Caliban - Opinion and Righteous Anger

Lisa Gerrard is coming back to Europe in the autumn. After the Den Haag (The Hague) concert in April, I thought that would be my lot for this year, so the news comes as a real treat.

The only Dutch gig scheduled this time is Rotterdam and this constitutes the first night of the tour. A couple of weeks later, she'll be performing in Antwerp, which presented itself as a fine opportunity to make an overnight trip over the border to Flanders. We can go to the zoo in the afternoon and enjoy the charming cafés in the historic centre. Who knows, maybe we'll even add an extra day and go to Brussels or something.

Did you know you can reboot and reinstall a car? That's what happened to ours today, when I took our trusty A6 Avant down to the Audi dealer to have its MMI (user interface to you and me) updated.

The car emerged two hours and a few CD downloads later, sporting version C6-HU 34.6.0 0647 of the MMI software (hitherto C6-HU 21.2.0 0534, in case you wondered). As if by magic, the car now also speaks Dutch (and a few other new languages, such as Portuguese and Russian) when instructing me how to get from A to B.

The navigation system now offers a 3D view, with the camera angle slightly tilted to give the impression of being somewhat elevated above the ground. Perhaps the software update has added other useful new features, but I didn't encounter them on the short drive home.

The new 3D view is nice, because the viewing angle compacts the field of view, which means one can see more of the surrounding area than when in 2D, even when the zoom is set identically, say at 400m.

It also works well with 'junction zoom', whereby the system zooms in ever closer as one approaches a junction at which a new manoeuvre is required, such as turning left or right.

The only thing I don't like about the 3D view is that most streets don't have their name displayed along them, which is the case at the same zoom level in the 2D view. It also seems impossible to obtain north orientation for the map (even though you can configure it for same), probably to avoid confusion or perhaps impractically sharp viewing angles when travelling east or west. Who knows?

Since Audi had a special offer going, I took the opportunity to avail myself of the latest Western Europe DVD for the sat-nav system, too, so perhaps the woman with the dulcet tones will now be less determined to send me via the perpetually languid Overtoom when I ask for directions to pretty much any destination inside the ring (A10).

Poland and Hungary have been added to the list of countries for which there are maps and guidance data, which could prove handy. Hungary would have been good to have a year ago, but at least we're now covered if we choose to return.

It's strange to witness a car being rebooted and reprogrammed, as I tend to still think of them as predominantly mechanical machines, but they've really been powerful computers on wheels for quite a long time now. Nevertheless, it still amuses me to think that a car can be improved and have features added by installing a new version of the software.

Similarly, it can have new bugs introduced in the same way, so I hope not too many of those have crept in.

A week ago on Sunday, we seized a dry, sunny moment and drove over to the neighbourhood of Oud Osdorp, a lovely area of rural tranquility on the outskirts of Amsterdam and not at all representative of what comes to mind when one hears the name Osdorp these days.

The reason was the organic farm De Boterbloem, where Eloïse got to pick her own delicious strawberries from the vegetable garden. While we were there, we were also able to pick some flowers to brighten up the home.

It was lovely to be able to offer Eloïse the opportunity to pick her own fruit, thereby giving her her first indication of where the stuff actually comes from. It doesn't just magically appear in the supermarket and it's good for her to understand that a lot of time and effort goes into the stages of planting, cultivating and harvesting before she can pop a strawberry into her mouth.

And how pleasant that all of the produce is organically grown. The farm has a calming atmosphere about it, with a nice wooden barn in which the shop is situated. It reminded me a bit of the dog sleigh farm in Maine that we visited last autumn.

This has to be shaping up to be one of the wettest Dutch summers on record. It seems to rain every single day and not just a little bit, either. It regularly comes down like a monsoon and is frequently accompanied by thunder and lightning.

The quantities of precipitation have been such that we've had some water in our cellar on a couple of occasions now; nothing too bad, but any water seeping into your home is unwelcome water. Still, this is Amsterdam and there's not much you can do. Life here is a constant battle against water, as it is in most of the country.

Anyway, Sunday just gone offered a rare period of sunny skies in between predictions of doom and gloom on either side. Normally, we'd avoid any popular weekend destination in favour of a midweek getaway, but one can't make any assumptions about the weather at the moment, so we took the car up to Enkhuizen yesterday to visit Sprookjeswonderland.

