Tour Tweets: Busgate, Sky Beta Kappa, and badass Chava

We have boats, we have buses, we have bikes. We have jerseys: yellow and national. We have Cipo topless, Bernie stripping and Kittel sweating. And much, much more! It’s a bumper crop of Tour de France Tweets!

Rock the boat

Our Tour heroes made it to the team presentations via yachts/boats/dinghies of all sizes and shape. The whole thing reminded me a little of …

Our first boat (well, ‘scarab’ if you remember correctly) brings Mario Cipollini to shore. Oh, hang on…

Ah, this is better. This would be OPQS trying to look comfortable and nonchalant. They look more like ‘MOM, are we THERE yet?’

Here are the Sharpies coming off their row-boat, with a giant Ryder Hesjedal dwarfing all those who follow him.

While the Sky Yacht (christened The Empire) hovers over the water as if by some sort of Force and the team is looking like a bunch of frat boys going to chat up those honeys from Alpha Delta Pi! Please note Geraint Thomas, looking ever so suave with that hand on the hip, and Edvald Higgs Boson Hulk Hogan Haagen Dazs with the sunnies in his golden hair.

Meanwhile, on the dock, the Argonauts have recruited Sting’s younger brother and a German porn star to hobnob it with the hoi polloi.

Boys need bikes – let’s look at some of the customisation that’s been going on.

This is definitely my favourite!

While Sylvain Chavanel is so badass, his bike is painted according to his tattoos!

And a few of the guys have a few customised jerseys: here’s the UK national champion, Mark Cavendish [cue mancrush squeals], with some cool rainbow stripes on the sleeves and collar.

Andre Greipel, on the other hand, is wearing the German national jersey. He looks happy, doesn’t he?

Here’s a national jersey that’s gotten the thumbs up from almost every style-conscious tweeter out there. It’s FDJ’s Arthur Vichot, French champion. You’d be hard pressed to figure out what team he rides for – hardly any sponsorship anywhere on this jersey.

And here’s a popular rider, full stop. And Johnny Hoogerland just happens to be the Dutch national champion. And he’s sweet to fans. We like him. We like him a lot.

So now that we’ve got the boats, the bikes and the jerseys out of the way, shall we go onto stage one?

You could drive a bus through that!

Or not, as the GreenEdge&Ham coach driver found out. (Poor guy, it was his first day!!!) I can tell you one thing, Keith Partridge never had that problem as he was driving the family to their gigs! Ask yourself, driver, what would David Cassidy do?

Where’s Bernard Hinault when you need him to sort this stuff out?

I still laugh when I see this. Priceless!

So the bus was at the finish line, the finish line was changed to the 3km mark, then the bus wasn’t at the finish line so the finish line was changed back to the 0km mark and there were confused riders and an almighty crash! Greg Henderson says it like it is.

The Divine Haunches

At the end of the day, Marcel Kittel won the sprint – if you can call it that. It seemed more like the last man standing. However, we mus give the Argonauts credit – they were all there at the end. I’ve dubbed him The Divine Haunches™, which is second only to The Sacred Haunches™, who will be making an appearance later in this column.

Although I would say he looks like an alien from that angle. Not Sting’s younger brother.

But you know what, the best thing about him is that he’s a class act. And this is proof. Tony Martin went down hard in that mega-crash on stage one …

Well, hello … who do we have here? Ice ice baby!

Is it just me or is there a shocking resemblance due to the haircut? I think you need to go back to the Sting cut, Marcel!

Just me? Really? Okay then. Here is Marcel finishing stage two, where he suffered suffered suffered and lost the yellow jersey.

And he lost it to someone from RadioShack! I say someone because commentators were split as to whether it was Markel Irizar or Jan Bakelants. Most confusing. But the look on Bakelants’ face wasn’t confused. It was sheer joy!

Give that boy an extra stack of pancakes

A popular addition to the Cannondale Tour team is Ted King. Always friendly, always responsive, works hard for the team and takes some real punishment. Ted, we salute you!

Look at that face! Sweeeet!

I think this will start a trend in desk art.

And a little film about fluffernutters (you might need to be American to get that) for The Boy King.

Remember I mentioned the punishment he takes? Here’s proof. Heal well, Ted!

Lost Boys of the Tour

There has been a great deal of consternation amongst the fans of The Sacred Haunches™ Fabian Cancellara and Ladies’ Favourite Bernie Eisel, that they are not at the Tour this year. But all is not lost. We have the internet.

And then of course there is Fabian Cancellara, who announced on Monday that he is staying with the new Trek team and that he was going to answer questions on Twitter. And he would answer them in Fabianese!