Day 18 - Rest Day 2 of 2

Tuesday 24 July 2007

I slept in until about 10am, when Breakfast was nearly finished. It felt pretty good; to sleep that much, considering we got in a little late last night after our visit to the discotheque. (Yes, discotheque is still a word.) And my clothes smell DISGUSTING after being down in that smoky place last night.

Golf again today; but this time it was a little better. You would think we learned our lesson from last time, in that we should try to find a course that is close by. So after a 40-minute ride, we arrived at last.

The foursome was: myself, Al Trautwig, his son Alex, and Robbie Ventura, who is Floyd Landis’ personal coach. Talk about playing with good company. Thankfully, we were all about the same skill level, so it made for an interesting match. We played more of a match play style than normal scoring. I played a good game on the front, lost it a little bit on the back. But the course was beautiful. Set in the middle of the Pyrenees in Huesca, Spain sat the nicest golf course I’ve ever played on. The look and feel of the course was very contemporary, as it was designed by PGA star Jose Maria Olazabal. Even the pro-shop was so very modern.

The game was overshadowed unfortunately, when the bombshell regarding Alexandre Vinokourov of team Astana hit. We were returning back to the hotel when Joel called and informed us that they kicked Vinokourov (and his team) out of the Tour after a positive blood transfusion test had surfaced. Al was extremely upset; and rightfully so: when he reports on an athlete and says all positive things about them, and then it turns out the whole time they’ve cheated, it makes him look like a liar or a fool. I understand his opinion, and I guess this is not the first time it’s happened to him.

Dinner was included at the hotel tonight, so we all gathered in the restaurant. Naturally, dinner wasn’t until 9pm, Spanish style, so we finally got seated at around 9:20.

But it didn’t take nearly as long as I had expected. Since it was free, we were limited to the number of bottles of wine we could have. So when we ran out, what did we do? That’s right, I stole some bottles I saw sitting on the side of the restaurant and brought them outside to the patio to continue drinking. Did anyone say a word? Nope.