Mountains - Personal and Cycling

Yesterday, my first official "day off" in two weeks, started out great, but came to a crisis point quickly. I awakened, went on-line and dealt with my emails and my blog, and headed to breakfast and a meeting with my Physical Therapist. After adding new exercises to my regime and asking him questions, I got things ready to go for my staff at the shop, then headed back home. Seated at my computer desk, I reached over and depressed the ON button for my computer. No response. The button depressed, but there was no corresponding action. Having gone through a similar event with DH's computer in the past, I phoned my computer Guru - Dale. 

My computer guru came through for me again. I'm so happy
I met him years and years ago because he's become a
good friend and he's fun to talk to while he fixes
my equipment. 

Making a long story short, noon found me in my car, computer in the back, taking it over to Dale's place. Fortunately it turned into a relatively minor fix, and although we don't trust the switch (he's ordered some new ones and we can do a full replace later on), we switched the pins for the ON and the RESTART buttons. Now my computer turns on by depressing the restart, and the new restart is the old start. I taped over the wrong button - don't want to do a hard restart if not necessary. Crisis averted, and Dale didn't even charge me. What a sweetie. 

Today is our first day in the Alps, and we have two Cat 1
and two HR peaks to climb today. It's a killer stage and
I can't wait! Whoot!!

So - mountains! Although yesterday's stage was "flat", there was a really tough Cat 3 climb near the end and of the four riders abandoning the race yesterday, two were out because they took too much time to arrive at the finish line. Tony Martin (Jumbo-Visma) and Luke Rowe (Team Ineos) were dropped because of time, Luis Leon Sanchez (Astana Pro Team) and Cees Bol (Team Sunweb) did not start. The winner of the stage was Trentin Matteo (Mitchelton-Scott) in a hard-fought battle. 

Here's a detailed profile of Col d'Izoard, the first of the
two HR category mountains on today's ride. Yikes!!!

The jerseys remain the same, however. Julian Alaphillipe in still in Yellow - quite the long span for this talented rider. Peter Sagan is still in Green, and look to have the jersey locked up with some really smart riding racking up the points. Tim Wellens is in the polka dot, although that may very well change over the next three days in the Alps, and Egan Bernal is still rating as the "Best Young Rider" and holding on beautifully. 

The Col d'Izoard is a forbidding place but actually features a
small cycling museum at the summit in honor of the many times
Le Tour de France has crossed or finished on this peak. 

So today, as we climb from Embrun to Valloire, climbing peak after peak for 208 km of riding, I suspect many of the standings will change dramatically. It's three days of hell followed by the road into Paris, so if the riders can hang on, they will ride down the Champ. Good luck to all, and I'll be back tomorrow. I'm so happy ... MOUNTAINS!!! Really BIG mountains - LOLOL.