Whew. Just when I thought Dave Zabriskie was safely back in yellow…By now most of you have seen it on OLN, but Zabriskie's crash in the final kilometers of today's time trial was just the sort of providence Lance Armstrong needs to win his seventh straight Tour de France. The quirky, shy Zabriskie has a history of crashing, and it was painful to see him go down so hard once again. His face was drawn and pale as he rolled through the finish area. It was as if he had lost a loved one. And, in a way, he did.Funny how some guys always find a way to crash, and some guys always find a way to win.CSC was always the odds-on favorite to win the team time trial. They have the unity, talent, and confidence to beat almost anyone. Their lead through the early time checks was impressive enough to think that they were cruising. But Lance Armstrong made it clear in a post-race interview that it was all part of his plan. "We knew the race was going to come down to the last 20 kilometers," he said. "The newly paved road, flat course, and relatively straight path were signs that there would be no big time gaps. Our plan was to stay comfortable early, then push hard into the finish."Lance knows how to beat a guy when he's down. He dismissed Zabriskie as "a great young rider of the future." Daming praise, it pretty much means that Zabriskie will remain in his rear view mirror for the rest of the Tour.Lance is a straight shooter. He looks you in the eye when you ask him a question. His answers are blunt and straightforward, sometimes laced with wry humor. So when the question of strategy arose – namely, would he try to stay in yellow for the rest of the race? – his deflection was odd. He passed the question over to team manager Johann Bruyneel, who hemmed and hawed about the difficulty of protecting the yellow jersey for the next 17 stages. Then the old Lance returned. "I'm gonna' put a little pressure on him to let me keep it."Zabriskie started the day two seconds up on Armstrong. His team, CSC, finished just two seconds behind Armstrong's. During a team time trial, all team members get the exact same time as the first member to cross the line. Logically, Zabriskie and Armstrong should be tied for yellow. So why is Lance wearing the maillot jaune? Because Zabriskie crashed into the barricades before crossing under the triangular red banner denoting just one kilometer remaining. The rule states that a rider only gets the same time as his teammates if he has passed under the flame rouge. As it was, Zabriskie lost 30 more seconds and dropped to ninth.I like a good rivalry. It was – and remains – my fervent desire that Lance Armstrong go hammer and tongs with another rider this year. I was hoping it would be Floyd Landis or Levi Leipheimer (the great irony would be Bobby Julich, who was considered the great hope of American cycling until Lance's 1999 victory rendered him anonymous). But if someone's going to have a go, they need to make a move soon. The closest real threat is Alexandre Vinokourov, 81 seconds back in seventh place. Floyd Landis is a desultory 20th, apparently saddled with a team that looks stronger on paper than in reality. Ivan Basso is 10th, some 86 seconds back, but Armstrong can crush him in time trials (there's one left. It's a 32-miler on the penultimate day), so the affable Italian isn't really a factor. So who's going to take a chance at Armstrong? I'm betting on his old nemesis. Jan Ullrich, who's always good for a fight. That would be some battle if Ullrich could manage to make up the 1:36 deficit.The scene after today's finish was madness. Fans mingled in with the Tour procession, clutching pens and camcorders as they clamored to touch the riders. It was hard to watch as young children battled with grown adults for access. Actual, bona fide paparazzi were in attendance to snap Sheryl and Lance. Over at the CSC bus, a mournful Bjarne Riis spoke in hushed tones about Zabriskie's pratfall. The sky was cloudy and threatening rain, which only added to the ominous feel. This was the biggest crowd since the Tour began Saturday, though it will be dwarfed in the weeks to come. Crazy to think of what lies ahead.Don't have a place to sleep tonight. That's a common theme here, and I brought a sleeping bag just in case I need to bunk in a pasture. But the wind is howling outside the media tent, rain is going to come soon enough and I'd like to stay dry. It's interesting: When most people (me included) think of France, they think of Paris. Or maybe Provence. But not all of France has a cosmopolitan vibe. Most of the country is as undeveloped as the South Dakota prairie, and just as laced with farmland. There are no Marriott's or even Motel 6 off every freeway exit (and for the most part, there are no freeways). And Expedia doesn't take reservations for most of these small towns -- I checked. But I have hope that some quaint