Oh Shit!
I know "Leaping Lanka" is sometimes an outlet for some real obscure shit (i.e. yoga, Roland Barthes, Axl Rose, PCP, constant and worrying references to muesli, comic books and crack-cocaine), but I'm so sparked on the news that Ivan Basso has left CSC.

Armstrizza and the boys at Disco better step up to the plate with a blank check or I will be sorely vexed. I mean really, you're gonna put Leipheimer on as your number-one stage racer?

I know road racing (on velocipedes, you heathens) rates just below organized professional booger-flicking in the sports consciousness of the American public, but trust me, Ivan drops nothing but hammers on the bike, and you should see the man climb! Ah, it'd bring a tear to your eye. In fact, I'm getting a tear in my eye right now thinking about stage 12 in the '04 Tour de France, a mountain stage in the Pyrenees, when Ivan, looking minty-fresh, edged past Lance for the stage win.

(Of course, Lance crushed Ivan several stages later by passing him — passing him! — while climbing up Alpe d'Huez during the individual time trial. But I digress.)

You may now return to your favored sports, Americans. These sports undoubtedly involve watching cavemen lining up and hitting each other in between commercials, watching grown men stand around on grass fields, scratching their balls and spitting tobacco as thousands of people in the stands fall asleep, or else watching rednecks speed around an oval for the upteenth time.