Tour de Muskoka - now underway

The second annual Tour de Muskoka (TdM) is today!  These guys are crazy!  There will be at least 260km of riding today with the option to bump it up to a triple century ride if the legs and weather cooperate – a possible 300km?!  Yup, they’re crazy.

“…is he a superman or a fool?"                                                 Thank goodness for chamois cream!!!!

“They said this tour was too short. They said this tour was too easy.  …They were wrong!”

L to R: Mark, Dave, Paul , (Martin will join them along the route)

The array of now-infamous LIggett-isms and Sherwan-isms from cycling coverage over the years will find their way into TdM history as well.  Stories will be told for years to come to children, to grandchildren, to great-grandchildren, or to any captive audience willing to listen. 

Ahhhh, the glory days, when “dancing on the pedals in the most immodest way” was seen as, well…not really immodest at all.

Here, in the early morning hours, the riders are “circling like caged lions waiting to get into the start house.”

And they’re off.  Tour de Muskoka is underway.

“It’s a great day for a bike race!”

"The race has no respect for reputation, you’re only as good as now.”

Weather, so far, is perfect…but then again that’s how it all started  last year as well.  It wasn’t until later in the day that the clouds moved in and the rain began. 

"Bridge to engine room - we need more power. There is no more"

Should the weather take a turn for the worse, and they find themselves in a “wee spot of bother”, they’ll have to “reach into their suitcase of courage”. But, for now…go get ‘em! 

Just checked a few weather updates in some towns along the route and right now, winds are light from the south for the most part, so it should make for good riding conditions for the first leg at least.  Hope the boys enjoy “a nice slice of tailwind” where they can “tap, tap, tap out a rhythm" and ride “on all cylinders today”.

“I think you bring out something special in a rider when you throw in a few cobble stones!".  Alas, no cobblestones on the TdM route today, and there is “no reason to rush into hell”, but guaranteed at some point, each of these riders will be “pumping those two pistons they call legs” and “riding to a high level of superb-ness”.

"The history of the…” Tour de Muskoka  “…was chiselled into these walls of rock by men willing to ask more of themselves knowing that this time, for some, the answers from their bodies would be...no more".

But for these four riders, “the heads of state have come to the fore”.  May they ride today “like the halcyon days of Eddy Merckx!”

Note: all quotations above have been attributed to either Phil Liggett or Paul Sherwan  (Google ’Liggettisms’ for these and other now-infamous quotations)