After yesterday’s stage that saw Sylvain Chavanel totally do it with France, today’s stage will be the first hair pull in the cat fight for the yellow jersey. Yesterday’s stage was hilly, but not overly mountainous; today’s stage has two first category climbs with an uphill finish and it comes before tomorrow’s rest day, so that means that racers can go for broke as they will be spending all day tomorrow playing with Legos—at least that’s how Andy Schleck spends his rest days.

Today could see Contador being aggressive with Andy Schelck and Cadel Evans defending their gains earned on the cobbles. Lance will be wishing that he has some 1999 blood running through his system.

Today is my daughter’s fifth birthday, so any Tour viewing will be wedged in between trips to the pool and candle extinguishing. I will start with the TV coverage on my Tivo, a device I would gladly choose to be buried with.

I tune in and start my fast forwarding right away, I pause for the stage profile graphics and find out the stage distance is equal to the length of Long Island, instinctively I tear off my sleeves and ask my seven year old what she’s lookin’ at?

Live race

After a hiatus that included a lawn mowing, a gutter cleaning, a trip to the pool and several viewings of leaps from the raft into the water, I open up the VS Tour Tracker and scroll to the 128k to go point, and shockingly, there’s a break away—I wonder if there’s any French guys in there? Wow, there’s three French guys there? Incroyable!

Since it’s after eight tonight’s stage with be brought to you with the aid of both vodka and tonic. Vodka compels me to skip ahead to the 26k to go mark and also tells me that my pants are way too confining.

51k to go, we’re about to hit the hills, and it looks like Lance is caught in a crash. He hits his LifeCall™ and the Shacks fall back to bring him back up to the race.

48k to go, I wonder if anyone will try to push the pace and drop Lance, somewhere Alex Zulle is giggling.

47k to go, Shack is drafting the Garmin car, JV hits the brakes hard and laughs.

The chalkbot has been out on the road on this climb, luckily someone wrote a message on the road reminding Lance to take his heart pills.

Cadel’s at the front of the pack on the climb, behaving like someone who is not Cadel Evans.

46k to go, Cav is following Thor SMASH on the climb, both pedaling their bikes as if they were made of quicksand.

Koos Moerenhout has attacked the breakaway, delaying the inevitable.

Amaël Moinard and Mario Aerts are trying to catch Moerenhout. 

44k to go, Sky goes to the front to remind Wiggo that he is supposed to be a GC contender.

43k to go, Tony Martin has popped like an off brand "Lora the Explora" novelty balloon. He lost a lot of time yesterday, I’m guessing that he’s got the runs. Just a feeling.

I feel compelled to mention here that Koos’ name is "Koos", pretty sure that name probably has its own Urban Dictionary entry—let’s check. Yup, it does—and it’s what you’d expect that it would be.

42k to go, Sky still pushing it at the front. Koos (hee hee) and Aerts off the front at 3:23.

41k to go, Chav is hanging in there, I wouldn’t expect him to lose too much time today, he could hold onto Lady Yellow for another day.

40k to go. It seems like Sky is trying to shake the tree here on this hill, Wiggo has one teammate left, Alberto reminds himself to get some watches for Wiggo and his teammates.

39k to go. Voeckler dropped, France unfriends him.

Saxo Bank goes to the front, taking over the race for Alberto’s giveaways.

39k to go, Chavanel is getting dropped, France turns off her cellphone.

Brajkovic is getting dropped, but so is Lance. Lance radios to the Hog and asks him to play "No Scrubs" by TLC, for old time’s sake.

38k to go, Astana goes to the front, spooning up with cancer.

Vino is getting dropped, eliminating a rival for Contador

Kloden hanging with the front group, about to get his ass fired.

36k to go, Levi is hanging with Astana at the front, developing melanoma. 

Cadel hanging with Berto, showing some skin through his shorts.

35.8k to go, there’s a wild boar running along the road! Dammit why isn’t Toto here?! You know he’d jump right after that pig.

35k to go, Vino pulls back up to the front and delivers a bottle to the Astana guys. Vino is delivering bottles!

