70 The Church Of Lance Armstrong

Over the past couple of years, I have been sort of a silent surveyor of the emotions people have for Lance Armstrong. You need not go to Austin, Texas for this privilege. Its right here on the internet.

While Mr. Armstrong's Twitter account is bludgeoning with over 1.5 million followers, fierce wars are being waged in forums, blogs, news websites, sports commentaries, opinion columns and even video sites like Youtube and Metacafe. I wonder if the numbers of people and the sheer amount of time spent/wasted in these 'word battles' make any sense to a casual observer at all.

To give you a small perspective, take Yahoo Sports for example. On stories such as this one in YS, the number of comments from people who were interested in trading and exchanging the war of words on the topic of who was right and who was wrong is easily over 1900. Yes, you read right. One thousand nine hundred comments.

Now, if you go through such comments like you slowly flip the pages of a fat book, you can sort of arrive at a general trend of what people are thinking. This trend has been overwhelming many websites. People are all thinking in this direction. Its the number ONE herd attitude that has been behind the persona of Armstrong.

If you have read these comments or have experience in dealing with them, much of them hold one underlying thought process, which may be associated with a fallacy of the human mind. Its a cognitive bias and I talk a little about it towards the end of this post.

I won't call out anyone's specific comments, but lets see what that dominant herd attitude is...put in my own words, in a clean and decent fashion, without tears, yells, screaming or inappropriate language :

"I'm a huge fan of this athlete and you sir, are wrong if you aren't. If one is a survivor of a disease that has touched many, has achieved a great athletic feat in sports successive times and has managed to bring huge amounts of recognition for the sport and money along with it, that person is simply too great and should be automatically immune from criticism or have the privilege of being reserved from criticism in spite of shoddy behavior. This is because the sum of the parts are excessively good even though the individual constituent parts maybe bad, as you say. You are simply jealous of someone else's success."

Let's substitute the appropriate words for the general terms :

this athlete = Lance Armstrong
disease that has touched many = Cancer
recognition for the sport = recognition for cycling

This is the underlying idea. Simple.

Now I don't know if there are any readers of my blog out there who are neutral about this Armstrong phenomena or entirely against his attitude. But if you are, you know that the above sentences are what is being fed down your throat over and over again. It has been blended like juice in many forms and has different variations but the recipe is the same. It doesn't matter how much scholarly criticism you round up against the figure of Armstrong. It doesn't matter which objective sources of information you cite for your arguments. You will get the same juice from the 'followers' to drink.

This is the herd behavior because it also rubs on other people like a virus and soon, they all begin to think alike, even though they have not done their own research on who they are voicing for. Its like fashion. Today something new comes along, quick start believing in it. The blind fanaticism then runs like a pandemic.

Now it doesn't take much to see that this blind fanaticism over one man has obviously taken religious proportions. And there are consequences if you don't follow.

Many of Lance's detractors may have come across a certain stigma in the public. What is stigma? It is a state of being discredited or rejected in society. And here's the cause of that stigma : If you don't like Lance Armstrong in your circle of friends or any group of people, then its likely you're somehow viewed as not being religious. You don't fit in the herd. There must be something wrong in your head.

The religion here is that of supporting the fight against cancer through the faith and and a Herculean worship towards Lance Armstrong. It is a religion because its followers are bound by its ideals and to thinking, talking and having faith in the powers of a human demigod, a personality behind this disease, all the time. You are not to criticize, only support no matter what the circumstances.

To signify you are part of this loyal cult, you will engage in exclusive practices such as wearing yellow and black, an elastane wristband, donating lots of money to his charity, taking part in his mega charity rides, all this while carrying high the torch of the day the demigod survived cancer. You may even build a shrine for him, right in the neighborhood gym or at the local bike shop where you will adorn the walls with lots of pictures of his face or his sweaty body riding a bicycle.

While all this is going on, the demigod high the throne of the food chain being adored, loves the adoration so much that he becomes a full time narcissist, converting the adorers into money and further adoration. Its a perpetual cycle. If he can't do this himself, there are others on the royal bandwagon to help in the process. They then take a share of the pie too. $$$ !

Whether you consider this religion good or bad is up to you, but it is a cult considering the size of the adulation, the inflated fascination towards one individual and the sheer number of his followers.

If you're a detractor of the religion, you could be easily viewed not only as a detractor of the god, but as an atheist to this goal, this ideal, this philosophy of the fight against cancer. You don't recognize that he came back from the dead, you don't recognize that he is the savior, you don't recognize that he dominated in a sport after he resurrected, you don't recognize that he has the power to save people from death because of his fame and power. You may not even recognize what cancer is!

