Today was not a photography day for me – the rain gets in my way big-time, since I’m not willing to risk my cameras getting soaked. I did buy one weatherproof camera cover and it worked pretty well at the end of the stage when it was not yet raining heavily. The finish was pretty dramatic. I arrived only a few minutes before the Peloton – I followed the Caravane Publicitaire, and we were so slow that we almost got in the way of the finish. I got some shots of the guys riding thru the mob of media right after the race, and will put them in the smugmug gallery.

I took a couple of shots of the new Skoda truck in the caravan. It is just absolutely humongous – a huge, hankin’ Kenworth, and quite deluxe. It towers over all the other floats, and you can hear the horn a mile away, I’m sure. They have gals dancing in the back, and they are all tethered down (as with all the floats) so they won’t fall off. I feel like a 3-foot tall kid when that monster truck goes by. It is all silver and shiny chrome – they must have had to sell 10,000 Skodas to buy that Baby! I keep wondering how it is going to do the high mountains, and how it is going to negotiate those tight, U-shaped corners. If it breaks down, I can’t image that there is a tow truck that could haul it on up. I would not want to be driving the vehicle behind, or in front of it in the mountains. Yikes! I’ll put some shots of The Big Skoda Machine up in the smugmug gallery.

I saw a news article that OLN is worrying about their Tour coverage next year without Lance. Actually worried about viewer numbers. One OLN person was quoted as saying they “were losing sleep over it”. OLN averages something like 99,000 viewers a day during the year, but during the Tour, it is 1.4 million. Guess they are wondering how many Tour fans will lose interest sans Lance in 2006… And I’m wondering what the infinitesimally small minority of my viewers will do with their snide comments sans Lance in 2006…