country inn will have a room and a hearty petit dejeuner with dark black coffee in the morning. And without hope we are nothing, right?I'm going to take a small break from the Tour tomorrow morning. I need to dash into Paris and wrap up some business. Then it's a sprint back down the A6 in time for the finish. Actually, if all goes well, I'll be back in time for the 1:15 start in Chambord. I had promised myself I wouldn't go into Paris until the Tour arrives July 23, but it will be a nice change of pace. Maybe I'll see Tom and Katie standing atop the Eiffel Tower.Tomorrow's stage travels 183 kilometers from Chambord to Montargis. The route is as level as the Bonneville Salt Flats. Lance predicts that Tom Boonen will win. "We know Boonen," he alluded to his former teammate. "And he can win six, seven, eight stages this year." We'll see. Those flat stages, with their sprint finishes and breakaways, are always a crapshoot. And now that Lance has a relatively cushy lead he might be more willing to extend some team a gift by allowing a successful breakaway. Lance is known as the patron of the peloton, which is a nice way of saying he's cycling's version of a godfather. Nothing happens without his blessing.  Speaking of gifts, the Tour souvenir stands are selling a t-shirt with "No Gifts" scrawled across the front. It's an allusion to a conversation between Lance and Bernard Hinault a few years back. The topic of discussion was crushing rivals and never giving them a single moment of hope. Seems appropriate right now. I read in my French history guide that the castle in Chambord is the largest in the Loire region, a landmark of the French renaissance known for it's turrets, spires, and double staircase. Sounds wonderful (I see ten castles a day and have yet to tire of them). From the description, however, I much prefer the finish in Montargis. It's a canal-lined medieval city known for its gastronomy. Given that four vineyards battled to have their wines tasted at today's media buffet (the food menu: foie gras, salade forestiere, fruit sorbet, and fresh local blueberries), I can't wait to see what a center of gastronomy will have to offer. Vive le France. If you look at a map, tomorrow's stage puts us halfway across France. The terrain has changed every day since leaving the Atlantic. I'm really not sure what tomorrow will bring, and that's OK. I find that's the best way to experience the Tour. Ah, there it is. The light patter of rain has been replaced by a steady downpour and distant flickers of thunder. Until tomorrow.

It feels like all of France has descended on the tiny fishing village of Fromentine for the start of this year's Tour. During the five-hour drive down from Paris yesterday the roads were packed with cars towing small campers and lugging bicycles on racks. Now those same campers line the course from Fromentine here to the finish in Noirmoutier. It's still five hours before the start, but as I drove in from my hotel in Notre Dame de Mons this morning, spectators were already perched in their chairs along the roadside claiming their spots. Here and there, tables laden with wine bottles, plastic cups and fresh baguettes announce the start of the party. Cyclists wearing the colors of their favorite teams pedaled along the blustery roads, past the oyster farms and low salt marshes that define the topography. The air smells like low tide. Closer to the finish, fans of all ages from around the world line the barricades, waiting for the moments when the riders will pass and they can bang their palms on the metal signage covering the barricades for the last kilometer. The mood is, above, all, expectant, like the moments before the start of the Super Bowl, albeit it a Super Bowl that will contiue for the next 23 days. It feels good to be at the Tour, like the feeling that comes before the start of a great adventure.   Except this time the adventure will not be solitary, but shared with the other 20 million spectators who will watch the race between now and Paris.Today's start will be very late in the day – 3:40 pm local time. The winds are blowing lightly along the course right now, but if yesterday's weather was any indication, the gusts coming off the ocean to hit the riders broadside will greatly increase in power by late afternoon.The focus, of course, is on Lance Armstrong and his bid to win a seventh and final Tour de France. He has maintained a low profile, but his picture is in all the papers. Not even Frenchman Thomas Voeckler, a national hero after defending the jersey for more than a week last year, is more prevalent. Armstrong has been subdued in his discussions with the press, except to say that he didn't come here to lose. The bike crash last week (a bee flew into his glasses and stung him) hasn't left him the worse for wear and tear. Pre-race scuttlebutt is saying that Armstrong's team is the