Sprookjeswonderland is a children's park with fairy-tales forming the underlying theme of the various attractions. Children can enjoy everything from boat and train rides to mechanised fairy-tale figures twitching to piped music. Some of it was a lot of fun; other bits are a bit naff and showing their age. That didn't stop the crowds from descending in droves, however.

In general, it was a great day out, because Eloïse loved virtually every minute of it. In fact, we had a hard time getting her out of there at 17:00, when the park was closing. She'd run around so much that we felt certain she would fall asleep in the car on the way home, but she amazed us by remaining alert not just for the ride home, but also well into the evening once we got inside.

I hope we can do a couple more day trips over the coming days, but the weather forecast is looking pretty dire again.

With no summer holiday planned for this year, we're continuing to make the most of the lacklustre Dutch summer by making the occasional day-trip. The weather for Saturday was forecast to be good, so we all piled into the car and drove north, crossing the Afsluitdijk to the Frisian capital of Leeuwarden (or Ljouwert, as it's known in Frisian).

Our destination was Aqua Zoo Friesland, a place that I recall visiting about ten years ago, when I'm pretty sure it was just an otter park. These days, however, it's evidently a significantly expanded affair, with beavers, seals, turtles, raccoons, primates, birds of many different varieties, and many more species of animal that I can't recall at this late hour. In short, it's now a fully fledged zoo.

We had a fabulous day there and the weather cooperated, too. Eloïse thoroughly enjoyed herself, although she was constantly changing her mind about whether she wanted to walk, be carried on papa's back, mama's back or mama's chest. Thus, we were constantly putting on the sling, removing the sling, putting on shoes and socks, removing shoes and socks, etc. It drives you mad, but that's par for the course with a two-year old who doesn't yet know her own mind.

We left the zoo mere minutes before closing time, so it made sense to drive into town and have dinner in Leeuwarden, which we did at Spinoza.

As planned, Eloïse was well and truly knackered by the time we left the restaurant, so she fell asleep in the car within minutes on the way home and was easily transferred into bed upon arrival.

Sarah and Eloïse fly to Chicago for a few weeks next Thursday, so I'm hoping we can have one or two further day-trips before they go.

With all of the doping scandals of the last few months, my interest in the noble sport of cycling had reached an all-time low this year. I didn't bother to watch any classics this year and even the nearing of the Tour de France couldn't excite me.

But the Tour's the Tour and so I forced myself to watch the prologue. Of course, once I beheld the spectacle that is the greatest cycling race on earth, I was hooked again, as I am every year. I soon found myself regretting not having travelled to London for the prologue and opening stage, or at least Ghent a few days later. Lame.

The first week of the Tour was pretty dull, really. The prologue is always exciting, but after that, it was the usual array of flat stages ending in mass sprints. This year, however, they seemed even less eventful than usual, perhaps because the strategy is now so well directed from the team leader's car that the riders themselves scarcely seem incapable of making a decision. It all seems so directed and choreographed.

Happily, that changed somewhat in the Alps, when men like Rasmussen dared to go out on a limb and go for yellow. And then there was Juan Mauricio Soler's epic and totally surprising victory. This is the stuff great tours are made of.

Before you know it, though, the D-word is back. Patrik Sinkewitz of T-Mobile is found to have tested positive for an abnormally high level of testosterone during an out-of-competition check back in June. 'Abnormal' is putting it mildly, too, as his testosterone level made Floyd Landis's positive test from last year look like a glass of mineral water. In fact, the level was so high that you have to wonder whether this test was reliable, especially since testosterone doesn't do a cyclist that much good. It's pretty much only useful for recovering from heavy exertion, but this was a rider in training, not in competition. If he was using testosterone, what on earth was he thinking?

That's not the strangest thing, though. German cycling has had a particularly hard time of it over the last few months. Ullrich, Aldag, Zabel, etc. The press conferences had the air of a catholic confessional.

The yellow jersey of Linus Gerdeman a few days ago was therefore a timely blessing for the Germans. At 24 years old, he represents the much-vaunted and already tired concept of new cycling, a man with a clean slate, a man who could wash the German Radsport whiter than white.

