Breaking radio silence

I've missed posting the past few days but I've been trying to watch the Tour of California. I have to say the Versus coverage has been disappointing. First of all, they still don't have coverage in HD. Then you've got the weather messing up the video feed for some of the best parts of the race. And finally you had Versus cutting off before the finish yesterday to go to a hockey game. Now, I love hockey, but that was pretty bad. This is all unfortunate since despite the terrible weather there has been some great racing so far.

Levi's not who we thought he was

Leipheimer's attack on stage 2 was pretty shocking for me. I've always thought of Levi as a vanilla kind of guy, similar to Cadel Evans. He can climb well enough to make it hard to drop him and he can time trial with the best of them. Those skills can lead to great results and victories, but they don't make for the most exciting racing. I can't help it, I love mountain top finishes. So I was happy to see Levi really go for it on stage 2. It's clear that he wants this victory and that he also realizes if he falters his team is so deep they have plenty of options to go to. With teammates Lance Armstrong in fourth place and Chris Horner in fifth place it's clear Levi knows he has to deliver. He even said there's no choice but to come through when you've got someone like Lance working for you and riding up front in the rain. Lots of big guns are still in the mix (Mic Rogers, Dave Za), which should make the time trial on stage six all the more interesting.

Hey, remember me!

It was good to see Thor Hushovd win yesterday. Over the past year I don't want to say I forgot about him, but Boonen was grabbing headlines for the wrong reasons, Cavendish was exploding on the scene and you had Oscar Freire and Daniele Bennati winning a ton of big stages in between. But Hushovd has won his share of stages and sprint jerseys. If he's back in the mix of things we really good see some amazing sprint finishes this year.