Our DC team has the greatest guys: they’re just plain nice people, hard workers and have determination and guts. But they are also human... Just like us, sometimes they really get pissed off about happenings in the race. I see where Leif got DQ’d at the Tour de Suisse after Stage 7 - they said he spit on a commissaire’s moto, but he denies spitting. Evidently the moto bumped into him while he was riding the stage, and he got mad. Maybe Leif was so mad that he was foaming at the mouth...

Now, in races, the job of motos is also to stay out of the way of the guys who are racing. Whether a moto official or a moto photographer, it is their responsibility to be aware of where the riders are, and to stay the hell away - front, back or beside. If they cause a pile-up, there could be riders who break collarbones or worse, which could be the end of the race, or even a career, for some racer.

I guess there was also another incident a bit earlier in that same stage, where a moto official had actually crashed right in the middle of the peloton. It sounds like there were some unqualified moto folks out there. But, I hear that Leif went up to the moto guy after the race and gave him the what-for, and ended up being disqualified.

In Philly (maybe you’ve already heard), some beer-guzzler grabbed onto Mike Creed’s jersey as he was slowly climbing the Manayunk Wall at the rear of the peloton. The idiot nearly pulled Mike over, and then the guy was high-fiving his buddies about what he’d done. Well, MC is a dude who doesn’t take crap from anyone, so he stopped his bike right on the hill and gave the guy a choice word or two...

At one location where I was shooting on the Wall, I was jammed next to a guy, his girlfriend, and a bunch of boozing buddies. They looked like they’d had beer for breakfast, and were still having breakfast. This one drunken guy was leaning out over the barricade, giving the one-finger salute and shouting “F... You” at the top of his lungs to every racer. His girlfriend kept trying to make him stop, but he thought it was really funny... I wonder if it was that same guy who grabbed Creed...