And then Sinkewitz happens, another German and, as if that weren't bad enough, a T-Mobile teammate of Gerdeman. You have to feel sorry for Gerdeman, who suddenly finds himself having to justify the entire sport to hordes of sanctimonious German journalists.

But the strangest thing is the response of ARD and ZDF, the German public broadcasters.

As a surprised Sinkewitz was issuing denials from his hospital bed, where he's been since a bad fall a few days ago after finishing the day's stage, yesterday afternoon's Tageschau was announcing that ARD and ZDF have decided to immediately cease their coverage of the Tour de France.

The reason given is that cycling is currently not a credible sport. Therefore, the companies feel they are functioning purely as an advertising vehicle for the various teams. They further claim that to continue the coverage would be to further damage the credibility of the sport, presumably by further exposing the underbelly of the sport in the form of new scandals.

I find this reasoning absolutely bizarre. Yes, there are bad apples in the sport, but it's not the fault of the Tour de France, any more than it is the fault of the thousands of German fans or up-and-coming riders like Gerdeman. Don't these broadcasters have a responsibility to behave like journalists and to refrain from this kind of moral judgement? This doesn't seem like an impartial, unemotional decision to me.

On a related note, what will T-Mobile do? With so many disgraced riders having ridden for that team and having just received the benefit of the doubt for having purged the ranks of old cycling, how will they now react to the discovery that, no sooner is the ink dry on the new cycling charter, than one of the riders who signed it tests positive?

I wouldn't be surprised if T-Mobile now withdraws from the sport entirely. Who could blame them, especially in view of the fact that they now can't even get their shirt logo onto TV screens in their own country?

I don't approve of the decision made by ARD and ZDF. Cycling is a noble sport that is currently struggling to self-cleanse. It needs support and constant publicity to achieve that, not the summary rhetorical judgments of public broadcasters who do the riders and their fans a serious disservice.

If anything, the latest revelation proves that cycling is a credible sport, for it proves that the drug controls work. The irony is that, without controls, no-one would get caught and the German broadcasters would contentedly cover every stage of every race, ignorant to what was going on behind the scenes. And that, of course, is what happened throughout the nineties and in more recent years.

I'm happy that the NOS aren't debating whether or not to abandon the Tour. They have expressed their continued commitment to cover the world's most important bike race, in all of its glory and all of its, hopefully ever decreasing, seediness. After all, that's what journalists are paid to do and to cover a story, you need to be on the spot, reporting the news as it happens. That's not something you can do from a studio somewhere in Germany.

While the Tour de France is tailor-made for watching on MythTV with a time-stretch of 110%, making it 10% faster to watch (and thereby reducing 66 minutes of footage to an hour) without any change in audio pitch, it's hard to take on board the intrigues unfolding in front of my eyes.

The other day, I reported that the German public broadcasters, ARD and ZDF had abandoned the Tour. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that void has already been filled by the German commercial station, SAT1. Nothing bizarre there.

But today, an attempt was made to have to have Michael Rasmussen removed from the race! As we Dutch might say, Het moet niet veel gekker worden.

So, what happened?

The UCI, the Union Cycliste Internationale, is the governing body of all national cycling federations, including the Danish one. It also organises all ProTour races and therefore strives to maintain a closed set of races involving a fixed roster of teams.

The national federations are responsible for carrying out out-of-competition doping tests on all riders that they have licenced to race. In the case of the Danish federation, this includes Michael Rasmussen.

Now, to carry out these tests, the cycling federations need to know where all licenced riders are at all times, so that they can swing by to tap blood and urine at any time.

Here's where it gets interesting. The current yellow jersey, Michael Rasmussen, is married to a Mexican woman, and therefore spends extended periods of the year in Mexico, training. He's also a man who likes his privacy, so he's been pretty lax about announcing his whereabouts whilst overseas.

Now, whether or not the Danish cycling union would, in any case, have bothered to send a man with a test tube to the other side of the world to tap Rasmussen's pee is a pragmatic question that has no place in the world of cycling bureaucracy. Rasmussen wasn't available for testing and that's that.

This happened on several occasions and Rasmussen was issued several warnings. At that point, he should have been penalised, possibly with a one month racing ban or something similar. Instead, however, the Danish union did nothing. In fact, worse than that, they let him take part in the Danish national championship a month ago. In other words, they let the issue slide.

