up time.

Merde

Despite a plethora of frenchman in the big break of the day, there was no french win on Bastille Day. Le pou pou. However, Linus Gerdemann absolutely immolated himself to take the stage, the maillot jaune and the maillot blanc. It looked to me that he was in some sort of quasi-religious state of agony towards the end of his little solo jaunt. In all his effort it appeared that he forgot to drink any water and the salt goattee encircling his rictus-like smile could signal a brief reign in yellow for Linus. Hopefully he is sucking down the saline iv's this evening trying to reverse his dehydration.

Vino' finished in the bunch with all of the other main contenders. He managed to blow out of all of the stitches in his knees and elbow. He finished dripping blood from all of his wounds. My word of advice to Astana: superglue. Oh yeah, and duct tape. Glue him together, tape him up and send him out on his merry way.

Tomorrow's stage looks to be a real beeotch. Vino says he wants to limit his losses tomorrow and then recuperate during the rest day monday. We shall see...

You can follow the physiological live data of select riders mapped in real time on Google Maps at this site.

Last, check out this techno song about Tom Boonen (thanks for finding it Jeff!)


Tommeke, Tommeke, Tommeke, Tommeke, Tommeke, Tommeke!

Boris Karloff eat your heart out...

Looking like an overzealous actor at a casting call for "The Mummy Returns", Alexander Vinokourov toed the line and finished with the bunch today. I don't have high hopes for him starting tomorrow, but dammit, I want to see this guy recover and light up the tour. I've been accused of some BMC partisanship, but that is not the case. Vino' is the most exciting rider to contest the grand tours. I want to see him make good on all of the crazy, attacking, Kazakh promise that he has shown in year's past. I want him to exact retribution for his undeserved exclusion from last year's tour. I want to see a guy who doesn't follow conventional wisdom or tactics. I want to see a rider who serves up old school beat downs with the ferocity of Bernard Hinault. I want to see a rider who is willing to lay it all on the line in a gamble between heroism and foolhardiness. Vino' is the rider who can deliver this and it truly breaks my heart to see such a cruel blow dealt to the man.

Astana still have the Kloden card to play. His previously feared broken ass has turned out to be just a fractured ass. Hopefully, this will mean a speedy recovery and subsequent aggression.

Alright, so everybody and their brother jumped on the bandwagon for defending CSC. Boo hoo. Sure, Discovery (nee US Postal) did similar work in defense of Sir Armstrong's bid for the maillot jaune. Notably the infamous '99 Passage du Bois debacle that saw Armstrong put a huge time gap between himself and eventual 2nd place finisher Alex "I need a seeing eye domestique" Zulle. But let's put it in perspective: take away the huge time gap gained during the Passage du Bois pileup and Alex Zulle is the winner of the '99 TdF. Sure, rubbin' is racin', but don't you want to see a winner who earns it through legs and not through luck? I mean, who makes the better '06 TdF champion: Landis with the incredible audacity of the stage 17 solo attack or Oscar Pereiro who benefited from a bit of maillot jaune largesse?

Tomorrow will see the first true anger of this tour and maybe that will settle my unease...

"You wanted to call down the thunder?!!"

Cheap move, cheap move. For shame CSC! Vino' goes down hard and the boys in red and black go to the front and drill it in a show of unethical riding. The only problem is that now CSC has gone and pissed off the most volatile rider in the peloton. Oh, and who has his back? A whole team full of eastern bloc goombahs who are just as unpredictable as their leader.

Another victim on the day was Vino's Astana teammate, Andreas Kloden. Preliminary reports have Klodie suffering a broken coccyx aka the ass bone. This should provide no problems for Klodie. He's german; the culture that brought us nihilism, so riding in pain shouldn't be an issue for Klodie since life is pain.

Tomorrow we should see another no hoper break off frenchmen, a last few kilometers catch by the sprinter's teams and then some super crazy sprint. At least that's my prediction...

You're right, I'm wrong

The tour has begun and right off the bat, I'm 0 for 3 in the predictions dept. Dave Z did not take the yellow in the prologue. Oh, well. We'll have to wait until the very end to see the genius inherent in my other two predictions.

Well, the tour is on and you know what is going on as well as I do. The sprinters are ruling the long and boring days of the flat lands. The real players are just trying to keep it upright and avoid serious injury in the crazy crashes that seem to be inevitable at the beginning of the tour these days. As much as I hate to say it, Robbie McEwan's sprint in stage 1 was unbelievable. That guy seems to have an extra cylinder that all the other sprinters are lacking. The sheer ferocity of his dusting brought to mind the viciousness of Sean Kelly back in the day.

We took off yesterday and headed up to Damascus, VA to ride the Virginia Creeper Trail. It was Owen's longest ride at 12 miles long. The trail was a very nice rails-to-trails conversion and was populated by a very high number of obvious non-cyclists, riding unhelmeted and not a properly adjusted seat height to be found! We stayed the night in Abingdon, VA (Owen's first overnight). We slept with Owen between us in the hotel bed and made the startling discovery that he is a little unconscious tornado at night. The smallest member of our family took up an enormous amount of space in the bed and had a big negative impact on the restfulness of his parent's sleep! Today, we went for a hike at Grayson Highlands. We got to see about 20 of the wild ponies that populate the area.