The break is almost to the summit, that means descent time! Can we get a Fab cam here? There should be a rule that every descent should have a moto following Fabian.

31k to go, Horner and Brajkovic are pacing Lance to 25th place.

Ryder is still with the GC group, by the way. 

Barredo is pacing Chav over the hill.

28k to go, in year’s past, I could’ve made an easy joke about Cadel falling off the hill on the descent, but the world of Cadel has gone crazy, he may just attack on the decent.

28k to go, Andy Schleck goes back to the team car to tell Bjarne about the  episode of "Phineas and Ferb" he saw last night.

26k to go, Astana at the front of the race, looking um, weak?

25k to go, Vino off the front of the group? I’m sure he means to put the other teams under pressure for Berto, yeah, that’s a totally selfless move. You can trust Vino.

There’s still a break of three off the front, not that it matters.

22k to go. Has Vino dropped back? Has Vino been tamed?

21k to go, Levi still with the GC group ahead of Lance.

20k to go, Lance looks like he’s on an MS 150 ride now, Phil mentions that’s Lance has had some bad luck—neglects to mention that he’s just full of slow.

19k to go, Astana at the front—looking weak enough to dominate this stage.

17k to go. An Euskatel guy goes down getting a feed and holds up Lance, how will he be able to get Levi’s bottles to him?

The break has 1:38, as they get to the bottom of the climb. Astana at the front of the race, with Vino playing nice, it doesn’t look like they have much "left to learn".

Lance is about 4 minutes down now, Janez is staying close, going down with the Shack ship.

Everyone else’s GC guys are in the Berto group. It looks like we’ll see Cadel in yellow today if he can hang with any Berto attacks.

10k to go, Astana is killing it at the front, Chavanel is getting erased from France’s speed dial.

Basso is still in the GC group also

8.6k to go, Aerts drops Koos. I’m pretty sure that sentence is dirty in another language.

8k to go, Joaquím Rodríguez jumps the front group, prompting an "eh" from the GC guys. He could win the stage, and many people will be hard pressed to remember it.

7.7k to go, Vino has been dropped—or has he?

7.3k to go. Only one Astana left in front of Berto, with everyone else taking numbers to line up on Berto’s backside. 

Andy Schleck looks comfortable, he tells Basso that he has the village of Morzine in Playmobil figures at home.

Ryder dropping off the pace, oy!

6.5k to go, Nicolas Roche is getting dropped

6k to go, Navarro doing a great job for Astana today. I predict some colon cancer in his future.

5.7k to go. There’s a shot of Lance, the moto guy has to do a track stand to go slow enough to film him. He’s hanging with Moreau!

4.7 k to go, did Phil just say they were climbing Alpe d’Huez?

4.2k to go, so basically Berto’s team is pulling to get Cadel in yellow? Is there any way BMC could hope to control the race?

3.5k to go. Navarro’s pace is knocking Wiggo off the back, Wiggo explodes like a Kiss roadie’s suitcase.

2.8k to go, Navarro is killing it. There could be a mini GC bunch sprint at this finish? How funny would that be? When was the last time Menchov sprinted?

Lance is surrounded by Moreau and Voeckler! He’s racing with Frenchmen!

I can see Cadel winning this stage today. No gifts, Cuddles!

2k to go, Kreuziger jumps but surprises no one.

This is like a 15 mph field sprint.

Gesink jumps, but gets covered. Rogers is getting gapped, has it been 10 days already?

1k to go. Andy Schleck goes, Berto looks to Sanchez for help but can’t get across, the move drops Cadel.

Berto is sitting in the wheels, and doesn’t seem to be able to jump to Schleck.

Sanchez and Schleck head to the line together, Andy sits on Sanchez and comes around to win! Somebody’s going to go on a Gogurt bender tonight!

Cadel will get yellow. Forcing podium girls to stoop for kissing.

Wiggo’s dropped a minute forty.

Lance finishes on Monday morning. Levi prepares his musette order for Tuesday.