"You want it to be one way. But it's the other way."
Like many others put off or revolted or … — what’s stronger than “revolted”? — by developments at Twitter, I’ve started a Mastodon account — mostly to see if it’s a viable alternative to what I’ve gotten used to over the last 15 years as a news and information tool. This is still Day One, but early signs are that it might.
My major first-day “learning”: Individual messages are “toots,” not tweets. Did Mastodons really sound that way?
[7:30 a.m.: The update to Levi Leipheimer’s broken wrist: He’s having surgery. And he’s reporting on it–both tweeting and posting pictures: See @LeviLeipheimer at Twitter and levileipheimer’s images at Yfrog. The image above is captioned, “This is 22mm Titanium screw!” So the new model of an event-ending injury is get hurt, get diagnosis, get treatment, and show the whole world the process. Video with expert commentary can’t be far behind.]
Earlier post: A little after the sun comes up on the West Coast in about five hours, just about anyone who cares will know the bad news from the Tour de France: Levi Leipheimer is out of the race with a broken wrist. It’s a potentially race-changing injury: Leipheimer figured to be a key to the victory chances for his team’s co-non-leaders, Lance Armstrong and Alberto Contador. And if one of them faltered, he has developed into the kind of tough competitor who might have a shot at the overall Tour victory himself.
It’s interesting how the bad news broke. At 12:25 a.m. PDT, or 9:25 a.m. in France, Lance Armstrong sent out a Twitter message: “Woke up to bad news. Levi is out with a broken wrist. Damn..”
At 12:28 a.m. PDT, Astana team director Johan Bruyneel sent out his own message: “Starting the day with bad news… Levi has a fracture of the scaphoid (wrist). Not good!”
And at 12:33 a.m. came word from Leipheimer himself: “My wrist is broken. I can’t describe how disapointed I am.”
Anyone who’s following race news this way knows the basics of the story now. Meantime, a full half hour after Armstrong broke the story–and that sheds some light on what Twitter does to news–even the rapidly updated Google News is behind. They have a full palette of stories describing Leipheimer’s crash yesterday just before the finish, and a display quote in which he talks about escaping serious injury: “My wrist hurts, but surprisingly it’s OK. It could have been a lot worse,” … “I was a bit surprised by a left corner …… my tire was sliding and I couldn’t quite save my bike from sliding out”
A brief list, along with number of followers. Some Tour and cycling notables below the race group. Send me more if you have ’em.
| Name (Team) | Twitter handle (linked) | Followers |
| Lance Armstrong (Astana) | lancearmstrong | 1.27 million |
| Levi Leipheimer (Astana) | LeviLeipheimer | 45,913 |
| George Hincapie (Columbia-HTC) | ghincapie | 28,654 |
| David Zabriskie (Garmin) | dzabriskie | 17,158 |
| Christian Vande Velde (Garmin) | ChristianVDV | 15,738 |
| Mick Rogers (Astana) | mickrogers | 12,582 |
| Cadel Evans (Silence-Lotto) | CadelOfficial | 8,863 |
| Mark Renshaw (Columbia-HTC) | markrenshaw1 | 4,208 |
| Steven de Jongh (Quickstep) | stevendejongh | 2,616 |
| Bradley Wiggins (Garmin) | bradwiggins | 1,627 |
| Brett Lancaster (Cervelo) | bdlancaster | 1,286 |
And other notables:
| Johan Bruyneel (Astana director) | johanbruyneel | 26,647 |
| Greg Henderson (Columbia-HTC) | Greghenderson1 | 960 |
| Chris Horner (Astana) | hornerakg | 12,133 |
| Robbie Ventura (Versus TV commentator) | RobbieVentura | 1,885 |
| Robbie McEwen (Katusha) | mcwewenrobbie | 13,616 |
| Jonathan Vaughters (Garmin director) | Vaughters | 1,684 |
| Phil Liggett (Versus TV) | PhilLiggett | 9,348 |
| Chris Boardman (retired fast guy) | Chris_Boardman | 1,341 |
| Floyd Landis (one-time ’06 Tour winner) | TheRealFloydL | 6,126 |
Yes, the Tour de France started today, which is the annual early-July signal to take even more leave of my senses than usual. As the late, mostly unlamented Church Lady said, “Isn’t that special?”
My Tour Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/re_cycling
My cycling blog, which goes sadly neglected most of the time: re: Cycling
Regularly unscheduled programming will continue here at Infospigot, with occasional break-ins with cycling news of cosmic significance.
… News coverage : If you wonder why all the commotion about Twitter, it’s worth checking in on users’ “coverage” of the Iranian election aftermath at http://twitter.com/timeline/search?q=%23iranelection . We need some other word than coverage to describe this; coverage suggests something organized and controlled. What we’re getting from Tehran is chaotic, rumor-filled, repetitive and largely dependent on mainstream news sources. But it’s also immediate, passionate, and encyclopedic, and it brings all of us closer to the scene. The picture above is a case in point, shot and posted today by a Twitter user in Tehran. (The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz has a column today on Twitter and how it’s shifting the way we use media.)
… News analysis: Why does the Iranian opposition denounce the election results. FiveThirtyEight.com breaks down the numbers and shows some striking anomalies in the results. (On Saturday, on the other hand, FiveThirtyEight shot down one purported piece of evidence that the result was rigged.)
