Hangover

It's over.What do we do now?All you sports fans out there will know what I'm talking about. It happens each year with the winning of the Stanley Cup, the World Series, the Super Bowl. It happens every four years with the FIFA World Cup of Soccer (sorry, football) and the Olympics. It happened yesterday when Floyd Landis crossed the finish line at the Champs Elysee in Paris, to close this year's Tour de France.The competition started (or did it end?) the day before the prologue, when 9 riders were suspended due to drug allegations. Two of the main contenders, Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso, were implicated and an entire team was forced out since they could no longer field a full team. Prior to the suspensions it was looking like the post-Lance era would be most interesting, but this bombshell just blew all our expectations out of the water.None of this should take anything away from the man who will forever go down in history as the first (and I'm willing to bet, only) man named Floyd to ever win the Tour. It looked like he lost it in stage 16, when due to dehydration he lost over 10 minutes to the leaders. The next day in stage 17, however, we witnessed one of the great stage victories in the history of the Tour. He won that mountain stage by a stunning seven minutes over the yellow jersey, Oscar Pereiro, and although Oscar held onto a slim lead, the writing was on the wall.A masterful time trial on Saturday was all that Landis needed after that (gee, is that all?), and the Tour was done for another year. All that was left was for Thor Hushovd to beat out Robbie McEwan in the final sprint to take Sunday's stage (but not the green sprinter's jersey - McEwan still won that) to finish the Tour - a tumultuous one, to be sure - for another year.The thing about the Tour, as opposed to other sporting events, is that it's on every day (with two rest days) over three weeks. You've gotta get your fix. You watch, you cheer, you marvel at how fit and fast these guys are. No matter who wins, you can't help but respect the guy, if for no other reason than the near-impossibility of the feat.In addition, following the Tour is sort of like being a member of an elite club. Most people don't really follow it, so those of us who keep up by hanging around the Jet Fuel mornings (I can only make it on weekends) to watch it on the big screen, check in on the various websites during the day while we work, then sit around and discuss that day's stage and our predictions as to what will happen the next day, are like "insiders" on a big secret. Although there was some public interest over the last couple of years due to the whole "can Lance keep winning" thing, this year the Tour has once again dropped off the North American sporting radar, rating back-page coverage in the Toronto Star (for instance).So now I wake up this morning with a big hole in my life. How can I continue without my fix?I need it and I need it bad, baby!! Give it to me, give it to me and I'll do anything for you, ya gotta believe me!