Bite Me, Cycling.tv! (Part II)

Giro? What Giro?: well, it was apparently a pretty rip-roaring finish up stage 4 to Montevirgine with the GC contenders all hot on each others' wheels and we love Iban Mayo making a very fine ride of it, and also quite the lively sprint today (with we love Thor Hushovd right in there) considering half the peloton was sore from a nasty array of crashes on wet pave' yesterday--not that I'd !@#damned know it with the cycling.tv coverage I paid for completely unable to function! Here I am, finally making peace with the concept that I have to gack up extra dough for the Giro and Vuelta above my general cycling.tv subscrip, and even psyching myself into feeling rather grateful for the opportunity given that I quite enjoyed the Classics beyond a few irksome snafus and that lame US television can only be bothered to show about 2 hours' worth of Giro coverage a week, and even accepting the problems I've been having since the new website came up--like I have to kill my computer's firewall to get it to come on at all and the extra-bitchin' bit rate I paid for comes in with the approximate clarity of one-bit-per-computer-screen and there's no sound at all--since I've already sent friendly emails alerting tech support to the problem and certainly even the finest site ought to be given a fair and reasonable time for technical tweaks, when voila'--a particularly unpleasing midweek stomach bug legitimately buys me two days at home from work with nothing to do but lump miserably on the couch clutching my guts and watch...nothin'! Nothin'! Bring me back my !@#damned Giro you hacks!!

National Lampoon's Vacation: so in the wake of Ivan Basso and Michele Scarponi's suspension from the Italian cycling fed, and the interesting revelation from the prosecutors that Basso has mysteriously backtracked from his earlier promise to be open about the nature and extent of his doping activity and overall knowledge (you weren't tipped off to that when all he'd cop to was "trying" to dope for the '06 Tour?), it turns out that Ivan Basso, Jan Ullrich and Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes were all totally coincidentally vacationing at the exact same German hotel at the exact same time just before the start of the '06 Giro, which is really nice that the teams gave the boys some completely unquestioned time off right then considering I'm sure neither Jan nor Ivan had anything else they were supposed to be doing for their teams, like, um, training, at the time. Speaking of CSC and T-Mobile, T-Mobile is now apparently questioning its sponsorship because since they pushed the riders to actually stop doping their results have been in the tank and they realize the extent to which they've screwed themselves with their hypocrisy, I mean, they've just got too many commitments elsewhere to be bothered, and CSC kindly reassures us all that the two riders who were nailed for blood 'irregularities' were really within normal limits after all, and would you please ignore the man behind the curtain? Finally, Caisse d'Epargne has seemingly come to the conclusion that they can't rely on Pereiro for the maillot jaune in the Tour even with half the field theoretically disqualified by Op Puerto, because they've decided to back Alejandro "I'm Not Valv" Valverde after all, noting a la' that oily wank Bruyneel that the boy promised to give DNA if asked, which they've got a hell of a better reason to think won't happen in Spain than it did to Basso in Italy, so see, we've proved he's clean you rumormongering naysayers!

Y'know, I'm so touched by the teams' genuine pursuit of clean sport I'm welling up. Truly. Now, could you goons over at cycling.tv please fix my freakin' Giro, so I can go back to watching the actual sport?