It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!/

Everywhere You Go: dang, it's not enough that the blizzard conditions are wrangling half the riders into the pavement at Paris-Nice--where at least you *expect* the conditions to be crappy every day--but now even the boys at Tirreno-Adriatico (including Robbie McEwen, who poetically tweeted that he "crashed on my arse") are getting walloped by Mother Nature as the predicted snow turns into miserable slippy sleet instead? Those poor little peloton popsicles--someone, buy those fragile scrawny bodies a hot tub! Hmmm, maybe it wasn't such a bad idea to switch the Tour of California to completely destroy any legitimacy or competition by rescheduling it at the same time as the Giro in May after all...

Bruised But Not Beaten: while we're yappin' Paris-Nice, I see Alberto Contador is recovering nicely from a nasty bruise that, thank goodness, wasn't so severe it'll inordinately screw up his Tour de France training, which is great, as Lance Armstrong has, for the second time in as many days, hit the airwaves to reiterate that the Tour is no biggie one way or another and if he doesn't win or even podium, who gives? Um, am I the only one who recalls him (1) stating approximately 85,000 times last season (and pretty damn frequently earlier on this year) that he only came out of retirement to win it in the first place and (2) shrieking like a toddler in full-on meltdown when he didn't? Just makin' sure all that meth hasn't *totally* affected my memory!

Bah(ati), Humbug!: yep, as the Euro peloton continues to welcome the most disgusting miscreants back into its grimy ranks with impressive regularity, 2006 Tour de France champ Floyd Landis joins ex-Rock racer Rahsaan Bahati's new gig, replete with the sort of child-friendly charity photo ops that just last season bought the comely Ivan Basso a big fat ticket to Liquigas. I don't know, Floyd, maybe if you just changed your citizenship to Spain or Italy...what's a little traitorousness to the USA, if it'd score you one last (lucrative) ProTour gig for old times' sake?

Shock and Awe: in UCI news, the billion-dollar bio passport program has now busted its latest high-profile star for doping: that's right, Massimo "Who the !@#$ Is That Guy?" Giunti. Next up, that teenager you always see around your neighborhood riding his BMX bike on the sidewalk while he's texting his buds gets record-breaking narco-sentence for that extra algebra-class Red Bull. Nice to see all your hard work's paying off in locking up the big boys, UCI!

From the Do As I Say, Not As I Do Department: speaking of UCI, as head honcho Pat "Dick" McQuaid--much like the same pain-in-the-!@# ten-year-old who starts meticulously quoting from the rules on the inside of the Monopoly box the second they start thinking they might lose--goes all Inquisition on any sap rider whose sponsor dares to ask the UCI well ahead of time if the new time trial bike they're planning on using gets an A-OK from the playbook fascists, a faithful reader kindly sends me this lively tidbit about our earnest stickler Pat: indeed, while still just a lowly cyclist himself, he deliberately broke the UCI rules and assumed a false name to ride a race in apartheid-era South Africa, thereby being not just a rules-defying naughty-boy and a callous enabler jerkface, but also getting his dirty self kicked out of the Olympics as a result. Sure, *much* worse to have an extra millimeter of carbon fiber on your stem--don't you feel better about being yanked off your bike at the sign-in, Alberto?

We Love Jens Gratuitous Video of the Day: oh, yeah, he's in yellow, baby--and what's more, since he's not defending his 656th consecutive Criterium International crown this year, he sez he's in it to win it:
We love Jens!