The light is red.  I hover above my bicycle, left pedal cocked, waiting for the light to change.  Other Amsterdammers fill in around me, on their bicycles.  As the red light lingers, the crowd has perhaps swelled to a dozen riders.  And then the light turns green.  I shove off from the curb with my right foot, while pushing down hard with my left, in a smooth, practiced maneuver that immediately juts me to the front of the pack.  Other riders push their way across the intersection, close at hand.  My eyes are locked on the zebra-striped cross-walk on the far side of the intersection.  I get up off the bike seat to pedal with full thrusts of my weight, leveraged with long, alternating tugs on the handlebars.  It's down to me and some punk who had the good fortune of just perfectly timing his drift into the intersection with the light-change, thus transferring his full-speed momentum into the cross-roads.  But I will not be denied.  As the cross-walk finish-line looms, I pedal harder and harder.  The tendons in my forearms stand taut and sinewy.  I stretch my legs to full extension.  My neck even leans forward...

And then, joy!  Victoire!  The front tire of my bicycle crosses the line a full tire-length ahead of the other guy.  I pick up some valuable sprint points in being the first to reach the other side of the intersection, and I feel incredibly satisfied, settling back onto the bike seat and pedalling in a more regular rhythm... I feel good about myself.

The sad thing is that the situation described above is not exagerated (or at least not by much).  I get into this frame of mind for about three weeks almost every summer -- where my afternoon enjoyment of the Tour de France subconsciously transfers itself into my daily commutes.  Every intersection is a sprint.  Every bridge is a climb beyond category.  Every tourist roaming into the bike path is one of those ridiculous Norwegian fans on the Alpine inclines wearing a viking helmet and waving a red-crossed flag within centimeters of the spokes on my front wheel.  Every time I lock up the bicycle is a return to the team bus at the end of a day.  My imagination gets the best of me.  And though it feels like the fantasies of a nine-year-old boy on his BMX (though, to be completely honest, those were actually more the days of my bike being a speeder zipping through the forests of Endor, just like in the "Return of the Jedi"), I only feel a little bit embarrassed to publicly admit these thoughts.

The Tour de France is a lot of fun for me.

Ironically, when I watch the Tour de France on television, it's actually more of a relaxing experience than a thrilling adventure.  The coverage is slow-paced (except at the end of the day).  The announcers' voices are subdued.  The vast panoramic views of the course -- provided by helicopter -- are like postcards or fairy-tale books, with a modern-day bicycle race running through them.  Coverage lasts for hours every afternoon, for three weeks.  When I get home around supper-time, I can usually just catch the last five kilometers of the stage before settling down to a pleasant summer evening.  Like so many Americans, Lance Armstrong was indeed my gateway into the Tour de France.  And I have to admit that his return to the Tour this year has made things more interesting than they've been for four years -- my love of the Tour transcends my admiration for Lance Armstrong.  Even so, I'm thinking that if Armstrong looks like he might be in a position to win this year's Tour, our family might need to organize a last minute trip to Paris to see him accomplish the historic feat... Who knows?!?  That remains to be seen.

But in the meantime, I'm definitely enjoying the ride.