Au Revoir Team Time Trials and the Prologue

The Tour De France is messing up in a lot of ways this year.  It really is a sad sad thing.  I guess I did not realize that there has been so many changes with my small amount of time off of the bike.  But the Tour De France no longer carries a Prologue OR a Team Time Trial?  What the hell??  The Tour of Georgia has a team time trial!!!
My g.f asked which stages I wanted to watch while we are in France for two weeks.  And like an idiot i said, I don't really care as long as I get to see the team time trial... I knew that they had not done it last year.  And we all know that they had rid it from the tour because of Lance Armstrong, but they are continuing this crazy tradition? 
Speaking of tradition, this is the exact reason that they should NOT get rid of what makes the Tour De France so beautiful!  Team Time Trials are a story in motion!  The High speeds!  The aero dynamic bikes!  The TEAM efforts! The colors! and the never ending awws as a whole team acting as one with a single goal pass by us on television or in person with one blur, tossed to the side like it never existed!?!?
I truly hope that the French learn that this is a huge mistake and eventually add it back to the Tour De France knowing the importance of it's very own tradition.
It's traditions like this that attracts people like us to the sport in the first place.  An average pay check for a pro cyclists is 30,000 a year, while a mascot for a pro football team makes 45,000 a year.  Does it sounds fair?  NO! But one individual is living out their dream, and we are living vicariously through them.  I truly feel that concepts like this that attracts us to the sport in the first place.
I am still going to go to France, I am still going to love every single moment of it, and I am still going to take a million and one pictures!  But these are a few sad but true topics that I felt I needed to mention!