strongest in the field. They'll do their job protecting him from the wind and on the long climbs. The pressure will be on Lance to perform in the time trials (starting with today's) and during next week's pivotal mountain stages.The course today is a tough one. After a circuitous loop past the quaint streets of Fromentine, the riders head out to the island of Noirmoutier en L'ile. The road is protected from the winds by trees (and campers) for the first few miles. However, the bridge between the mainland and island is both steep and unsheltered. The winds should be particularly harsh there. After a screaming descent off the bridge (it will be a test of courage to stay in that aero tuck, given the combination of winds and angle of descent) the road stays level all the way to the finish. Salt marshes, freshly-mowed farmland, and oyster farms line the road. The riders wil make a sharp left at the roundabout once they reach town, then stand up in the pedals for that final short sprint to the finish.Last year Armstrong's team, U.S. Postal, was known as the Posties. This year his team has a new sponsor and a new nickname. Team Discovery Channel is also known as "The Disco Boys."The CBS television van parked next to me in the gravel car park near the finish. Armen Ketayan is over here doing their coverage this weekend (the daily feed will be handled by OLN, while CBS will continue the weekend reports they've been doing since the days of Ric Lacivita). It was nice to see the CBS guys and good to hear someone speaking English, but what I really liked was the guys carrying the extra bags of Brooks Brothers clothing just in case the weather turns. I need a guy like that.The Tour generally starts with a short prologue. This year is different. The first stage is a 19-kilometer individual time trial, meaning that gaps of seconds and even minutes will separate the field after the first day of competition. The Tour organizers (no dummies) are setting up a three-week drama between the top riders, instead of the usual quiet first week before a true leader emerges. Look for Levi Leipheimer, Floyd Landis, Jan Ullrich, Andreas Kloden, Alexandre Vinokourov, and, of course, Lance Armstrong, to separate themselves.Of that group, Vinokourov – "Vino" – goes off first. He starts 104th at 5:23 pm. The riders leave at one-minute intervals. Leipheimer goes off at 6:11. Armstrong heads down the ramp at 6:48, just a minute behind Jan Ullrich. You can bet Ullrich will be aware of that short gap, though his chances of getting caught are slim in such a short time trial.On a personal note, yesterday was a long one. After the overnight flight from L.A., I battled Paris traffic for several hours before breaking free for the drive to the coast. Paris doesn't have a single ring road, meaning a navigation challenge through the outskirts of the city to find the way from de Gaulle to the A11 highway. After a detour that almost led me onto the grounds of Euro Disney (I promised my son, Connor, I would try to make it there while I'm in France, but that will have to wait until the Tour brings us all back to Paris in three weeks time), I finally found the A11. The road was lined with pine trees and signs advertising turn-offs toward local castles and other historical spots. Beautiful, simply beautiful.All the local hotels were booked up (with every shake of the proprietor's heads I learned the hard way what "Voulez-vous reserve?" means), but after picking up the media credential in Challons and eating dinner at a small local restaurant (the standard menu was local oysters, steak au poivre, and chocolate mousse), I finally found a place down the coast from the start at 11 pm. The long day was done.Ran into Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen a few minutes ago. They're gearing up for six straight hours on the air. Liggett was proud to pass along the news that he was recently given an Order of the British Empire (O.B.E.) for his contributions to cycling.One key facet of pre-race preparation is the podium ceremony. I looked on this morning as a new flock of young podium models went through a dress rehearsal for this evening's presentations of flowers, stuffed lion (the symbol of a major sponsor), and yellow jersey to the day's winner. The women were shapely, well-coiffed and somewhat nervous as the Tour music swelled from a speaker to begin the practice presentations. A scruffy male production assistant in shorts and a t-shirt stood in for the winner. A producer knelt down front and used hand paddles to cue them on the proper order of presentation (always the same: bouquet, lion, two kisses on the cheek, and then the yellow jersey, which five-time Tour champion Bernard Hinault personally zips).That's it for now. Still three hours before the start. Plenty of time to walk around and take it all in. Right now, all that's missing is the riders.

