Toor Day Frants!

It's Tour de France time again! I'm not sure why I love it so much, but I do. OLN shows the race live every morning starting at 7:30 a.m. CDT, and I usually watch it then.

I think part of the reason I enjoy it so much is the commentators, especially in the morning when it's live. They re-show each day's stage in the evening with extended commentary by Al Trautwig and Bob Roll (whose aggressively American pronunciation of Toor day Frants is pretty well known), but in the morning it's broadcast with Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen. Phil and Paul are British and are themselves former cyclists. Phil in particular is pretty excitable, while Paul is fairly laidback. The following exchange, which took place during the prologue time trial a few days ago, pretty well sums up their personalities:

Phil (suddenly extremely excited): And it looks to me as though Stuart O'Grady has just gone through the time check in first place! Oh, this is amazing! No one expected -

Paul (interrupting): Uh, that's actually forty-first place, Phil.

Phil (immediately contrite): Oh, I beg your pardon, Paul.

They're a great team. And the race is amazing, and lots of fun to watch.

In other news, Jill's going to come visit us this Thursday and stay for a long weekend! She and Jay are in the process of moving to Connecticut (actually, Jay's already there), and she was able to take a few days away from visiting her parents in Indiana on her way up to come up and see us. We don't have definite plans, aside from playing Trivial Pursuit with each other. Hooray!