turkeys and men in spandex

The weather has been nicer for the last few days, not too hot to start and rising relatively gently over the course of the day... combined with a little higher humidity and it seems to make scents particularly profound. The picture is from a couple of days ago... but the Mominator has been throwing shapes like this ever since then.

The slightly scarey and funny story of the last two days was Momo's tracking of a turkey in the park woods. (For all the possible jokes about bird-dogs in New York City, Momo has had his first whiffs of pheasant and woodock in our woods. His first point at four months old was on a turkey back up in Maine.) He was with my wife who says that he got the scent, began to alternate points and a slow creep forward, when all of a sudden she saw a turkey ahead of him. The turkey then realised His Majesty only had a slight weight advantage and charged him before taking off into a tree. Needless to say he was a bit surprised! Turkeys, like herons, also seem to be perfect evidence for the 'miracle' of flight, apparently.

On a different note:
One of the traditional fine-tuning warm-ups for the Tour de France, the Dauphiné Libéré, begins this morning (EST). A mini-tour of sorts it features time-trials, sprints, and some beefy climbs over the course of its week. Alejandro Valverde will be there, as will the mercurial Kazakhstanis, Alexander Vinokourov and Andrei Kashechkin. Hopefully we'll get to see if either Levi Leipheimer or Tom Danielson of Discovery has what it takes to be more than a great support rider, but a team leader in their own right. Or maybe Cadel Evans will suddenly materialise as more than just a great top-10 rider, or Denis Menchov... all very exciting really.