Let's be honest with each other

So, today's stage was that familiar and sad tale of the long breakaway that looked so close to the line that with 17 seconds on the peloton with just 2 km to go they must surely, this time, be successful. But no kids, the professional catch is brutally deceptive and gives hope beyond measure to the poor, benighted rider who feels like they have gotten the golden ticket in which the hapless chasers come up just short of denying the plucky few the spoils of Tour de France stage victory. And so, with just tens of meters separating the "no-hopers" from the eternal glory of a stage win, the sprinters sweep past in a flurry of elbows and quads with the wide shoulders of Gorilla Greipel tearing the molecules of air asunder in his second successful bid for the line. This after earning the title of best bike handler at Mach 5 when Tyler Farrar decided to hit the deck and slide into him and Greipel pulled the no-footer ride over and continued on with little loss of place. True, Greipel did transfer the bulk of Tyler's force into Peter Sagan, sending the Tourminator into a high speed high side that ended on the curb, but Greipel showed a mastery of applied force, vector physics and gravitational redirection that should earn him serious consideration for a Nobel Prize in Applied Physics.

In more serious news of the Luna Cycles Big Deal Fantasy Tour de France, Quint Ervin stays in the lead for an incredible third day in a row, lending further proof that his team is on the chinese chicken juice pretty hard. Let it be known though that the bare chested fury of Team Mas Fuerte is coming to bear and will be fully realized with a reckoning of epic proportions in the mountains.

So let's be honest. There is about 10 minutes of real excitement in these stages, and it comes at the very end. I am going to while away the bulk of the stages like these chatting up friendly locals, imbibing in the local drinks, and endeavoring to be sober enough to pay attention to those crucial last 10 kilometers. Deal?