You’ve probably already read it in the tabloids: Lance Armstrong and his girlfriend Anna Hansen are expecting a baby.  Blah, blah, blah.

What caught my attention is the photo of her biking (right) looks very familiar.  It’s from the Leadville Trail 100 mountain bike race in Colorado.  She’s just finished the Boulevard and is about to turn onto Sixth Avenue for the finishing stretch.

And she finished just 9 minutes under 12 hour cutoff to earn a Leadville buckle.  That’s impressive, especially for an apparent first attempt.

Singlespeed mountain bike racing was fun until the fast guys figured it out.  We need a new racing fad and this could be it.  Who’s in?

I’d love to see some penny farthings on a car bike rack with a race number on the bike.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsanHNYZA0Q

If you need a good dose of holiday spirit, I recommend the Miss Cass Pageant without hesitation.

The 14th Annual Miss Cass Pageant was on Saturday and the theme was “Grease”.  The event is run by the Cass Community Social Services and the participants are all developmentally disabled.  The Free Press ran an article about this year’s show and there’s an excellent video from 2003’s pageant on YouTube (see below.)

Photos from the pageant are on-line, but you really need to see the show live.

There was still some room in the pews, but their hope is to eventually outgrow the Cass Community United Methodist Church Sanctuary.

Afterward, we wandered through Midtown’s Noel Night, which was just packed with people despite the cold weather.

He headed downtown this morning for the Detroit Thanksgiving Day Parade.  What fun!

We parked in the shadow the Masonic Temple and walked the Woodward parade route to Campus Martius, where we met up with friends.

Feeling the chill, we ducked inside of Foran’s for a Bushmill’s warm up.  It was somewhat sad cheering as Santa’s float passed by from a bar stool.

On the trek back to the car, we were befriended in the Corridor by a homeless man named James.  He asked if we could buy him a drumstick of chicken to eat, so we stopped into a corner store.  They were out of drumsticks so we bought him a half-dozen wings with hot sauce.

He was pretty jazzed to begin with but more so with the food in hand.

Link: Photos from the parade

Karen and I headed Downtown for another fun event: the tree lighting at Campus Martius.

We started the evening by quickly dropping into D’Mongo’s on Griswold.  It’s a quirky, retro, funky place that’s worth a visit.  They’re only open on Fridays this time of the year, but open on Saturdays during the summer.

We ventured down to Campus Martius, stood around for some singing and skating performances, then cheered as Mayor Cockrel lit the huge tree.

Next, worked our way over to Foran’s to split a couple beers and fish & chips.  We jumped next door to Eph’s, which is now open in the evenings – Woo hoo.  We visited with Bil Lusa who was holding his 5-day old son Spencer and John Gannon who gave us the inside scoop on the deli scene.

On the way back to the car, we chatted with Chuck Gadica and Josh at the Urban Bean.

It was a cheery evening downtown.

The Detroit News has coverage of the event as well.