"Marco Had Not Future Tense"

"Looking back, there was always a fatalism in Marco's riding.  He won or lost through foolish, inspired deeds with little sense of strategic calculation.  The tangible holding-at-bay of the night in those unforgettable late-afternoon victories at Montecampione and Les Deux Alpes was always there.  For others, stage-racing has always meant weighing up the potential of stages to come, and riding accordingly - riding, it might be said, in the future tense.  Marco had no future tense.  His sytle, in life, like his cocaine use and death, was lyrical, not narrative - a losing himself in time - and, in time (or outside it), the forces that had allowed him to live, consumed him as they comsume us all."  -  Matt Rendell, The Death of Marco Pantani

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2FQqHF8x5I

Jan Ullrich, sit your bad-luck, no-teammates, no-talent ass down. 

February 19th, 2012.  Will our mightyfine winter of 2012 top the Pantani-Day weather of 2011? 

Who is in top winter form this year and willing to be subject to the now-annual, mostly-fabricated, pre-race interview?

What am I even talking about? 

"This is me looking at you, looking at me, wishing you were fly like that."

Stay tuned. 

And, by tuned, I mean, loosely in touch but locked and loaded for Feb 19.  

Up, up, up.