Le Tour

It's getting tougher and tougher to find the time to keep up with you, Bush. Downsizing is not for the faint of heart, I'm beginning to discover. Here I am, up at five-ish every day, and getting down to the task or sorting and packing by seven-ish. We have accumulated unbelievable amounts of STUFF in the course of thirty-five years of married life, thirty-three of them in the same house. This morning, we got a start on the bedroom, carting out boxloads of treasures and junk, family pictures, trash... And then the question gets to be: where to put it all? Not enough room in the trash bins for the trash; not enough room in the basement for the garage sale stuff; not enough room anywhere for the stacks of pictures, framed and unframed, that emerge in bewildering quantities. Anyway, I consider myself lucky if I get to my computer by ten-thirty or eleven. And even then without much of an idea. No time to have read the newspapers, or to have watched the morning news. I'm vaguely aware that you have arrived in Scotland for your summit meeting. Hopefully with some plausible new ideas. We'll see.

One thing I don't miss, late evening, on the television: the Tour de France. I'm a big fan. Have been a big fan since before Lance Armstrong was born. Back in the 1950s, at boarding school, we used to have an auction at the beginning of each term for who got the right to have a first read of the various newspapers: I always put in my bid for France-Soir--the best for Tour de France coverage, in those days, and followed the daily coverage in French. Nowadays, of course, I'm a big Lance Armstrong fan. Who wouldn't be, given his incredible story? Except, of course, those Frenchies, who keep testing him for drugs. Sore losers, I say. Seriously, though, I do admire the man's strength, dedication, and focus. More still, his remarkable ability to inspire and work with the members of his team. Yesterday's team time trial, in case you didn't catch it, was a superb performance: the coordination, the concentration, the unwavering power of the Discovery Channel team was quite amazing. Even so, they might not have come out ahead--or at most by the merest whisker--if it hadn't been for the last-minute crash of the young race leader, Dave Zabriske, which set his CSC team back, miraculously, by only a few seconds, but deprived Zabriske himself of the opportunity to wear the leader's yellow jersey for another day, and set him way back in the overall standings.

A real drama, anyway, Bush, and surely a trauma for this young rider who had been doing so extraordinarily well in his first tour. To crash so ignominiously in front of millions of television viewers at the very height of his achievement. I wondered how Lance Armstrong would react, being thrust into the leadership by this rival's crash, but could not keep awake late enough for the post-race analysis and interviews. I did catch a brief snatch of an interview with him this morning, though: he was declining the right to wear the yellow jersey for the day, citing long-standing tour custom not to take advantage of another man's crash. That seemed a dignified response to me. But then, later, he was shown racing with the yellow jersey over his Discovery team jersey, so I'm guessing the tour organizers made him wear it, and he chose to demonstrate his disagreement by wearing both together.

Well, there you go, Bush. I know you don't go much for all this French stuff, but since it's an American who's top dog in this game, I thought you'd like to have the update. Good luck at Gleneagles. And give a little, okay, Bush. Give just a little. We'll all love you a lot more for the effort to be generous.