Lake Forest: What?; Le Tour: steps and dinner

You have probably read of the Australian and his dog who were ‘rescued’ after drifting for some months in the Pacific Ocean off Mexico.  

I had seen the headings on articles reporting this and glanced at them.  They caused me to wonder, but after seeing the above photo of the boat at the time of the ‘rescue’ sent to me by Tim for which I thank him, I wonder no more.

I see a standing mast.  I see a sail attached to it.  I see a standing fore or head stay and a sail attached to it.  I see a rudder.  I see a monstrosity of a boat on which I would never have set foot, but I also see that it is still afloat with no evidence of hull damage.  I will not speculate on the mental state of the Australian, but I will state unequivocally that no competent sailor would have required rescue from that boat.  The key word is competent.

I have been watching Le Tour de France which has been dominated in the past three runnings by two young men, Jonas Vingegaard, a Dane, and Tadej Pogacar, a Serb.  Pogacar won the race twice, Vingegaard won last year.  Neither has ever finished lower than second.  Through the first fifteen of the twenty-one stages this year they were separated by ten seconds.  This after more than fifty-five hours of cycling.  No one else was in contention.

Yesterday saw one of the most remarkable individual performances I have seen in sport.  The stage was a time trial with riders starting at two minute intervals in reverse order of their standing, the lowest starting first.  There were still more than one hundred riders in the race.

Pogacar started second to last and he blew away the field, besting the next best time by 1 minutes and 13 seconds.  A huge margin.  And then Vingegaard who started last blew away Pogacar, beating his time by 1 minute and 38 seconds.  Everyone, including the commentators, was stunned.

The last time I saw such a performance was when Floyd Landis made his solo breakaway on a stage of the Tour in 2006.  I was watching on television and was elated by his daring and ability.  Until we all learned that he was using drugs, and that he was not the only one.  

As I have mentioned here before, this caused me to ignore the race for many years, until friends who know more about cycling than I told me the sport is now clean.  I hope it is.  If so, they are extraordinary, almost super-human athletes and deserving of the highest admiration.  If not—well, I won’t think about that unless I have to.

I went for a somewhat more modest bike ride myself this morning.

Last evening Carol again drove us down to the lake front for drinks and dinner.  Before eating we again climbed the 120 stairs up to the top of the bluff.  Carol’s apartment is on the second floor, our condo in Hilton Head on the third, both the top floors of their buildings, so I don’t climb stairs that often anymore.  I bought a stair stepper, but found using it too artificial and boring.  This was the third time we’ve climbed those stairs in the past eight days and it has become easy. 

 Afterwards we placed our camping chairs near the water’s edge where three inch high ripples form and break with the pleasant sound of real surf.  Alcoholic beverages are not permitted on the beach, except for wine bought from one building there.  We drank from insulated containers on which was printed ‘coffee’.  I will say only that they did not contain coffee.  We shared a smoked turkey and Swiss cheese sandwich, spinach empanadas, and chicken egg rolls, all bought by me at Fresh Market, which is for those of you living in other countries a high end grocery chain.  While much of the world is roasting, Chicago has, except for the stray tornado, remained comfortable.  The temperature was 72F/22F when we went down at 5:30.  A pleasant evening for an old landlocked sailor and an architect.