"It feels like the end of something," Dad said as we left my parents' apartment this morning after the final stage of Le Tour.

I remember when this started. It was the first Saturday in July 1999, and I was home alone watching a network TV feed of the opening day time trial at Puy du Fou, and this brash kid who'd come back from cancer offered us a surprising moment of hope. I cried.

This morning I sat with the two cancer survivors closest to me as the boys lapped the Champs Élysées, and I didn't much think about cancer, which is OK. It is, after all, a bike race:

So how 'bout that Vinokourov? Man he's fun to watch.