Giro Stage 19 Preview: Avellino - Vesuvio

… it does not extend to custom development of particle fountains in Google Earth. However, I’m sure that given enough time, Gavia, her crayons and I could probably come up with something.

Somehow, I had a feeling you’d appreciate the Holst :)

That means Traguardo Volante – intermediate sprint.

“Ercolano” is Italian for “Herculaneum”. I wanted to do a zoom in on the ruins there, but the satellite hasn’t taken hi-res imagery of that location.

to do so.

Of course an espresso along the way is mandatory.

mushroom cloud graphic?

after having read the CycleSport piece where Robbie McEwen describes his greatest victories. The tale of Stage 13 in 2005 when the Davitamon riders collectively decide to overcome fatigue and pull back the break to give McEwen a shot at winning is so cool it almost makes you a *lotto fan for life.

While watching it I thought the stage had to be 600 km or something.

pretty much yesterday in geological time. or, even this morning.

Ok… deep breath Dan… deep breath.

That, dear Chris, is “Mars the Bringer of War” from Gustav Holst’s suite “The Planets” Op. 32 composed between 1914 and 1916. That piece of music has been ripped off or used directly for everything from “Gladiator” (listen to the music used for that opening battle against the Germanic tribes) to “The Right Stuff” (the launch of Glenn’s Atlas rocket) to every piece of hack crap that John Williams has cobbled together that wasn’t ripped off from Stravinsky’s “The Rites of Spring”. The “Jupiter, Bringer of Jollity” movement has been most recently used by Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup advertisements.

It is one of those seminal pieces of music that modern composers just steal from shamelessly over and over and over again. While Holst was dissappointed that this one suite overshadowed the rest of his body of work, I can only hope that, at some point in my life, I will perform some act that is even worth sitting in the shadows of this piece.

So… there. You are now appropriately chastened. Buy this now, and listen to track one while starting to reach a struggling point during your next workout.

Hail PdC, bringer of enlightenment. If I ever get to name a star it will be called PdC.

compile Danilo Tifoso’s stage predictions? I am sensing a pattern here… :)

Di Luca has to have a weak today.. Tomorrow is the perfect stage to do that

… which is usually the Autostrada which the Giro doesn’t ride on. Try this, in Google search for “Milan, Italy”, then create a place mark there… then search for “Genoa, Italy” and create a place mark there. Then right click on Milan and select “Directions from here” and right click on Genoa and select “Directions to here” and it should create a driving route for you.

For simulating race routes like this, I usually have to wind up dropping a bajillion little waypoints in the podunk towns along the way to force the mapping engine to take the side roads. then you map from point a to a1 then a1 to a2, then a2 to a3 then a3 to b.

Another little trick is that when it creates the route, it generates all the little “turn here, pause here, turn here” placemarkers in the routing. If you scroll through all of those, down at the bottom, is the actual purple line it creates, which is what I drag and drop into the stage I’m mapping and just delete all that other crap.

or reality check.

LL in VN says he’s just hanging on at this point. Basically says he’s fried. Could be sandbagging, but sounds about right.

I don’t think we were watching the same Armstrong at Blockhaus. The one I saw TRIED to bridge to Jen Grey and didn’t make it. And then he got shelled by the heads-of-state group. He’s just not as fast. Part of that has to do with trying to recover from his first broken collar-bone (the old Armstrong would have been out of the saddle a lot more). There are lots of other reasons besides that for his being slower.

Whatever they are, I just don’t see him getting away solo (not without wads of Kash-is-king having been paid out beforehand) tomorrow.

This doesn’t look like a very strategic stage. Only one major climb, up a pretty steady (leg-breaking) grade. LIQ are the only team with multiple podium contenders. They could try something with Basso and see if it causes havoc. But I’ll guess that we will see nothing but cautious marking, followed by a mass-start time trial up the Vesuvio. Strongest guy wins. No idea who that’ll be, but given my cursing ability I’ll call it Menchov. To make it interesting.

I am so out of here before Dan gets back and reads this…

… hence using a piece of music written for the astrological symbol associated with a Roman God. I also thought of using maybe something from Ben Hur, like the “Toil of the Galley Slaves” or “Parade of the Charioteers”, but I heard Mars in my head the first time I read the course description and I thought Parade of the Charioteers more appropriate for a fly over of the Rome stage (it being written for the Circus Maximus after all).

Then there was the thought of using anything written by Respighi, but, again, Mars was in my head.

41 minutes left