The Tour is a week old and is probably going to get really boring from a GC standpoint, but hear me out. Most Tours aren’t that close. I could do some research here but all I have to do is try and remember the close ones, and you can count them on one hand. Close Tours are the exception, not the rule, so, you’re probably saying to yourself, why are you typing about the race? Because every day at the Tour can be special. A rider like Simon Clarke, who didn’t have a team at the start of this season, can get away in a group and win a stage; Magnus Cort can somehow find enough hills in Denmark to get the polka dot jersey; Taco can get away and Taco—there’s a lot of possibilities. Watching the Tour is a slow burn sometimes, which I’m told is like watching baseball, whatever that is.

And not to jinx anyone, but there’s alway the possibility for mayhem, one spectator makes a sign for Opi and Omi and the whole race can change, one detour into a ditch or a flat tire at a really bad time and the race can change complexion entirely. Should we be watching the race like ghouls hoping for misfortune? No. Can Ghoulish things happen? Absolutely. Just ask Jose Beloki. That being said, Pogo almost certainly has this Tour wrapped up. Not only did he not have any issues on stage 5, he practically pranced away from the other contenders, which makes me think he could do well at the real Roubaix, and since he’s Pogo, he might just race Roubaix. Which bring me to…

These young guys are different—or ARE they?

Wout REALLY wanted to get away on stage 6. If you were watching from the beginning (we in the US finally get to watch whole stages, you young people have no idea how lucky you are), you saw Wout either starting or smothering all manners of breaks until he got away with some dude from Trek. If this were 2002, we’d all be talking about how silly this move was, about how he was wasting energy. How he should be sitting in the pack, defending the yellow jersey. But this new generation of riders is different, they SEND IT. They aren’t waiting for the mountains to come, they aren’t playing the cautious game of chess from years past. They go for it. And it’s fantastic. Wout races like he’s trying to fill out a Tour Jersey bingo card. And in year’s past, these performances would lead to talk about whether he should focus on one day winning the Tour, and to that I say, “Stop it! Leave the guy alone. He wins throughout the year. He wins in winter. Let him do what he wants to do.”

And this makes me think back to the days of old, when we heard tales of racers winning all year round. Merckx dominating throughout the year; Hinault winning the sprint on the Champs-Élesées; Coppi attacking 200K from the line, and looking hella cool in his sun goggles. Maybe these new racers are more like the old racers. Will all this panache make a difference? Probably not, Pogo is a force of nature, but that doesn’t mean that we as viewers can’t get distracted by the nonsense. We can count Cort’s kilometer total on the front of the race; we can aero-analyze Pogo’s Tufts; we can consider whether Bettiol is auditioning for UEA; we can wonder whether we like the special edition kits (um, not so much). The Tour is a big, weird parade. So join in. Select a favorite French rider and watch as they thrill and disappoint (I’d suggest gettin on the Pinot-coaster, what a ride!). Look for pissy hand gestures in the breakaways. Evaluate roadside tableaux.

Start looking for tractors on the side of the road, trust me, once you seeing them you can never stop. And tractor Twitter is a wonderful place.