Now sit back and think. Which other great story has a parallel to the story of Lance. Maybe not literally, but still? Jesus Christ rose from the dead, 3 days after He was crucified. And then He promised He would return to save the world and provide salvation to those who believe. You're a Christian if you believe in Him and have a one to one relationship with Him, if you believe in what he can do for you. Billions believe in his power to heal and to work miracles in their life or anyone's life.

The name of Christ has been associated with one of the greatest victories in the history of human civilization. It has been associated with the greatest battle yet to come. It is one of the holiest of the holy names. Yet, lets not forget that even such a revered individual and prophet such as Jesus Christ has not been immune to criticism. The Holy Bible has been turned upside down and inspected with the greatest precision and critical eye. Detractors, such as Richard Dawkins, are celebrities today. Its a little ironic, but he happens to have his own big following.

If millions believe that Jesus has the power to forgive your sins, protect or cure you and fight evil, are you looked upon as a bad person if you fight Jesus and his followers? What gives you the monopoly to think that Jack is wrong and morally a bad person if he does not follow what you believe?

In other words, if Jesus Christ and the Bible can be debated in a sound manner as is happening in many educated circles today, why not Lance Armstrong?

Well. Uh-oh. It doesn't work that way. In fact, if you do the same against Lance Armstrong, you're a jerk, a dick, a piece of shit, someone who doesn't value life or success and is a hater for the fight against cancer.

Really? Never has been the word 'hater' so overused and out of context. Who talked anything about cancer here? We're talking about the man. We're talking about his personality. We're talking about his wrongdoings and serious misdemeanors that need a place for focused, intelligent discussion.

Nope. Not allowed. ACCESS DENIED. We will delete your comment. Our management will have you banned. He fought cancer, he's a cancer survivor. He won the Tour de France 7 times. Sorry, we believe in him and We're Holier Than Thou. You will hereby be an outcast.

Sadly, when celebrities and their egos attain larger than life proportions, so do the fallacies in the minds of their followers who engage in this hero worship, a cult phenomena. It is largely termed as cognitive bias. Confirmation bias is a type of cognitive bias. This refers to a form of selective thinking that focuses on evidence that supports what believers already believe while ignoring evidence that refutes their beliefs. You can see it in all comments on all websites in support of Lance Armstrong. This will be a wonderful terrain for those of you interested in social psychology experiments. You can see it happening from a distance. You can study it. But you'll be wasting your time if you enter the Church and question its belief system.

All Hell will then break loose. Run for your life.

I suspect that the Church of Lance Armstrong was founded on the day he rose from death and defeated cancer. It is very real, and it is here to stay for a very very long time. Yet, thousands of people all over the world fight the disease with little fanfare and emerge as survivors. Who really gives a fish about them?

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69 The Alberto Contador You May Not Know

Here are some few items of interest you may not have known about our era's champion of pro cycling, that kid from Pinto named Alberto Contador. I gleaned them from my range of readings. I'm very sorry that most of you won't find this in the western media here as most are busy chanting for Armstrong or writing the 200th biography on him that we hardly need on Amazon.com.

1. Brotherly Love : Alberto Contador became a cyclist through his elder brother, Fran Contador. When Fran passed his Spanish entrance exams at school, his parents bought him a new bicycle. The old one, an iron Orbea that weighed like a tanker, was passed onto the scrawny little Alberto, who couldn't have complained that he now had a bicycle as well.

Riding with Fran and his friends through the wind swept corridors of Pinto, Alberto would always keep up with the group on that heavy bike, even though the wind blew his tracksuit top open like a parachute. Now Fran enjoys being his champion brother's main PR guy, secretary and financial manager. When he's not busy, Fran himself defends the family name in the Nissan Titan Desert across the scorching sands of Morocco. It is also known as the toughest MTB Marathon in the world.

2. First Team : Javier Fernández, who signed the teenage Contador up for the neighborhood team of Embajadores, said the following to El Pais about the young rider, "He was about 15 the first time I saw him, with that iron bike, which was completely outdated. He had a natural talent and strength, and broke away from the pack in a race that included Madrid's best young cyclists. It was obvious he had no technique, but also that he wanted to be a cyclist. Alberto had nothing. His parents couldn't even go with him to the races because they had to stay with his younger brother Raúl, who has suffered from brain damage since he was a child. Raul was always in his wheelchair."

The lack of money motivated Contador to value the little things he had in life. Whenever he did save up some money, he would spend it on new equipment to improve himself.

