Flying in yesterday I looked down at the suburbs of Paris as the Air France Airbus approached CDG airport. We were only a few thousand feet up by then, and it struck me how similar the landscape below looked to almost any other one in what can loosely be called the "western world." For all the prejudices and habits and convictions of all those people down below, they're far more similar than different and you couldn't tell an ant colony in France from one in Melbourne, or Phoenix. Oh, the roofs may be a different color, the houses long or tall, the playing fields layed out for soccer or baseball, but the grid is strikingly similar, the roads drawn like the familiar lines on the face of someone you know well, houses shoulder-to-shoulder just back from the gray asphalt or pale gravel that leads from one artery to another, water tower to gas station to industrial park.

I was waiting for my bag when I glanced over to the windows and saw a girl in a striking, tres-chic red head scarf waving her arms: MarieJ, our TW poster-of-the-year, who had come to pick me up. No sooner did I step out of customs than she rushed up and said, "You missed it, Djokovic had a real warrior moment today!" She filled me in fully as we rolled down the Peripherique, toward Paris.

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We had dinner in town, at Byzance-Bello, a cozy, Spanish "bodega" style restaurant that has the pleasant ambience of a wine cellar. We had anchovies and pepperonici, and a main course of a Spanish specialty: cured, shaved beef that's a lot like proscuitto, but more lovingly cured and spiced. It came on a three-section platter, and we were advised (as if MarieJ, who's a native of Spain's central plateau, didn't know!) to eat in order - starting with the least spicy portion of beef. She picked a good wine, too. How lucky am I, getting picked up at the airport by a French hottie who knows her Spanish beef (as well as her Spanish beefcake!).

About halfway through the meal, MarieJ's cell phone rang and she answered it. It was Rosangel. Turns out she had missed her Eurostar train back to London, hightailed it to CDG to catch the last flight out to London, and got there just as boarding closed. Now I'm not sure Djokovic's performance, fine as it was, qualifies as a warrior moment - after all, didn't Patience blow a 40-15 lead, serving at 3-4, with a double-fault or two in there? - but Rosangel's sure did. Turns out she had been been at the tournament, and couldn't tear herself away from Rafael Nadal's match. She kept looking at her watch. The court. Her watch. In between, she had time to shoot 657 pictures of Jet Boy's knees. The clock was ticking, the light was failing, but Rosia wasn't - soon, her friend, who was booked on the same train, decided: This is nuts, we're going to miss our train!

So Rosia's friend bloted, Rosia stayed. Blew the train, the plane, and even dinner, for by the time she raced back to Paris from CDG, the the Byzance had closed shop.  But they did manage to find her a bowl of ice cream, we had saved a glass of red wine for her; by the time we left they were putting the chairs up on the table. So Lucy: WMB badge for Rosangel!

Okay everyone, time to watch some tennis and post later. Serena Williams is bombarding Dinara Safina as I sign off.