None of this would have mattererd one iota, if the coordinating body of the UCI hadn't today got wind of this and demanded from the Tour management that Rasmussen be removed from the race for failing to have made himself available for out-of-competition testing.

Rasmussen admits that he hasn't always treated the Danish union's demands to be kept abreast of his movements seriously, because they are difficult to comply with. A form has to be filled out before the start of every quarter, detailing the rider's movements over the next three months. Rasmussen failed to complete one such form on time, resulting in an official warning.

However, to demand his removal from the Tour de France after the cycling union, themselves, let Rasmussen race a month earlier is ludicrous. Not only did they let him race, but they performed doping checks on him numerous times when he was available for testing and found him to be completely clean.

The obvious questions are:

• Why did they let Rasmussen race in the Danish national championship?
• Why was he not penalised at the time according to the union's own rules?
• Why did the UCI not approach the management of the Tour de France before the race started?
• Why did the UCI make their demand only today, now that Rasmussen is firmly established in the yellow jersey?

It stinks. Bureaucratic incompetence, political malice or some unholy concoction of the two?

Political malice, if you ask me. The UCI and the ASO (the organising body of the Tour de France) have been involved in a power struggle for some time now, with the UCI trying to enforce a closed circuit of races and cajole independent race organisers, such as the ASO, into allowing only UCI-approved ProTour teams into their events.

As usual, it's not just political power at stake, but money, too. There are huge sponsorship contracts and television broadcasting rights in the pool, so the bald-headed and grey-haired vultures in suits are circling.

None of this has anything to do with cycling whatsoever. The riders, the teams, the fans and the sport as a whole are all victims of this posturing and greed, thinly veiled behind the pretense of seeking to cleanse the sport of drugs. In reality, everyone is looking after his own interests.

Business as usual.

...and the mice are playing, although the sensation takes some getting used to.

Sarah has flown off to Chicago for the La Leche League 50th Anniversary Conference and taken Eloïse with her. Hrmph; she's only two and she's getting to see a city I haven't been to.

Well, I didn't want to go. I'm all for breastfeeding, especially where babies are concerned (bitty, anyone?), but a conference dedicated to the subject is a bit much for me. I mean, I like ice-cream, too, but I don't feel the need to immerse myself in the subject or socialise with other eaters. As long as my missus is free to breastfeed our children for as long as they need it, that's good enough for me. On the other hand, I applaud Sarah's ongoing interest in the subject.

After a week in Chicago, she'll be spending a further two weeks with her folks. For three whole weeks, I'm a bachelor once more.

So, the Sonos is in party mode (which means it's playing the same music in all zones throughout the house) and I'm taking advantage of the freedom and quietude to relax and get some programming done.

A couple of days ago, I went out with Garth for a meal at Los Pilones, followed by a visit to the cinema to see Quentin Tarantino's latest film, Death Proof.

The meal was good, as always, although also invariably not as good as the Mexican food we enjoyed back in California.

The film was fun, too, if lacking much in the way of a story. As always with Tarantino, it's more the sharp dialogue than the story that attempts to hold your attention and it's been a long while since Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, so the characteristically unrealistic, snappy, larger-than-life dialogue is wearing thin on me now. All of his characters sound like they grew up as part of the same nuclear family.

Nevertheless, it was fun and a rare visit to the cinema for me. The last time I went was in December 2005. Some people are virtually incredulous of this when I tell them, and they seem to regard going to the cinema is an essential element of modern living. I find this to be a peculiar view.

The Tour de France, too, is good for killing endless hours, especially today's Pyrenean mountain stage, which is being broadcast in its entirety and will last a good six hours. Thank heavens for MythTV. I must remember to leave the house occasionally.

I sometimes think that my family is what anchors me to the earth. When they're not here, I descend into reclusion and lose my ties with the outside world (not that I have many). The days start to fly by, with no events or even minor interruptions to punctuate them and perturb the perception of a vast plain of time.

That said, Jules is coming over Wednesday evening and staying the night. I haven't seen him in ages, so it will be fun to catch up. I'm sure I can find some other reasons to leave the house, too, and not just for lunch at Casa e Cucina.

