Monday, July 19, 2004

LiveStrong

Going into this year's tour, I wasn't rooting for Lance. The decisions he's made regarding his family have caused me to lose a great deal of respect for him. From a historical perspective I do think it would be neat to see him win his 6th in a row. I had been pulling for Tyler "ride through the pain" Hamilton. Now that Tyler has pulled out, I feel myself being pulled onto the bandwagon. Although my adoptive Italian roots are making me like Basso more and more. Anyway, like him or not, Lance is trying to raise piles of cash for cancer research, and that's a bandwagon I don't feel ashamed of jumping on. So I bought 20 of the fund-raising bracelets and thought that the kids could sell them at a lemon-aid stand in the 'hood and then donate that money back. Kind of a lesson in philanthropy and volunteerism. Of course each of the kids wanted one for themselves, but even the youth size was too big for their little wrists. So we put them on their ankles. Four had one on each ankle and asked if we liked his soccer pads.
 
As an aside, President Bush has recently predicted that Lance would win the tour, and that he would win in November. I had heard that Jan Ullrich went as far as to guarantee a victory in the tour. Here's to hoping that Bush's prediction for his own success shapes up the way Ullrich's is looking to.

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