Today's La Chatagineraie-Tours stage is deceptively grueling. The riders will see their first real uphill of the Tour, with three fourth-category climbs in the first 100 miles. The wind is blowing hard enough that the finish corridor had to be rebuilt after several morning gusts knocked the barricades flat. It's also a very good possibility that we'll see thunder and lightning sometime soon. But perhaps the biggest obstacle will be the nature of the rural town's along the route. Houses and buildings press right up to the roadway, spilling spectators onto the roads. Add in the many abrupt turns, and an abundance of roundabouts and medians ("road furniture" in Tour parlance) and the riders will have to pay close attention to avoid a crash.The finish straightaway is spectacular. Used annually as the final stretch of the Paris-Tours Classic, it's 3,000 meters right into the gut of the city. The boulevard is wide enough to accommodate a dozen cyclists abreast. Fans were already lining the route by early morning. It is expected that they will pack the barricades ten-deep as the riders charge for home this afternoon.Though it's a longshot (I'm watching the feed right now, and the three-man breakaway group led by Erik Dekker is slowly being reeled in), I'm hoping for a successful breakaway. Barring that, the final sprint will be a long furious hammer to the line. Should make for great drama.Speaking of sprint finishes, Lance Armstrong watched a videotape of yesterday's finish in his hotel room last night. He marveled at the daredevil nature of the sprinters, and said he was glad not to be among them. It's worth pointing out that his Discovery Team is one of the few squads not to use a dedicated sprinter at the Tour. They're not willing to risk the loss of a rider due to a crash.It's hard not to notice that many of this year's top riders once worked for Lance. Among them are Floyd Landis, Levi Leipheimer, yesterday's winner Tom Boonen, and current wearer of the yellow jersey Dave Zabriskie. Dan Ossipow of the Discovery Team points out that their departures were all amicable, and it's true that these men were all very talented riders who could make more money and have a better chance of winning elsewhere. However, it's worth pointing out that Landis often chafed aloud at team manager Johann Bruyneel's authoritarian leadership and that Dave Zabriskie's quirky sense of humor went unappreciated. When it came time for contract renewal last fall, Zabriskie wasn't booted from the team. Instead, he was offered an amount of money so small as to be laughable. He had no difficulty leaving to sign with CSC.To Discovery's credit, they stuck through Zabriskie during two trying years of injury (unlike Cofidis, which dropped Lance in the midst of his cancer recovery). After the crash at Redlands last year which shredded the skin on his upper body and knocked him senseless, a tearful Zabriskie lay in his hospital bed and wondered aloud whether he had the strength to make a comeback.At last year's Tour, I noticed quite a few Capri pants on men. It seemed a whimsical fashion statement. Like day-glo and baggy cotton weightlifting pants, the trend seemed sure to die a quick death. Sadly, this has not come to pass. Richard Virenque – a mercurial former rider who never lived up to his country's expectations of a Tour victory – was even wearing a pair while taping a segment on French TV. Hey, I'm not saying the guy was wearing a skirt (not that there's anything wrong with that) but it just didn't look right.For the curious among you, today's media buffet was perhaps the best yet. Each town sponsors a dish highlighting their local specialties, and Tours put forth a spectacular effort. The appetizer was some sort of creamy pork spread that tasted like carnitas ("what is this?" I asked the woman behind the table. She was wearing a flowing green robe that looked very much like a Notre Dame graduation gown. "Mmmm…. How you say? Pig," she replied). So I ate the pig (very good) a slice of local brie, passed on the vegetable pate and roast beef (I'll go back for that later), and finished it all off with a china demitasse of coffee. All of it was good, but I'd have to say that the pig was the highlight.After the stage...Here's what it's like to cover a sprint finish: squeeze through a crowd of spectators through the small press entrance into the finish area. I go straight out into the middle of the road, into a crowd of TV camera men. The official shakes a finger at me and order me to stand in an enclosed area reserved for print journalists. Except the enclosed area is as crowded as a cattle stall on market day, and the journalists will be held in there until the TV guys have had a crack at the riders. I wait until the official turns away, then escape the holding pen and squeeze into a crowd of TV guys. By now the race announcer is going crazy on the P.A.   Straight ahead, I can see the entire peloton passing under the one-kilometer to go archway (the "flame rouge").   Tom Boonen throws up his arms straight up in ecstasy after winning the sprint. Then things get a little crazy. The rides whiz up to where I am standing, not bothering to touch their breaks until they're almost on the crowd. The street becomes a sea of riders and journalists. The cyclists have one foot in the pedals and the other unclipped to steady themselves. Lance comes up to me. I tell him congratulations, then make a note to get to his team bus as quickly as possible.   