Four Things on a Friday: A Personal Round-Up

I want you guys to appreciate how busy I got this week. It's college football Week 0, both AFF podcasts ran over an hour this week, and I'm looking for a cover artist for The Return of Dr. Necropolis. And let me just note that as much as I love that title, "The Return of Dr. Necropolis" is long and a bit cumbersome for an actual book cover.

Sigh.

If you missed it, we had a truly outstanding AFF Army Football Show this week. Shannon Horne's husband Paul Horne joined us for an in-depth dive into Army's O-Line. I can pretty much guarantee that you've never heard anything like this before. 

It got surprisingly mathematical. Paul went straight for my engineer's heart.

Anyway. I am trying to write here a little more often, so here goes.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving has become one of my favorite days of the year.  There aren't any presents to worry about, lots of football is on TV, and we have abundant friends to keep us in good cheer.  It's great!  This year, we're headed over to our friends Bruce and Tammy's house.  I don't even have to grill the turkey because Bruce is doing it.

I'm getting over!

Update: Tour of California Stages 6 & 7

I hadn't been paying that much attention to the Tour of California this year--up until yesterday.  The first four stages were--amazingly--won by the same man, Peter Sagan.  And, yeah, that's amazing and all, but the ToC is the biggest cycling race of the year in America, and Sagan is not an American, so bottom line, I just wasn't as interested as I could have been.

But then Sagan booted the Stage 5 individual time trial, allowing Americans Dave Zabriskie of Garmin-Barracuda and Teejay van Gardaren of BMC to get into first and second place overall, and suddenly the race got a lot more interesting.  Zabriskie is a talented all-arounder who's twice finished second in the ToC while van Gardaren, a climber, is probably the best young American cyclist of his generation.  Moreover, with significant climbing in both stages 6 and 7, yesterday's stage 6 promised to fireworks.

Here, see for yourself:

So yesterday the break almost got away, and Frenchman Sylvain Georges did manage to stay away, winning the stage with a huge solo effort.  More importantly, Zabriskie and van Gardaren are still less than a minute apart with several others also in that range, and today's high-mountains stage at Mt Baldy setting up as the final Battle Royal of the tour.

Honestly, as a cycling fan what more can you ask?

Looks pretty exciting, no?

Man, I totally forgot to post yesterday.

And today's looking to be a busy day as well.

*sigh*

Here. Least I can do is throw you a little Van Halen.