Lance Armstrong is actually not my favorite professional cyclist--he's probably not even in the top ten--but I love what he's done to bring American attention to the sport and of course greatly respect all the charitable work he's done.

This morning when I checked the only news site I look at every day, I was thrilled to see that he's decided to go ahead and race in this year's Tour de France. I'm thrilled because it means at least one more year of extensive US media coverage of le Tour and of other races (he's also going to defend his title in the Tour of Georgia), which means there's one more year for Americans to learn about all the other great personalities in cycling, like Floyd Landis, the World's Fastest Mennonite. Which hopefully means I can still watch cycling on television after Armstrong's eventual retirement (sometime during the 2006 season, probably).

As most of you know, the novel I'm working on is about a bicycle race across Kentucky, so really, this is all research.