He's upset about getting cut off and nearly crashing with three kilometers remaining.George Hincapie rides past, tall and lean and tanned, with a gruesome set of varicose veins bulging from his left calf. Ivan Basso stops to do an interview with a Spanish broadcaster.   It seems strange to see him so eloquent, because he looks so tortured when trying out his English. A Belgian domestique sees his mother behind the barricades and smiles broadly as he pedals over.  I am now complexly surrounded by bikes. The riders bump off of me and each other, always moving toward their team bus. Floyd Landis pedals alongside and slows to my pace. His red hair and goatee are trim and it looks like he has not broken a sweat all day. He rides while I walk and ask questions. Landis is witty and humble, already looking past this week into the mountains. After a block I run out of things to ask and he pedals away. I'll save the extended interview for another day.  By now the streets are a scrum of riders, press and team buses revving up and driving out of town. The race has been over for five minutes. It all happens that fast. Jan Ullrich pedals past, his body pressed against the AG2M bus as it rolls away. And then the riders are gone, off for a night of eating, massage and sleep.Boonen's victory means that every stage thus far has been won by a former teammate of Lance Armstrong's. This is significant because he handpicked each one. It's as if Lance has personally shaped modern cycling.Tomorrow's a pivotal day. I was going to say it's going to be a "very big" day, but there will be so many of those in weeks to come that I don't want to overuse the phrase now. It's to be a 67.5-kilometer team time trial from Tours to Blois (a city whose name means "wolf", given by the Celts, who ruled the area until 584 and feared the many wolves in its thick forests). The first 15 miles are flat. It will be easy for teams to stay together and maintain top speeds. But a series of climbs soon make the route extremely daunting, particularly the climb at Carrefour in the 58th kilometer. Look for CSC, Discovery, Phonak, and T-Mobile to battle it out. Dave Zabriskie's slim two second lead is definitely not safe.I bounced that assessment off Floyd Landis this afternoon. He says that the profile is misleading, and that it's actually very flat tomorrow. The route runs along the banks of   the Loire River. Those hills shown in the pre-race profiles are actually a very slight gradient. Landis says CSC is the obvious favorite, but points out that they've been working hard the past two days and are vulnerable. Blois, which has been rebuilt after being almost entirely destroyed by World War II bombing, is also the birth place of Harry Houdini. It's also the place where Joan of Arc also rallied her army against the British in 1429.Speaking of history, the French are a funny people. The local history of Tours takes pains to point out that it was devastated by German bombing between June 19-21, 1940. However, it points, the Allied raid of May 20, 1944 caused far more damage. Maybe if they'd repelled the invasion in the first place the French wouldn't have had that problem.Lance, by the way, had a few things to say about tomorrow. "The Maillot Jaune is something to be cherished," he said while standing in front of his team bus. "You can bet I'll be fighting for it tomorrow. CSC is a tough team and tomorrow's a big day."Looking forward to it.

The eyes of France were on Thomas Voeckler, hoping against hope that his four-man breakaway group could pull of a stage win and put him in yellow. And though he pulled it off last year, the baby-faced national hero was unsuccessful on this blistering Sunday afternoon. The peloton slowly but surely reeled in the breakaway. They seemed to be in no hurry, content in the knowledge that the gap between them and Voeckler's bunch was too small to be a threat. They were right. Tom Boonen got the win in a sprint breakaway.Voeckler's day, however, wasn't a total washout. Thanks to a time bonus awarded the first cyclist to pass the stage's 150-kilometer mark, he now wears the polka-dotted jersey.  This is awarded to the best mountain rider. Today's "mountain" was the renowned 230-foot peak, Chateau Guibert.Lance Armsrong, Dave Zabriskie, Alexandre Vinokourov, and everybody else in the top 10 finished without worry. Which is not to say there wasn't tension. The TV feed showed a telling moment when Lance's Discovery Team shadowed Zabriskie's CSC squad. The two men made eye contact; just Lance's way of reminding Zabriskie that he considers the yellow jersey to be on loan.We still don't know a lot about Zabriskie. He comes across as – let's put it right out there – boring in interviews. Friends say he's just extremely shy, and that in person he's one of the sharpest, wittiest people you'd ever want to meet. He gave brief evidence of that in his post-race press conference, telling journalists that the survival course team manager Bjarne Riis insisted CSC undertake in the off-season "made a man out of him." OK, not that funny, but at least it was better than yesterday's awkward interviews, when he could barely mumble