Tour de France: fantasy league

Posted on June 16, 2013 by Injera

Before you tell me that Fabs isn’t riding this year, I’ll remind you that this is Fantasy Cycling.

Image: Zimbio

With 13 days to go until the 2013 edition of Le Tour kicks off, this might just be the time to test your luck with a fantasy cycling team. Once again, Velogames has a competition up and running, with prizes for the overall winner, podium placings and stage winners. You can also join the Les Vaches du Tour mini-league – code 15165543. The overall winner of the league will get a cows t-shirt of their choice. If the number 13 treats you particularly shabbily and you end up as Lanterne Rouge, some Udderly Smooth chamois cream might salve your wounded pride.

Les Vaches au Tour

Posted on June 12, 2013 by Injera

See you on the other side, Team Vaches!

The most important items are packed first…

Cows in training?

Posted on June 10, 2013 by Injera

Thanks, @OzKnitter, for passing on this story from Cyclingnews: Dodging Cows And Pacing Yourself. The full story is at the link, but below is the vache-news. It looks as though one of the cows did a bit of a Hoogerland.

As the gun went off at 9:00 am, we stood there for another 30 seconds, waiting before we could start rolling on our bikes. From here, it was go time, Kris [Sneddon], Spencer [Paxson] and I made like a bunch of angry hornets and started hammering up the sidewalks, weaving around hundreds of cyclists and eventually up to the head of the race in 10 minutes time.

Lucky for us, the start was on a wide road and was relatively slow. I looked at Kris and gave him the thumbs up as it looked like we had dodged a bullet. Nope, we got content again and drifted back into about 40th position and then the road turned into a gravel path which was still ok, until three cows got spooked and hopped in the middle of the road, blocking everyone out of the top 30. Spencer made a bold move and rode up the ditch. At the same time, one of the fat cows also moved to the ditch, pushing my teammate into a barb wired fence. With one hand on the cow’s ass, and the other one on his handlebar, Spencer pushed the cow out of his way and snuck by. I was cracking up, but also getting pissed at the cows as they weren’t getting out of the way.

I remember hearing about Steve Gaffney from Calgary getting kicked in the face one year by a cow he tried to pass on the Bow 80 course and wanted to avoid the same fate. Eventually the cows cooperated and we rode by them, only to have a panicked cow 100ft up the road try to jump out of his pasture. Being a fat cow, he instead went through the fence and hauled all kinds of wire into the middle of the road. All the Euros started yelling “Ashtung”.

*Probably not the actual fat cow

Critérium du Dauphiné: les vaches d’étape 7

Posted on June 9, 2013 by Injera

Critérium du Dauphiné: stage 6 vaches roundup

Posted on June 8, 2013 by Injera

The Dauphiné continues to spoil those of us with an interest in cows, with stage six also giving us Carlton Kirby who took the opportunity to share some of his bovine knowledge.

Reliable vache-watcher Visible Procrastinations called the first sighting:

… and got an excellent screen shot of the next group.

We had to wait a while for the next sighting, but both the helicopter and the commentary team made it an easy spot.

Carlton Kirby was confident enough to identify these as charolais, also suggesting that they might be destined for a kebab in the finish town, Grenoble (where he advised exercising caution with harissa).

The final vaches sighting was fleeting, but substantial.

Perhaps not quite as substantial as Bugwan initially reported…

The “beasts of the field… doing their thing”. More classic cow commentary from Carlton Kirby.

Obviously I have updated my Tour de France map to check out these beasts as we drive into Grenoble.

Critérium du Dauphiné – whetting the appetite for the Tour

Posted on June 7, 2013 by Injera

Stage five of the Dauphiné followed part of the route we will see in stage 19 of the Tour, albeit in the other direction, and it gave us plenty of reasons to look forward to July. We saw a courageous day in yellow from Rohan Dennis, who will wear the white jersey in stage six. We got a glimpse of the forthcoming Froome-Contador rivalry won convincingly by Froome in this encounter, who almost gave us Kermit Arms in celebration. And we were treated to a wealth of cows.

First glimpse

An abondance taking an interest

Team Vaches was as reliable as ever in pointing out cow sightings.

Not that interested in the Sky train…

Tarantaise, perhaps?

Once again, thanks to all the people tweeting and screen-grabbing cows. Team Vaches’ form for the upcoming Tour is looking extremely good – I’ll need you to be sharp in July as I’ll be either roadside or trying to make sense of French broadcasts!

Critérium du Dauphiné: stage three – home ground advantage

Posted on June 5, 2013 by Injera

Stage three of the Dauphiné took the riders from Ambériue-en-Bugey through Charolais country to Tarare. The route came close to last year’s stage 10 start town in the Tour – Mâcon – so we were hopeful of some quality cow sightings.

Critérium du Dauphiné: stage two vaches

Posted on June 4, 2013 by Injera

Despite this race being the time-zone-friendliest race of the European season, the cold-and-flu season meant that this vache was off to bed hoping an early night might be the cure (and knowing that Team Vaches could be relied upon to tweet cows).

Early twitter reports suggested that this stage might be one more suited for the donkeys, what with the carrots all over the place.

But what have we here?

It’s clear that some of you have carrots in your musettes – that’s the only explanation I can find for this exceptional piece of spotting:

Thanks for the tagging of the cow-sightings, JayBeenEsq and VisibleProcrastinations!

Critérium du Dauphiné – an Abondance of vaches

Posted on June 3, 2013 by Injera

We love the Dauphiné. Unlike the Tour de France, where the race leaders collect fluffy lions, or the Giro, which bestows an anthropomorphised tub of yoghurt, winners get a cow. Not only that, but there’s generally a decent amount of live cow spotting to be had.

The opening stage of this year’s race has already given Team Vaches a lot to celebrate.

Image: Seb Piquet

Web round-up: where cows meet bikes

Posted on June 1, 2013 by Injera

What to do when there’s no cycling on TV? Well, you can engage in endless speculation about the real reasons behind Sir Bradley’s non-start in this year’s tour, or you can take a deep breath and Google “cows and bicycles” and see what you get…

= = = = = = = = = =

Cows, cheese and bikes, oh my! It’s probably just as well I hadn’t seen this before planning the France trip, because it might have derailed Tour plans. I guess I can always lie in French paddocks, with French cheese and French cows.

Image: Experience Plus

= = = = = = = = = =

This post from A View from the Cycle Path alerted me to the annual Boerenfietstocht, or Farm Bike Tours, where you can ride around the countryside visiting a number of farms. Google translate tells me that

Along the way you will see include the cows on the land and there are growing many different crops.

Everything is helpfully signposted and has this cute logo:

The dates for the rides in 2013 are the 18th of July and the 1st and 15th of August. I reckon the Boerenfietstocht will be factored into planning for our next trip, for sure.

= = = = = = = = = =

Finally, I found something to look for in France. And, despite the lack of cows, I almost think this counts as saving-the-best-’til-last. It combines beer, bikes and a nod to Jens Voigt’s love of geo-caching. It’s called Find the Beer! and it is what is says on the tin. There are only three rules:

1) you just take one, 2) you leave a beer of your own before you go, and 3) you let us know through Food and Think’s comments box that you’ve made the discovery–and, please, tell us how it tasted.

Seems reasonable. I’m thinking of taking a Holgate Temptress to leave for a lucky cyclist.