Over the last 10 days, we’ve gone from a dry season, a sort of perpetual autumn, to full Northern/Central California winter. Which means: rain in the lowlands and someplace unseen, far to the east, the Sierra Nevada living up to their name. We have a storm parked offshore now, and the rain has fallen all day without much of a let up. We got out this morning to walk Scout during a break of an hour or so. But a couple of later excursions took place in a pounding-down rain, and the dog was soaked when we got back (he doesn’t seem to mind; and he seems to like the process of us toweling him down before we let him back in the house).
Over in Davis this morning, just this side of Sacramento, Stage 1 of the Tour of California hit the road. The route was 107 miles to Santa Rosa over many of the same roads I’ve ridden on brevets, or centuries or just on rides with friends. The big climb of the day was up Howell Mountain Road. I remember it as a steep 2.5- to 3-mile grind I once did with my friend Pete. The eventual stage winner made one of his big moves on that climb today.
I’ve ridden some of these roads in the rain, but today it looked like the racers got pelted from beginning to end of the stage. You see all everyone wearing rain jackets, shoe covers, tights, and what look like scuba gloves. None if keeps you dry. The longer you’re out in the rain, the more water you get in your shoes, the more sodden your shorts get, the colder you become. Of course, the elite pros in today’s peloton really raced today; it’s very, very rare for weather to interfere with the running of a race (one exception I remember: heavy snow in the mountain passes during a stage of the Tour of Italy maybe 15 years ago caused the race organizers to abbreviate a stage). They raced today, but they were miserable, just like the fraternity and sorority of just regular riding folks.
How bad was it? Here’s the Twitter Lance Armstrong sent out after finishing:
“Holy hell. That was terrible. Maybe one of the toughest days I’ve had on a bike, purely based on the conditions. I’m still freezing.”
More rain in the forecast tomorrow. And some patchy, wild roads, too, including another one I rode with Pete once: Tunitas Creek. It turns into a wild one-lane route through a redwood forest. When we road it, the road was all patches and patches on patches. I saw a report from a local cyclist today that the route had debris on it today. Which makes it kind of amazing to me that the best cyclists in the world are riding it. It’s more than a little like the Yankees showing up to play on your local diamond, complete with pebbles in the infield and potholes in the outfield. Seeing the best on your home field — well, it changes the way you see the field.
Over the last 10 days, we’ve gone from a dry season, a sort of perpetual autumn, to full Northern/Central California winter. Which means: rain in the lowlands and someplace unseen, far to the east, the Sierra Nevada living up to their name. We have a storm parked offshore now, and the rain has fallen all day without much of a let up. We got out this morning to walk Scout during a break of an hour or so. But a couple of later excursions took place in a pounding-down rain, and the dog was soaked when we got back (he doesn’t seem to mind; and he seems to like the process of us toweling him down before we let him back in the house).
Over in Davis this morning, just this side of Sacramento, Stage 1 of the Tour of California hit the road. The route was 107 miles to Santa Rosa over many of the same roads I’ve ridden on brevets, or centuries or just on rides with friends. The big climb of the day was up Howell Mountain Road. I remember it as a steep 2.5- to 3-mile grind I once did with my friend Pete. The eventual stage winner made one of his big moves on that climb today.
I’ve ridden some of these roads in the rain, but today it looked like the racers got pelted from beginning to end of the stage. You see all everyone wearing rain jackets, shoe covers, tights, and what look like scuba gloves. None if keeps you dry. The longer you’re out in the rain, the more water you get in your shoes, the more sodden your shorts get, the colder you become. Of course, the elite pros in today’s peloton really raced today; it’s very, very rare for weather to interfere with the running of a race (one exception I remember: heavy snow in the mountain passes during a stage of the Tour of Italy maybe 15 years ago caused the race organizers to abbreviate a stage). They raced today, but they were miserable, just like the fraternity and sorority of just regular riding folks.
How bad was it? Here’s the Twitter Lance Armstrong sent out after finishing:
“Holy hell. That was terrible. Maybe one of the toughest days I’ve had on a bike, purely based on the conditions. I’m still freezing.”
More rain in the forecast tomorrow. And some patchy, wild roads, too, including another one I rode with Pete once: Tunitas Creek. It turns into a wild one-lane route through a redwood forest. When we road it, the road was all patches and patches on patches. I saw a report from a local cyclist today that the route had debris on it today. Which makes it kind of amazing to me that the best cyclists in the world are riding it. It’s more than a little like the Yankees showing up to play on your local diamond, complete with pebbles in the infield and potholes in the outfield. Seeing the best on your home field — well, it changes the way you see the field.
By all accounts, a miserable cold, wet, windy day (what Lance Armstrong said about it, via Twitter, when it was all over: “Holy hell. That was terrible. Maybe one of the toughest days I’ve had on a bike, purely based on the conditions. I’m still freezing”). Svein Tuft finished 31st overall today, toward the front of a large group that finished about five minutes behind the stage winner, Francisco Mancebo, and four minutes behind the main chase group led by Armstrong, Leipheimer, Voigt, et al. Svein’s general classification placing after today: 24th, 5:04 off the lead.