Tweets of the week: The Tour de France visits Singapore, happy birthday Chris Lawless, and cyclists get scary

I recently finished the novel Ti Amo by Hanne Ørstavik. It is a short tale of love and loss, of a woman coping with the imminent loss of her husband to cancer, expertly written, and sad. It would be trite to compare this with the end of the cycling season for the virtue of a round up of social media posts on a Friday afternoon, and yet here I am.

One is aware that the road cycling season is drifting away from a great distance, from as soon as the World Championships is on the horizon, and yet it is always difficult to process, to accept, to deal with it. One tries to cling onto it, to watch Paris-Tours or the start of the cyclocross season and pretend that it isn't happening, that there really is a bit of a wasteland until we get to the Tour Down Under. There might be things to keep you occupied in that time, whether it's the Track Champions League or muddy riding in Belgium, but it doesn't feel quite right.

Just as the narrator of Ti Amo, I find new situation hard to adjust to, even if the grief doesn't last forever. However, in the blink of the eye, we will be back in the thick of racing, working out early season form at the UAE Tour or getting really into the Challenge Mallorca, so I shouldn't be too concerned.

In the meantime, here are some choice cuts of tweets and Instagram posts to keep you going this Friday; maybe you could print them out and burn them for fuel, if you're one of those hardy types still refusing to put your heating on.

Read Ti Amo by the way! It's good!

1. Team BikeExchange have gone all out for their Halloween content, Christopher Ghoul-Jensen a particular favourite

2. Meanwhile, the SD Worx Halloween party was actually scary. Whenever I close my eyes, I now see scary clown Lonneke Uneken. Terrifying

3. It does not get more on brand for Geraint Thomas and Luke Rowe to record an episode of their podcast inside an Ineos Grenadier, the vanity-project car which still isn't really available. Super cool! CyclingTips (opens in new tab) did a good write up of where the massive car is at

4. Human Powered Health seem to have gone mad, apparently this is something to do with a made up world that has gone viral online? I feel old

5. Movistar take to Twitter to rebut rumours. Exciting times to be a social media admin

6. We discussed who would be good at tandem cycling during the Tour de France. What we never envisaged was a mixed tandem team, as Pfeiffer Georgi and Ben Turner are displaying here - the star couple would probably do pretty well, although maybe not in heels

7. For the not-deeply-online of you out there, the affable Dan Martin and the equally affable Tadej Pogačar have been engaged in a kind of faux-Twitter spat for some time now. Good to see they still get on in real life

8. British Cycling suggest going as a cyclo-cross rider for Halloween, but perhaps a Shell oil executive might be a better fit? 

9. The Tour de France Singapore Criterium: absolutely, definitely a completely fair and objectively ordinary race where Jonas Vingegaard sprinted to victory on a flat course. Chris Froome and Vincenzo Nibali on the podium too? Why not

10. The real story at Singapore, though, were some of the fun outfits and activities. In this clip, Alejandro Valverde looks like he's ready to retire 

11. Poor Wout van Aert, who was cruelly decapitated after he won the Amstel Gold Race in 2021. Annemiek van Vleuten is seen laughing at his misfortune

12. Whooooo remembers Chris Lawless? TotalEnergies just about do, with this half-hearted birthday tweet. Happy birthday Chris

13. Finally, if I were Pauliena Rooijakkers or Kasia Niewiadoma, my new directeur sportif wouldn't exactly fill me with confidence