Spinning wheel got to go round...

I’ve been enjoying

the coverage of the Tour de France this year the VS cable channel has been broadcasting the race live and repeating the installment a couple times a day. The return of Lance Armstrong to the race was my initial impetus to take a look at the event again. A guy pushing forty with nothing to prove jumps back into the game - a feat attempted by an old man which the rest of us long toothed athletes can vicariously live through.

Years past I would occasionally check in to see how the race was progressing – but this year I am watching each stage in its entirety - usually during the last re-broadcast of the of the day. I remember my grandmother watching professional golf – a game she never played – like it was a soap opera and that is how I am enjoying the Tour.

I’ve acquired a new vocabulary – peloton, domestique, attack. chase, break away, drop, yellow – green – white – polka dot jerseys. I’m getting into the strategy of the races – the rivalries between Team Columbia (the sporting goods company not the country) and Lance’s Team Astana (a Kazakhstan based team.) Then there are the rivalries amongst members of the same teams – just yesterday Armstrong’s whippersnapper of a teammate - Alberto Contador (his Spanish name conjuring the image of a bullfighter) broke from the pack – and the team manager’s plan – with less than two kilometers left rocketing himself in front of Lance in the standings into second place.

Now this is a long race – 21 stages, most over a hundred kilometers long and this was only the seventh stage – there is a lot of racing left. So, Armstrong let the kid go without bothering to chase finishing two seconds behind Contador. So, is this a wily veteran move? In the post race interview the senior’s face said pissed off, while his words were more cordial. Or, is this the beginning of the end for the old man? What about the rest of the Team Astana – who will they rally behind now? Bicycling is much more a team sport than one would initially imagine – it takes all nine members working together to put one of their complement on the winner’s podium.

Like I’ve told my sons – never get in a fight with an old man if you can avoid it ‘cause while they may not have the stamina to go a real long time they know this too. So they’ll try to take you out as quickly as possible.

I’d love to eavesdrop on the team meeting before the start of today’s stage.

PRESS PRESS - PULL

My Grandma kept everything.

Below is a combination of the pics from my first newspaper feature back in 1987 (found in one of Grandma's trunks) and another from a month or so ago.

Sara asked me if I'd give the kid sitting next to me the time of day.
I'm still thinking about it.

Extra points to anyone who can guess the allusion in the title.

Grandma

Anna Salinger

was my grandmother and a pretty good cook. Back in the day she made everything from scratch. That’s one of my earliest memories of her. She’s wearing an apron, flour all over the kitchen counter rolling out the dough then cranking it through a machine that sliced it into the long skinny noodles homemade for her soup. I was very impressed that nobody yelled at her over the mess she was making. This let me know she was the boss. She’d drop these into her pot of homemade beef broth, onions, potatoes, carrots always sliced the long way, but more than anything it was those homemade egg noodles, they were what made grandma’s soup the best. Of course this didn’t stop my grandfather from dumping a half bottle of ketchup into his bowl, but the rest of us knew better.

I remember staying over at grandma’s house. Sleeping in the guest room with the bumpy crocheted bedspread, streetlight shining through the window level with the foot of the bed and Collinwood yard train sounds coming in the other one.

I broke all the thermometers in her house. One time when I was staying over, I was probably around ten or eleven years old, I gathered then all up. My grandparents had quite a few thermometers too, between the one hanging outside the kitchen window and the ones grandma used for cooking and the couple I got from the medicine cabinet. I took them all and put them in the freezer then I took them and set them on the grill of the hot air vent then back into the freezer and heated again until they were all rendered useless. So my parents come to pick me up and see this pile of thermometers sitting on the counter. My Grandmother tells them what happened, and then she took my side. He was just doing an experiment, she said. He’s a scientist.

Every one of us grandkids and great-grandkids could tell a half dozen stories like this. Grandma always took your side. No matter what you did, the way you cut or colored your hair, the good and bad choices we made in life or our friends – she may not have approved of some of our decisions, but she never turned her back on us. Anna Salinger was as stubborn woman and we benefited because of this. We were always welcome at her table.

I know I speak for everyone who knew her when I say, “We’re all going to miss Grandma’s cooking.”

Anna Frances Salinger
Feb 18, 1920 - Sept 14, 2008