Friday

With the NCAA tournament underway, the blog is kind of like next-day, rural newspaper delivery: its not news, just background stuff.  But for those of you checking in between games, here's some grist for the mill.

I haven't paid very close attention to the European cycling season this year, but the Spring Classics are in full swing.  In addition to a number of 4-7 day stage-races, they have several one-day races that are highly regarded in the sport.  There is a type of rider known as a "Classics rider", who tends to be a strong individualist who may rely less on teammates than some of the stars from the major, 3-week tours.  They aren't sprinters, and they aren't climbers, although the sprinters have a chance in these races if the hills aren't too bad.  The extended Winter weather this year has made these races almost more about withstanding the elements rather than the strengths of the other competitors.

UPDATE: One of the true Strong Men won today's race in Belgium.  Fabian Cancellara...they call him Spartacus...for good reason.

The PGA remains in Florida this week, at the Arnold Palmer event.  Tiger has won there 7 times in his career.  They talk about "horses for courses" as a way to describe the fact that many players play better on certain courses, usually because the course design fits their game.  Arnie's track, Bay Hill Golf Club, might be said to be a "Tiger course".  He's four behind after the first day, but I doubt if many folks are making bets against him on the weekend.

And NASCAR is back in California.  The 24 car is off to another slow start this season.  He had the lead last week at Bristol, but blew a tire and went into the wall.  There are a lot of good teams this year.  If you're off your game, you'll get shuffled to the rear with Danica in a heartbeat.

Cyprus remains a big topic in the business news.  I'm thinking that it is a concept thing rather than the size of the financial interests there.  Europe remains an uncertainty in the global economy.  The Euro currency is used by a federation of states rather than a single republic.  And with the lengthy history of the disagreements between these diverse states, its no wonder that they can't find common ground for their economies.  The problem as I see it is that you have all of this debt in the struggling countries, and the stronger countries not wanting to give unlimited further debt to the same folks.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to extrapolate out the same scenario unfolding in Washington.  Athens on the Potomac may not be just a curious title to an off-Broadway play.

I brought the Buick out for duty this AM and found that awful book from last weekend still in the CD player.  Sometimes on these weekend trips within the Midwest, I'll end up with the last CD for one of the books not quite done, and I'll play the rest of it at home to get to the end of the story.  Not so much for this one.  I did a status-check this morning and I was finishing CD number 10 of 14!  No way in the world I was going to punish myself with four more hours of torture.  I'm guessing that a few more people died, the girl protagonist was actually the bad guy, and the primary protagonist learned the hard way that there was a Dark Side to all of the other players.  I can live with that synopsis.

Next time, I'm considering just a few country music CD's from the '80's and '90's.

Getting close to Palm Sunday and Holy Week.  Sounds like it may be time for Phase IV of my story from Tomah.

Make it a Good Friday.

BCOT