Speaking of the Tour de France, how nice it is to be able to enjoy decent coverage again. The days of Mart Smeets and Jean Nelissen are behind us, but Herbert Dijkstra and Maarten Ducrot are worthy replacements with their interesting insights, dry humour and undisguised irritation. Each stage's commentary is good for a handful of hilarious quotes.

Back in the US, Sarah and I would be forced to watch OLN's coverage via DirecTV satellite. It was really quite bad, but it was all we could get and bad coverage is vastly preferable to no coverage. I remember days when OLN provided no live coverage at all, just highlights at the end of the day. Other major irritations with the coverage were:

• The seriously inopportune ad breaks. Sometimes the coverage would be interrupted in the middle of the final climb of a mountain stage. Upon resumption, you would discover that someone had broken away in the climb to make a break for the finish. What the hell is advertising doing in the middle of a continuous sporting event?
• Commentary that failed to captivate. The permanent commentators, Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin clearly aimed their commentary at people who knew very little about the sport. In fairness, this was probably their brief from the station, as cycling wasn't really covered in the US before Lance Armstrong started winning. Paul Sherwin, in particular, was a dull commentator, resorting constantly to the same well-worn clichés (some of which still resonate in my ears).
• Amateur coverage. Often, the French camera would zoom in on some noteworthy aspect of the rider or the bicycle, and neither Phil nor Paul would pass even the slightest comment to enlighten the viewer as to what they were looking at. I think they, themselves, were oblivious to whatever was being pointed out by the cameraman. Similarly, they made virtually no comments about the equipment the riders were using, such as which gears they had mounted for that stage and why, or why someone might be using a closed as opposed to an open wheel. The background detail was conspicuous by its absence, too. For example, when the French director would focus on a particular rider, we'd get no mention from the commentators of how that rider was performing this season, what his victories and other accomplishments had been this year and in previous years, anything about the rider's history or any amusing anecdotes about the region being cycled through, how many times a particular town or mountain had been visited by the Tour, or which other riders had made history here in previous years.
• Partisanship. Dear, oh dear. You would have thought only English-speakers were competing in the race. The intense favouritism for the American riders, particularly Lance Armstrong, was very frustrating to me. It's American television, so one naturally expects daily interviews with the national riders and copious background information on them and their teams, but with OLN it was to the virtual exclusion of all else. If you were lucky, you'd get a snippet of information about Robbie McEwan or Cadell Evans, presumably by dint of their also being English-speakers and therefore more identifiably similar to Americans. An interview with an Italian, a Spaniard, a Frenchman, a Dutchman, a Kazach or a Swiss? Forget it, unless said person also happened to be a member of Armstrong's team.
• Kirsten Gumm, Frankie Andreu and Bob Roll. Oh, Oh, oh! Kirsten didn't know a thing about cycling and was presumably there for an assumed glamour factor. Frankie, a former Motorola rider, was just not a good interviewer. And Bob Roll, another former rider, who's probably a nice guy to share a drink with, but his coverage was like fingernails on a blackboard. He couldn't even pronounce the name of the race, for crying out loud.
• The direction. As with the ad breaks, sometimes the viewer would be whisked away from the live coverage to witness a prerecorded superficial interview with some third-rate no-hoper, just because he was an American. In the meantime, God knows what would be going on in the actual race. Why not split the screen down the middle and continue to show us coverage of the race on one half of the screen? Better yet, show us the interview before or after the race, not at a crucial moment during the live coverage.
• No evening coverage in a separate programme. Consequently, there was no post-stage race analysis from either the commentators or knowledgeable guests (such as ex-riders), no mention of the day's intrigues, no interviews with riders at the finish, no background on the organisation of the Tour de France itself, no analysis of the next day's stage, etc.

Yes, I know I'm very demanding. I should probably relax in my old age. I'll probably die complaining about something. On the other hand, if we all settled for mediocrity, where would that get the human race? :-)

Anno 2007, I have to wonder what the US TV coverage is like now. Armstrong has retired and neither Hincapie nor Leipheimer can make good on the potential they showed in previous years. OK, Leipheimer's currently fourth in the general classification and that's great, but he's not in contention to win. After seven years of Armstrong victories, Americans are used to watching grand spectacle, crowned with a victory.

