I’ll admit it: I’ve been feeling a bit rusty lately. I was clinging to my MSR start list this weekend like a confused chemistry student to a periodic table. Cycling.TV’s cataract-inducing picture quality and a whole slew of anonymous-looking white kits—Katosha, Serramenti PVC Diquiblahblahblah, Katusha, SaxoBank, I’m looking at you—sure didn’t help things. And that Austrian doping case? Some dude I’ve never heard of.
But now, names I recognize are winning races. In fact, they’re coming in first, second, and third. And the “real” media still seems pretty much clueless: Cyclingnews.com still has no RSS feed (and, if you really want to nerd out, a table-based layout), and the Lance getting surgery story is still worthy of three different headlines, ranging from “no big deal” to “oh sh–!” Even with the big recession, there’s still pixels being chewed up by overpriced weight-weenie fap and how best spend your piles of excess cash in Milan.
So as it was back when, if you want to find interesting stories, you’ll have to go to the blogs (and I guess Twitter, now, but you need to be on your toes). Podium Cafe has a nice rundown of the rumbly bits of today’s Dwars door Vlaanderen, the venerable Bobke Strut proves that even retro grouches had retro grouches, and Robbie McEwan loves crappy weather fancies his chances of a win. All in all, it’s a lot like coming back to visit your parents’ house; sure, the decor might have changed a bit, but you know its home when you find 20 containers of sour cream going bad in the fridge because your mom just couldn’t resist the price.