more than a sentence at a time. One other thing: The Utah native resides in Berkeley when he's not in Europe. His girlfriend is just finishing up school there.A new rule in effect this year gives the same time to every rider that finishes within two kilometers of the winner. This is designed to minimize those sphincter-clenching sprint finishes and the all-too-frequent catastrophic crashes (kissing the pavement at 35 mph is a singularly horrid sensation) that have defined the Tour's early stages in years past. That's why the gap between the sprinters and the peloton was several hundred yards at the finish today.Floyd Landis averaged 200 watts of energy expenditure today. On his scale of 1-10, that's about a 4. His training rides often see him average 250 for six hours straight, so Landis was pretty much just kicking back today. Don't ask me how this watt thing works, but I'm told it translates to about 3200 calories burned. Though that doesn't sound like much for a 115-mile ride, consider this: Landis didn't even have to pedal 16% of the time. He just flowed in the slipstream, sucked along by the riders in front. This, of course, is the same tactic Lance Armstrong has used so successfully on his way to six victories.Had a talk with Alan Lim, Landis' coach. The Discovery Team has scoffed at Landis's chances in the coming mountain stages, but Lim says those will be Landis's forte. Over the past two months he has climbed more than 350,000 vertical feet in training, an average of 7-15,000 feet up the Pyrenees each day. Lim says that Landis was up to the constant climbing, but that the clutch on the rental car used as a chase vehicle was so trashed they had to get a new one. To work on his time-trialing skills, Landis would switch to his TT bike whenever he rode through a valley. "Some people think you need to train long, some people think you need to train hard," says Lim. "Floyd thinks you need to train long and hard."Not that Landis is bitter about his time with Discovery, but the free-spirited Mennonite couldn't be happier at Phonak. He felt stifled at Discovery (then Postal Service) and was bothered by the team's rigid class system, which had every rider working for Lance, at all times.   Chris Carmichael of Discovery is openly doubtful that Landis can be a team leader this year, calling him a "top 15 G.C. (general classification, or overall finish) candidate at best." Lim, however, says that Landis is "one of the toughest people you'll ever meet." Not that either man is biased…Last on Landis, for now: Interestingly, he and Dave Zabriskie, the man in yellow, are roommates and training partnerss. Though they race for separate teams, Landis and Zabriskie share an apartment in Girona, Spain. They ride 80-150 miles per day, averaging 30 hours of training per week. For those in the know, that's the same Girona where Lance lives and trains while in Europe. He's not too forthcoming on his training mileage.A little bit of Tour trivia: It's a year-round corporation, sponsoring events other than the Tour. The official corporate uniform is a dark brown blazer, tan pants, and brown shoes. Bernard Hinault is fond of breaking the dress code on hot days by removing his blazer before making the post-race podium presentations.The press room today is a mile from the finish. It's housed in a school gymnasium with a wood-beamed roof and those retractable basketball backboards (six, in all) winched up to the ceiling. The air is thick with cigarette smoke and the air hums with cell phone rings,   a French show called "Velo Club" on the flat screen monitors, and journalistic debates in a half-dozen languages that somehow blend together into a single international thrum.   A woman with a bored expression circulates up and down the long rows of tables, passing out the day's results and a half-dozen other press releases, most of which are worthless. I would like to say that we all smell like lavender, but there is no air-conditioning and I sweat sitting still.   Just thought you might want to know...I like my history, so I'm looking forward to the next two stages. As we work our way westward up the Loire Valley, leaving the salt marshes and oysters of the Atlantic region behind, the towns possess are sometimes more than a thousand years old. My favorite tidbit from the Tour guidebook revolves around the city of La Chatagnerie, where the riders begin tomorrow's stage: "Local resident Francois de Vivonne was the tragic hero who fought a duel with the Baron de Jarnac in 1543. Vivonne lost, and Jarnac severed his hamstrings as he lay bleeding." Off to Tours to spend the night this evening and tomorrow night. It's the site of the third stage finish and the starting point for the fourth, that all-important individual time-trial.  Lance Armstrong and the Discovery Team, continuing their tradition of lodging as far as humanly possible from the race (and the press) as possible, are staying an hour further up the road in Chambord.Tomorrow's stage is just over 120 miles long. The terrain is rolling throughout, on country roads lined with pastures and irrigation canals. The high temperature today was 95 degrees, and more of the same is expected for tomorrow. Good news for the riders is that showers are expected in the middle miles, providing a brief respite. Talk to you then.