Hope you all are heading out on a great ride for 2006... Here’s a catch-up on Lance Armstrong - maybe you already know most of it, but then again, maybe not... I shot the photo of Lance and Luke (and the top of one of the twins' head) at the 2005 Ride for the Roses Live Strong Expo.

Lance went to the Rose Bowl to cheer for his Texas Longhorns - They didn’t dare lose with him there... He hob-nobbed with fellow Longhorn fan Matthew McConaughey and had a brewski or two. I saw an article by some gal in a small newspaper (I forgot who or where).. Oh, yes, it was a San Jose Mercury News blog, and she said at the Rose Bowl she “happened to cut in front of skinny, bony, scrawny, skinny, almost ethereal blond guy, who I could've beat up in about three seconds.” It was Lance, but I’ve not ever heard him described quite like that.... Dum, da, dum, dum, dum...

Saw that Lance will be involved with the new Texas anti-litter campaign, along with some other Texas celebs like the above-mentioned McConaughey, Owen Wilson, Chuck Norris, Lee Ann Womack, Los Lonely Boys, and Jennifer Love Hewett. The theme, of course is “Don’t Mess With Texas”, and motorists can even win prizes for not littering. I do hope the anti-littering awareness and rules include not leaving cyclists lying beside the roads as you drive by....

Was surprised to see something in an article by my friend Samuel Abt in the IHT a week or so ago. It was called A Cyclist for all Seasons, and it was a justification for choosing Tom Boonen as IHT’s Man of the Year instead of Lance Armstrong. He wrote it as if Lance had called him, beefing about not being named top guy. I don’t know if Lance actually called him or not. And you may or may not agree with the choice, but what surprised the Hell out of me was a line in the story where Sam Abt said, “But the Tour de France is just - if that is the word - a three-week race in July.”

Jeeze, I had to read it twice to make sure he really said that. Sam Abt, I see you at the Tour every year - you’ve been covering the Tour for something like 30 years! While you have a driver, and do not suffer as much as the rest of us lowly photographers and photojournalists, you know damn well how much those cyclists suffer for three weeks... And how much the Tour means to them and to France. A three-week race in July? Come on, man, give the riders and the Tour the respect that it gives you. You are a fine writer, Samuel Abt - the best. And you know the Tour like the back of your hand, but I have to disagree with you on this one....