intersections

My two favorite things about the 4th of July weekend...

...are British and French. I'm sure that will get me in trouble with some people. But it's true. The best things about the 4th of July weekend are the Wimbledon Finals and the start of the Tour de France.

Wimbledon features two classic finals match ups. The women's finals have the two Williams sisters facing off (with the obligatory drama that always surrounds that). On the men's side Rafael Nadal will face Roger Federer in what has become an annual event. I watched little of the Williamses semi-final matches yeterday and most of the Nadal/Rainer Schuettler semi-final this morning. Nadal v Schuettler was almost too painful to watch. Can it really be this easy? I am very eager to watch both finals matches.

The Tour de France starts tomorrow and I have never seen such little coverage of this event in a decade. That's how long it's been since Lance Armstrong began his 7-in-a-row win streak at the Tour. Due to a ridiculous amount of doping scandals, this year's Tour seems a little ho-hum. Most of the big names I've followed for 10 years are either retired our out for doping violations. I'm still smarting from the Floyd Landis debacle in 2006. Just this week Floyd lost his last appeal and is officially stripped of his 2006 victory. But I'll be watching anyway. Someone will emerge as the new king of the greatest sporting event in the world!

Have a safe and happy holiday, everyone!

And the Tour de France falls to pieces...

Well, the Dane is out! That's right...the news just came over the wire (and to my BlackBerry, courtesy of my friend, Jeff Gang). Michael Rasmussen is out of the Tour on a rules violation related to drug/blood doping testing. It appears he missed the last several appointments to have his blood tested. Also, Christian Moreni tested positive for testosterone and he and his entire team, Cofidis, is out of the Tour. The word is that Rasmussen's Rabobank team might also withdraw entirely from the race, so...possibly three entire teams out in two days.

I guess the silver lining for Contador is that he is now the race leader and will start tomorrow in yellow, but this is a terrible way to win a race. This whole thing has become such a disgrace, the sponsors don't want to be associated with it anymore. Now T-Mobile is saying they might end their sponsorship early.

Stay tuned for more drama.

Epic Battle and Embarrasing Defeat

My boy, Levi Leipheimer, came in second in today's unbelievably difficult stage 16 of the Tour de France. What an battle between the yellow jersey of Michael Rasmussen and the Discovery Team riders, Alberto Contador and Leipheimer. I'm so used to watching Lance Armstrong that I was just waiting for Contador to dart up the hill in the final 3 miles to steal the yellow jersey. But it wasn't to be. Rasmussen rode an amazing stage to not only keep the yellow jersey, but win the stage and put more time between himself and his rivals. Kudos to the Danes, several of whom play in our church's worship band. Way to go!

Leipheimer is having his best tour ever and it's good to see him finally getting some attention.

In other news, Alexander Vinokourov is a bonehead. I'll just leave it at that!

David Beckham takes the field for the Galaxy

Elysabeth and I were able to enjoy something totally unexpected last night - David Beckham's premier performance for the LA Galaxy. My cousin, Brenda, called me a few days ago and said she and her fiance, Christian, had a couple extra tickets for the game against Chelsea and did we want to go? Of course I wanted to go. What surprised me more than anything was how eager my wife was to go. During the game she called it her new favorite sport. I think we'll be attending more Galaxy games.

We got the timing of the game wrong, so we arrived at halftime, but all the fun stuff happened in the second half. Chelsea scored the one goal just a few minutes into the second half and David Beckham took the field with about 10 minutes to go.

The crowd erupted in shouts and applause every time he moved, literally. He stood up - applause! He took off his warm up jacket - applause! He jogged a little and stretched - more applause! It was the funniest thing. Most Angelenos know that Beckham re-aggrivated his hurt left ankle, so no one was sure if he would play at all. The fans were thrilled just to get a good look at his pretty face. He mostly hung around the back of the action, though he did get a few touches and one corner kick.

Christian played soccer for CalState Northridge, so he is a good soccer player and knows the game inside and out. It was amazing to watch Chelsea pick apart the Galaxy defense. They are an amazing, amazing team. Lots of Chelsea fans in the audience.

One more photo after the jump...

LA River Ride photo

This is the free photo we were promised from the LA River Ride. I wrote about the River Ride here, but only had a small thumbnail photo. So, here's my Dad and me about 5-7 miles into a 70 mile ride. It was a beautiful day.

Father's Day Fun!

