Le Tour 2015 BaKano Awards

Here they are, several weeks later and after Vuelta already started. But I had many stuff to do including some sightseeing so sorry about that.
Hope you enjoy reading it, as much as I enjoyed coming up with them:

"I Don't Want It" Award: There was that rider that didn't want to lead the escapees on a climb so he swerved right so fast that almost crashed into a motorbike. And there was that other rider that didn't want his musette bag so he fell when it was given to him.

French pedal strokes - 2015 3/3

The Tour de France 2015, also known as Tour de Froome, is now over. And as soon as it was over the excitement bug inside starts to fade and so it took longer to write the final article about this year edition.

Also once it is over it's harder to talk about the last week, because all is settled no new predictions only conclusions. So I have to go back to the 2 other articles to see my thoughts and considerations and sum it all up.

It didn't go as I thought although I got it right in what comes to Quintana winning back some time from Froome. And he did attack on both Stage 19 and Stage 20. What surprises me is that it was indeed due to the Sky team that Froome kept the yellow jersey, on the climb to Alpe d'Huez. I thought he could defend alone but he couldn't. He really needed help from his team-mates and 3 of them actually. If Sky would have been exhausted as suggested in earlier stages and Froome isolated, I think he would have lost several minutes and the Tour.

French pedal strokes - 2015 2/3

14 stages done, Stage 15 is going on right now and I am writing my second article about this year's edition of the Tour de France.

I expected fireworks on the second week and we did have great stages and nice results but not the attacks I was expecting. Well, kind of. Movistar did attack here and there, Quintana included, but Froome is still in control. I was expecting more attacks from Movistar and Tinkoff-Saxo on Stage 12. If I were a betting person I would have placed a bet on Quintana to won the stage or at least gain back some time, but it was not to be.
The big change we had was that the Big 4 became the Big 5 as Tejay van Garderen from BMC kept himself in the hunt, in particular after BMC won the Team Time Trial.
Nibali is gong backwards and Contador again lost more time.
Froome has one foot on the door, he just needs one final effort and crack it open.

French pedal strokes - 2015 1/3

I love cycling and follow the cycling season (road competition) closely every year.
The Tour de France being the biggest event of them all, is of course the crown jewel.

The 2015 edition is under way and more than 1 third (of the stages) is completed already.
Many things happened and already and has usual many crashes that took a toll on the peloton. Not as high impact as last year, when we lost the defending champion on week 1. This year we only lost 2 yellow jerseys, that were not contenders for the overall win.

And so all the Big 4 of current cycling are still there: Froome, Contador, Nibali and Quintana.

There is no failure except in no longer trying

The actual state of this blog is a reflection of my failures to achieve the so called "world domination" at least of the cyber community.
The plan was so simple, write my witty remarks and strange dissertations in English so they would reach a wider audience, and hopefully more people in the world would discover my brilliance.

Because I try to push too many wagons at the same time, I cannot continue to cover some subjects as regularly as I thought. For instance I started commenting on the 2015 F1 season but only wrote 2 articles.
And then I noticed my so-called brilliance was lacking. At least some years ago.

Let's talk about myself then

This text was originally published here (in Portuguese) on the 17-Mar-2008

My initial description of myself here in Blogger stated that to know more about me the best was to read what I wrote and latter make your own judgement about my person. Maybe not these exact words, well for sure not was since it was written in Portuguese, but the same message nonetheless.

But actually who am I? I think that is not at all relevant, more interesting is the What than the Who. So, what am I?
I think I am really a ... strange dude. I reckon is it always tricky to talk about ourselves, since I believe it is really hard to get it right.
What I can really say is that I am somewhat tall (1,85m), somewhat obese (~110kg) and somewhat a stinky pig (my wife used to say I should wash more often, and I am known to burp loudly regardless of the time and place). These are facts.

Be careful what you wish for

A German driver, dressed in red and stepping on the top place of the podium. Now that was typical a decade ago, but today there was a replay of that scenario. Who would have thought that 2 weeks ago?

