Le Tour de France 2017

I like to watch the Tour de France. For one thing we get to see the French countryside: the little towns, the castles and the towers, the rivers, the meadows of grain and sunflowers, the hills and the mountains.

This is an insane sport. It starts on the lowlands where speeding is done and then switches to the mountains. The majority of the bikers bunch together in the Peleton where they get a little extra pull from the other bikers. But, there are breakaways called attacks when a few bikers try to sprint ahead of the main group to gain time. The race is won in the mountains and the organizers schedule the race to run in the Alps and the Pyrenees. That is where breakaways succeed.

There are sprinters and climbers, stars and domestiques (guys who help the stars) and teams that are there to protect the stars.

This year the Tour is the same but different. Two of the top sprinters are gone: Cavendish was pushed by Sagan earlier: Cavendish was hurt and is out, while Sagan was disqualified. And breakaways are numerous and successful. There have been crashes and one rider competes with a broken hand.

The Tour is coming to an end. The final segment is the race in Paris. Will it end peacefully or succumb to a crazy Muslim(excuse the redundancy) trying his private jihad? Let's hope for the former.