It's good to be back to our nice, freshly painted house! Tomorrow, I start on all the other summer home improvement projects! Does it ever end?

let the silliness begin

The TdF starts Saturday and the idiocy and hijinks have begun in earnest. First off, Alessandro Petacchi is officially suspended from Milram due to his non-negative test results for salbutimol at the Giro. Scratch one sprinter from your TdF fantasy team.

Second up, the red-headed step child of the ProTour peloton, Unibet.com, have been denied a start at the Tour because they have not shown good results this year and do not have a high ranking in the team standings. Imagine how it feels to be the team owner who jumped through untold numbers of hoops, ponied up insane amounts of euros just to get a ProTour license and then your team isn't allowed to race over half of the ProTour events due to some obscure French law regarding advertising for gambling and lotteries (yet, somehow Lotto is okay). Then you are denied a spot at the most prestigious Grand Tour of the season, despite having changed your title sponsor to appease the law, and the reason given is lack of results as in a "you didn't race very well in all of those races we didn't let you race in" sort of thing. Further, no one seems particularly eager to take up your cause, either. Pissed wouldn't begin to describe how you'd feel. Oh, and by the way, Unibet are ranked 19th, just ahead of Milram (who are headed to the Tour) and just got second overall in the team competition at the Tour de Suisse.

I don't know if you have noticed that all of the Operacion Puerto coverage seems to always mention the "complex" system of codenames that was used to identify the rider's blood bags. Hmmmmm, let's see Jorg Jaksche's codename was "bella Jorg". Wow, the stunning decryption capabilities needed to crack that code are mind-boggling... Are you kidding me? 9 year-olds can come up with better codenames.

Well, the house painting has reached a point where the use of a ladder is no longer remotely safe and I have to go rent some scaffolding. Amazingly enough, the painting has gone far quicker than I imagined and the house looks sooooooo much better. I can't figure out why we waited this long to paint it.

Hope you had a good 4th. We had a little cookout with the folks. They bought a new grill and I think they are trying to use it as much as possible. We did benefit from their acquisition of a new refrigerator by getting their old refrigerator. Ours was in its death throes as it would wheeze its way through the night, occasionally peeing water into its little tray and freezing all of our lettuce out of spite. Here's to you dented up old refrigerator with no handles. Good riddance.

ketchup

It's been a few days since my last post. There has been a lot going on this past week and I have needed some down time in the evenings. Last night, however, was a different story. Last night was our buddy Jack "Mahogoff" Brown's bachelor party.

The day started innocently enough. The normal Saturday group ride saw 20 people show up. 4 of the riders had never been on the ride before. Have you ever noticed how when new people show up on a ride, you try to give them a heads up as to how things are going to go? Well, here I am telling them it's an out and back ride, it will start mellow and then pick up, but the route is easy, etc... Anyway, right before we take off, Chuck announces that this is Jack's last ride since he is getting married. Not last ride as a single man, but the dreaded LAST ride - ever. Now Jack is a calm and implacable guy, but the drillfest that ensued from the opening moments of the ride belied a touched nerve. As we shot down 90 at between 28 and 30 (so I heard, I don't ride with a computer for the very reason that I don't want a number to go with the pain), Michael (our first timer) rode up beside me no less than 4 times and asked, "Is it going to stay this fast?" Since I was having to put so much effort into breathing I wasn't able to articulate, "Dear god I hope not" and managed to say, "No". Sure enough it eased up a bit after Sand Mtn. We got to the end of Anthony's Creek and Chuck felt like thanking us for the pace of the ride; his first in a month. Now, I'll have to admit that I thought Chuck was taking his jersey off to cool down, but no, when you wear bib shorts the jersey has to come off before you can drop trou' and moon everyone. Someone remarked that they could see hemorrhoids, but Chuck assured him that those were his tonsils.

Fast forward past a busy day at the shop to the start of the aforementioned bachelor party at good ol' Sledgehammer Charlie's. Knowing that you are about to throw down with the owner of the restaurant gives one a certain amount of confidence that they won't get kicked out... As per the usual, we proceeded to order for Jack every strong and disgusting drink we could come up with. The restaurant staff got in on the act and started looking up bachelor party drinks on the internet. The rest of us maintained a strong and steady pace, setting tempo to Jack's breakaway. Needless to say, there are pictures and some video. Our bachelor took it all in good stride, wearing the numerous panties that he received in good humor and later donning the most alluring pair to be captured for all of posterity. I walked home, enjoying the light of a full moon and remembering the staggering intoxication of my own high altitude bachelor party...

It looks like there will be a break this week in the saga of thunderstorms we have been having. Hopefully, this will be my window of opportunity for house painting. Wish me luck...