Lance! Dude - What happened? Sirius Radio Live Strong didn’t happen tonight. Music for 20-30 minutes, and then LA and Higgs came on for only a few minutes. Lance apologized for being late - said they drove to the office, and there were technical problems. So they had to turn around and go back to his house and try to set up the broadcast. He joked and said the game got in the way, and there was probably nobody listening anyway. Lance asked Higgs what they should talk about and Higgs said the game, and ka-pow - they were off the air again. That was it - no mas. Lance, my man, glad this DNF was for only a radio show.... Guess they should hook me up as a back-up in case have a mechanical - I could talk the talk and be cool with other fans. Hey Sirius - are you listening? The heck with celebrities - how about a nobody doing a show?

As a nobody, I was interviewed live on the air by Active.com from a teeny hotel room in France - I think it was when I was in Lourdes during the 2002 Tour. And some sports radio station in Chicago, or upstate NY (I can’t remember) also interviewed me then, and another called me for an interview, but it sounded like a shock jock show, and I figured they’d do a number on me, so I said no. I did a daily report for Active.com from the Tour that year, as well as doing Podium Girl Gone Bad for cyclingnews.com.

Jeeze, that was so much work to do two totally different reports from the Tour - it was kinda like having multiple personalities, one was Velogal and the other was Podium Girl Gone Bad. I had fun doing it, but the Internet connections drove me nutz - all I had was dial-up and had to do it from my hotels. Over the years, I’ve stayed in lot of cheap little places that didn’t even have phones in the room. In one place, I talked the bartender into letting me use the phone in the bar. I sat at the end of the bar, and plugged into the only phone in the place to access the Internet. I was typing away and he kept bringing me little glasses of some special dessert wine. It took forever - I think the connection speed was something like 12kb a minute! I sent the report and a couple of photos - it took several glasses of wine... er... I mean about an hour and several disconnects to send everything.

Last year, at one of the stages, I was waiting for the teams to arrive, and went into a little shop that advertised magazines, smokes and internet access. I wanted to pick up messages from my webmail. The guy behind the counter was kinda sleazy-looking, and he led me into a little back room with three or four computers. I connected to the internet and was reading my email. The guy comes back and gives me a candy bar - I didn’t want it, but took it to be polite. Next thing I know, the jerk is trying to give me a shoulder massage! I told him no, and he went away, but then came back and tried again. I hollered at him to leave me along and got outta there real fast. I’ve had some pretty interesting experiences following the Tour solo. Most have been really pleasant, but a couple of times things were a little hairy....