Wow! Has the weather been crappy! Elvis has not been on a bicycle outside since Thanksgiving Day. That ride saw the Boss take two tumbles on ice cover trails, temps in the 20's, and these two guys right on our trail;
They look too young to be wielding a gun that size and what on earth were they doing on a hiking, horseback-riding, bicycling trail? Nothing bad could happen in that mix, could it?
Most of the glorious State of Wisconsin has seen seasonal records for snowfall and February isn't even half done with us (nor is winter itself). All of this has Elvis in an exceptionally cranky mood. How would you feel after looking at the dank basement walls while riding nowhere for three straight months knowing that there could be at least one if not two more months of the same? Every time I hear some lackey earnestly mention that non-sensical, fear-mongering, global warming tripe I want to take that gun away from those two kids and... Well, let's just say Elvis has had better winters. Let me just point this out to you folks that buy into Al Gore's Incomprehensible Truth; the projected deaths caused by a few degree upturn in temperatures pales to the number of deaths attributed to icy roads and bitter cold temperatures. Read HERE how it has affected the homeless, HERE regarding the 25,000 souls lost in the winter of 2007 in England alone, and HERE to learn that cold weather related deaths exceed deaths due to leukemia, liver disease and MURDER combined. So if a person really, and I mean really cared about humanity in general (and homeless in particular), that person would stop worrying about global warming and start considering a move to warmer climes, which, according to the last article linked, would give you a 4-7 percent increase in life expectancy. Warmer temperatures equals longer life spans? Hmm... Why don't the global warmers ever mention that fact?
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Due to all of the indoor riding Elvis has had the opportunity to follow the drug scandal currently enveloping American baseball. It's a lot like the cycling stories except that it's on television. Yesterday was a particularly entertaining day as NY Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens testified before Congress while sitting at the same table as his former trainer who claims to have physical evidence proving that Clemens took human growth hormone and some other crap. Clemens had spent the previous week canvassing members of Congress in an unseeingly manner. Going door-to-door trying to plead his case. It apparently worked as numerous Congresspersons were very sympathetic to Clemons' claims that what he took was vitamin B12, not the other stuff. They also seemed to buy into his claims that the sworn testimony of other baseball players who stated that they knew Clemens was on the juice were simply, "mis-recollecting" when they made those statements. What? That's the kind of thing we hear from the likes of Lance, Tyler and Floyd. Who could have known that Major League Baseball would take the lead of professional cycling.
Similar to many cases in cycling, there is physical evidence that can provide the truth. In the Clemens case it's needles that were used to inject him with HGH. And just like the cycling world there is an awful lot of "Bla, bla, bla", going on when all we need is the lab to take a blood sample from the guy claiming to be innocent and compare it to the evidence. Simple. Oh, that's right -- it would be a violation of human or constitutional rights to take the blood. Leaving us to wonder why guys who go on tours to talk about their innocence never offer to take a simple blood test.
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Astana out of the Tour? It would seem so according to the report HERE. This would leave two of the top three finishers from last year's Tour out of the running. A stunning turn of events indeed. However, if you look past the headline and think about the background maybe it makes sense. The Tour desperately needs a clean race in 2008. With all of the doping problems in the last decade cycling it about to become the laughing stock of professional sports and sponsors are running away as fast as they can. Astana had numerous doping problems last year, most notably one of Elvis' former favorite riders, Alexandre Vinokourov. It turned out to be a team wide problem with the team trying to protect riders even after they were caught. And while the team management has changed since last summer some things remain the same; a Kazakhstan government not overly concerned with drugs in sport, a new manager, Johann Bruyneel who has nurtured far too many dopers, and current riders implicated in drug scandals, '07 Tour winner Alberto Contador, to name just one. Elvis' take is that all of this would be a good thing if it holds out to be true. But with the formal team invitations not due until February 29th and almost five months until the start of the Tour lots of things can change. In the meantime, you can read Astana's reaction HERE. And wasn't Bruyneel the guy who jumped off the Discovery ship because he said that he needed a few years off only to show up a few weeks later at Astana? Maybe the Tour directors don't like guys who lie. Or maybe he'll come up with another one to get Astana in the Tour.
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If you take the phrase, "A dream within a dream" and rearrange the letters, anagram-style, you get, "What am I, a mind reader?". This is the kind of hidden indicator that is essential to a human being's understanding of life. Unfortunately, I have no idea what it means.
Labels: Cycling