All of which leads me to expect that viewing figures must be falling over there, aided by the disrepute into which the sport is constantly being brought by doping scandals. I witnessed in my first couple of years in the US how Olympic events were scarcely covered if no Americans were taking part in the event. And if Americans weretaking part, you'd see pretty much only the Americans performing, plus maybe a couple of Russians just for old time's sake, to show that they're still being beaten. And cycling isn't even broadcast across the national networks; you have to subscribe to a cable or satellite package to get OLN or whatever it's called these days.

Anyway, enough about the Tour coverage and back to watching it.

At this point, I'm watching the Tour de France more out of morbid curiosity than anything else. And, I suspect a number of the riders themselves are wondering why they're still taking part in this race.

The day before yesterday, Vinokourov, winner of the 13th and 15th stages, was found to have engaged in blood doping (transfusion) before the start of the 13th stage. As a result, the entire Astana team was asked to withdraw from the Tour, a request that was honoured. So, that was goodbye to not just Vinokourov, but also men like Kashechkin and Klöden.

Yesterday, Vinokourov was found to have tested positive during the 15th stage, too.

There was worse to come, though. During the 16th stage yesterday, it was announced that another rider had tested positive for doping. The name wouldn't be released until after the race.

After the race, it was announced that Moreni, an Italian rider on the Cofidis team, had tested positive for testosterone a few days earlier. The predictable result was that the entire Cofidis team withdrew from the race.

And then, just when you think it can't get any worse, if only because the hour is late enough that most people have retired for the evening and the machinery of the Tour has wound down for the day, the Rabobank team announces that it is withdrawing yellow jersey Michael Rasmussen from the race with immediate effect. The guy who is leading the race and who won the day's stage in spectacular style, the man who looked set to ride to Paris in yellow and walk away with the race victory, is now no longer even in the race.

And what was the straw that broke the camel's back? It turns out that Rasmussen had lied when informing the Danish cycling federation about his whereabouts so that they could conduct out-of-competition testing. He had said that he would be in Mexico, when he had, it seems, actually been in Italy. He had also misinformed his own team about his whereabouts during the same period.

His undoing was that an ex-rider, now a commentator for Italian TV, had seen Rasmussen in the Dolomites in early June. The man had actually spoken to Rasmussen and was sure that it was him. He mentioned this encounter in passing to a Danish journalist, who realised that this was at the same time that Rasmussen was claiming to have been in Mexico.

One thing led to another and, before you know it, Rasmussen is ejected from the Tour and may well never race again. No doubt this will please the UCI, the French press (for whom any victor who isn't French is undesirable) and all of the other people who have been calling for Rasmussen's expulsion from the race over the last week.

In the last twelve hours, I have been hearing words like 'traitor' to describe Rasmussen and it occurs to me that the quest to cleanse the sport is now turning into an inhuman witchhunt.

I, for one, have a lot of sympathy for Rasmussen. Let's not forget that he was tested for doping at least 14 times during this year's Tour de France and found to be negative every single time.

Who knows why he gave incorrect information to the UCI about his whereabouts? Perhaps he had planned to go to Mexico, but later changed his plans and remained in Italy. Even if he deliberately lied, perhaps he felt he had good reasons for doing so. He is known to be a very private man and perhaps he resented being followed around by men in white coats with a syringe in one hand and a test-tube in the other.

As far as I'm concerned, until he is proved to have using doping, the most one can find Rasmussen guilty of is lying; and lying alone should not be grounds for expulsion from competition.

According to UCI rules, receiving three warnings for failure to be available for out-of-competition testing is equivalent to a positive test result. Rasmussen had received only two such warnings, which is why he was still in the race until yesterday. He was ultimately expelled for having lied about his whereabouts to his own team, thereby transgressing the team's internal code of conduct. Neither the UCI nor the ASO had any grounds for taking action against him.

Michael Boogerd, Rasmussen's team-mate, is the only person I've seen show much sympathy for Rasmussen today. He said that he could imagine perfectly how it must feel to be Rasmussen today, that his life is now in tatters, and that he will probably never race professionally again. His career is over, and that without even having tested positive.

In my opinion, Michael Rasmussen had demonstrated himself to be the top rider in this year's Tour de France. He was without a doubt the strongest in the course and it will be a hollow victory for whomever now rides in the yellow jersey onto the Champs-Élysées.