This was the best Father's Day I can remember! It was a wonderful combination of spending time with my kids and my dad. The morning was one of those wonderful, slow and sleepy mornings with coffee and the newspaper.

In the middle of the day I went to the Dodger game with my dad, Beverley and her son, Steven. We got great seats from Steven's trust fund manager and it was a beautiful day at the ball park. I've never had a really good camera and great seats in one game, so I spent a good part of the day taking pictures of the action. The picture above is the one great play the Dodger's made. It's the homerun hit by Rafael Furcal's in the 1st inning. It just happened to catch this shot (it's not like I photographed every pitch). I thought it was pretty cool. Click here to view a short slide show of some of my better photos from the game.

Later that evening we walked a couple of blocks to Lousie's Tratorria for dinner with the family. All it all it was an amazing day

What did you other fathers out there do for your Father's Day?

LA River Ride - 70 miles is a long ride!

On Sunday, my dad and I completed the 7th Annual LA River Ride. This ride is put on every year by the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition (check out their website). LACBC is a county-wide organization working for safer streets and better access for cyclists.

This ride essentially follows the LA River all the way from Griffith Park to Long Beach (and back). There are large portions of the river where the trail is not completed so we ride the streets through downtown. You can do a 50-mile version which involves taking the Metro from Long Beach back to Union Station in downtown LA and then riding from downtown back to Griffith Park.

This year my dad and I decided to ride the whole 70 miles. It's the longest distance I've done since my one and only century ride back in 2005. It was hard in some spots but we made it in good shape and had a great time. The weather was good and there were a record number of cyclists. Even if you're not an avid cyclist you should consider doing this ride. It's not as hard as you might think. There are children on BMX bikes and all sorts of different cyclists out there.

We are entitled to one free photo from PhotoCrazy.com, but they haven't released the coupon codes yet, so in the meantime I'm posting this small thumbnail. I'll update this with the full sized photo when I get it.

Conquering Mt. Whitney

On Sunday and Monday I climbed Mt. Whitney for the first time. What an amazing experience. Pictured here at the top of Mt. Whitney, from left to right, is Robbie Wertz (my step brother), my brother Rob, my dad, Rick and myself.

We did the trip in two days. The first day we hiked from Whitney Portal to Trail Camp (6.3 miles and nearly 4,000 feet up). We camped at Trail Camp (12,600 ft elevation). That night the temperature dropped to at least 20 degrees or colder. Our tents were not quite up to the challenge and we froze our butts off. Not too much sleep that night. The next day we hiked the remaining 4.7 miles (and almost 2,000 ft) to the summit, descended back to Trail Camp, packed up and descended the rest of the way to Whitney Portal. That was a very long day and the final hour of the hike was done in the dark.

It was an incredibly rewarding experience for all of us. My dad is 62 years old and wasn't sure he was up to the challenge but he did remarkable. Really inspiring! The picture below is the view from our campsite as the sun was rising on Monday morning. Mt. Whitney itself is actually not visible in this picture. It's further to the right. There are hundreds more pictures which you can see by clicking here.

Believe it or not, there are many people who do the trip in a single day. We met dozens of people who started from Whitney Portal at 3:30 or 4:00 am and went the entire day. We also met a couple of different groups who were just finishing the entire John Muir Trail, which starts in Yosemite Valley and ends at Mt. Whitney - approx. 210 miles in all.

I hope to do this trip again in the future and take some friends along. Anyone want to go???

Let's Go, Dodgers!

On Thursday, my dad and I went to the Dodger game. The cool thing is that I could almost walk to the stadium from my house. In fact, on my Sunday morning bike rides I start out by riding up to the stadium. It's less than 5 miles, if I remember correctly.

Anyway, it was a great game except for one thing...they LOST. Which, at any other time might not be that remarkable, but on that night the Dodgers had an 11 game win streak going. As of last night, they have won 13 out of 14, which means my dad and I caught the only losing game in two weeks.

What's even more remarkable is that just before starting this winning streak they were on a record setting losing streak, losing 13 out of 14. So, here in L.A. we like the winning trend better. Let's go, Dodgers!!

Tour of California

Today, Sophie and I went to Redondo Beach to watch the final stage of the Tour of California. This final stage was a circuit race (10 laps of 7.65 miles). It was a really great thing. I've never see a professional bike race live. There's really nothing like it! Check out the photo albums on the left column for more pictures of the day! Click here to see a short video of the start.