Despite the best efforts of the French rail system to deter me (with a 6 hour train ride that was supposed to have lasted less than 3 hours), I have posted my first impressions along with some photos and a brief movie from the final stage of the Tour de France today, at my weblog, Random Fate.
I hope to post more impressions of the race and the day surrounding it later, after I get some sleep, because it’s almost 3:00AM here!
(TMV NOTES: This post is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED so click on that link!)
UPDATE: The AP notes that Armstrong is am athlete who ends his career with a kind of storybook ending:
It was the end of Armstrong’s amazing career, and in retiring a winner he achieved a rare feat in sports — going out on top. He said his decision was final and that he walks away with no regrets.
“I’m finished,” Armstrong told a motorcycle-borne TV reporter as he rode a victory lap of the Champs-Elysees, waving to the crowds and accompanied by another rider waving the Stars and Stripes.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.