Not many people for sure, and I admit me neither. But I am happy, more than happy. Mainly because as usual after one race, sometimes after the Winter tests, people come and complain about all sorts of things. The new rules and engines are crap. There is no competition. Mercedes are too far ahead and will win everything. Rules have to be changed to make the sport more competitive. And then it takes 1 race, 1 race only and we get already a different winner. And a driver and team that were win less the year before.
It was brilliant, absolutely brilliant, that Vettel and Ferrari answered so many questions in just a couple of hours.

The Chronicles of Paris - The Shower, the Internet and the Train

This text was originally published here (in Portuguese) on the 07-Mar-2011

No, I am no thinking in writing a fantasy saga with amazing stories set on incredible worlds. Although I do have some incredible stories that might be considered fantasy.
Basically I went to Paris this weekend, more precisely to Val-de-Marne, to spend it with my parents. But let's take one step at the time since, because this told in smaller parts might be funnier:

The Piss Problematic

This text was originally published here (in Portuguese) on the 06-Mar-2008

It became a routine. Every now and then we got the e-mail, sent by the administrative assistants, to complain about the mess that we, the male colleagues, made at the toilets. That because at my previous job the toilets were common, shared between the men and the (few) women.
But why were the WC dirty? Basically they were full of ... piss in the floor around the toilet.
Does this mean that all men are pigs and can't even piss properly? No doubt that some are, and we all are careless in the act at times, but the truth is that pissing is really a complicated procedure and that most of the times it leaves traces outside the proper places, meaning the toilet and urinal.
Because I know that women will find this difficult to understand, I will use an analogy, that I am certain will make everybody understand my point.

A match made in heaven?

When the new partnership between McLaren and Honda for the 2015 season was announced, many people thought it would be a repeat of the previous partnership that dominated F1 in the late 80s and early 90s.
On top of that the last year that Honda had a turbo F1 engine paired with a McLaren car, they dominated entirely the season winning all bar one race.
Me on the other hand, as well as some others of course, was actually thinking on the previous venture in F1 by Honda that failed big time. Toyota also had big ambitious and came up short so I did not trusted much in the Japanese engineering, as before.

Starting the new season with the first Grand Prix at Melbourne, many people were still believing McLaren would pull a Red Bull 2014 (where they performed miserably in testing only to be the second fastest team at the season start).
In reality they were a mirror of the 1988 season. Back then they locked up the first row in Qualifying and now they locked up the last row, like a mirror (where left is right and right is left)...

Google knows me well

This text was originally published here (in Portuguese) on the 23-Dec-2014

Searching for an image using text "Winter is coming" to talk about the Winter Solstice, Google presented me in the results of the search the following image, that seemed to me a bit out of place:

One might think that Google decided to show me this because it knows me well, knows my taste (or fetish) in HUGE BREASTS and in its supreme clairvoyance thought "here you go, you will like it". And it is true, I did liked it! A lot!

Reversed roles

The blog has just started and I immediately start breaking the rules by writing a unpublished text instead of just translating a previous one. And it will be a serious subject moreover.

So, I guess you guys can identify the images on the left. It's those idiots from ISIS destroying historical artefacts at the Iraqi city of Nimrud. These so-called Muslims are in reality some fucked up morons who are using their very twisted interpretation of the old books to spread destruction and chaos.

Before them we had the Taliban, another messed-up horde of dimwits, destroying the Buddhas of Bamiyan and God knows what else in Afghanistan.
But it is curious that is the complete reversal of roles of what happened before, almost 1000 years ago.

Ready, Set, Go!

10 years ago I made a trip that started it all: the writing of texts to be shared with others. The 8th of March was the day I sent my first a chronicle about that trip so it is fitting that I chose the same day, 10 years later day to start this new blog.

For those who don't know me, I am Portuguese guy born in France more than 35 years ago but raised in Portugal. I started working and the fairly young age of 17 and that allowed me to do some working stints in the UK, Japan and France and 4 years ago I moved from Portugal to The Netherlands, also due to professional reasons.
I am married and I am a father, and I am only telling you that because I will write about both subjects, or mention them from time to time.