3. Brain Condition : Contador missed his first Tour de France due to an aneurysm in 2004, which, just two months before the race, almost killed him. While racing in the Tour of Asturias, he collapsed to the ground almost like Tom Simpson with severe convulsions. Doctors said that he had a congenital problem with an artery in his brain and they called it cerebral cavernoma. This balloon like bulge of the blood vessel can kill you if it ruptures, as it causes subarachnoid hemorrhage. Pathologically, it is red to purple in colour, appearing as a raspberry in the brain. There's a video here of a crash early in his career which shows him having convulsions as he lies on the road.

He underwent immediate surgery to prevent irreversible brain damage and this event has permanently marked him through a large scar and titanium plates on his head. How he survived the face of death is extraordinary, leave alone winning the Triple Crown of cycling and his 2nd Tour de France this year.

Contador has no special memories from that day, the coup de grâce for that entire season. But when asked, he does recall that the people who first attended to him on the road where he lay unconscious laid him on his back, a complete mistake as he could have swallowed his tongue and choked to death.

When doctors told him that he could start cycling again, on November 27 2004, it was 3 degrees and raining buckets outside. Yet. he still picked his bike and went out to train with new life because it felt like a privilege when before he might have been lazy to ride because of bad weather.

4. Health (A Ticking Timebomb?) : The internal scar left in his head makes that area of his brain so hypersensitive that he often has epileptic fits. Contador takes medication daily to prevent those fits, and pays regular visits to the neurologist. Pedro Celaya, the doctor at his past team Discovery reported that as he remembers, Contador was absolutely obsessed with not doing anything strange about his health.

Perhaps Lemond and other Contador grillers in the press may like to think twice about "firing" pressuring questions at this youngster in front of cameras and the whole world. Perhaps this is the reason why he tries to avoid needless questions that try to take his mind off racing. He remembers hospital too well and does not want to end up there again.

Meanwhile, ignorance about his condition among his detractors abound and they chose to do things such as labeling him a "doper" or asking him to account for error prone "VO2 max" calculations when he had a race to take care of. Others, such as Armstrong and Bruyneel, were happily applying both psychological and political pressure on him through means of Twitter propaganda and press media. An astute observer will have noticed that these two individuals, with the help of media, were trying to manufacture a certain tension out of the team, while Contador was coolly trying to save the situation by reporting back that everything was quiet, friendly and normal at the dinner table and that the ambiance in the team was very good. Is it too hard to guess certain elements around him were trying to mentally break him from the inside while he was trying to concentrate on his career? It didn't work as planned, although Contador stated several times that this year's Tour was very difficult mentally for him.

5. Wins, Riding And Attacking Style : Contador is an all-rounder. He has been a proven time trialist. He was Spanish Time Trial champion in the under-23 category in 2002 and in this year again. Plenty of other ITT wins range in between. He has represented Spain at the Beijing Olympics in the ITT and became fourth. He has nearly 50 professional wins, so he has plenty of experience and wins to prove it.

Consider this : He is aged just 26 and has won 3 grand tours in succession, plus a second Tour de France this year already. One more Tour win puts him in company with Bobet, Thys and Lemond, all legends with 3 Tour de France wins. He's also one of only 5 riders in history to have won the Triple Crown of cycling (all 3 Grand Tours) in his career thus far. In contrast, Lance Armstrong at age 26 (1997) did not have a single grand tour overall victory in his belt, instead he had two stage wins in two different Tours and was UCI world champion in 1993. Armstrong was in his 30's when he matched the number of grand tour wins Alberto has now. Armstrong has not won the Giro d'Italia nor the Vuelta a Espana, the other two Grand Tours apart from the Tour de France.

Contador is dark skinned and thick skinned, with long legs and a skinny upper body. He has a high level of muscular strength and endurance, while offering little frontal area for aerodynamics. He has been observed by Phil Liggett and others to time trial with similar abilities of Miguel Indurain.


Contador seems to launch his best attacks when he knows there’s a headwind and he can get five or six meters of gap between him and rivals. He snaps forward to try and break another rider's rhythm. Then he steps on the gas and continues to drive solo at a very high pace on the climb. Something about his effortless cadence up the climb just tends to psychologically dampen the riders behind him even more. Intelligent people on Science of Sport have calculated his vertical ascending speeds up mountains and the numbers that come out are like nothing the Tour de France or any other cycling event has ever seen before. Armstrong agreed in the press in the final days of the Tour that even he in his prime may not have been able to match the performance of Contador.

Contador loves to attack at the right moment and he trains to keep his speed up for a long periods of time. His rapid acceleration up climbs is virtually unmatched. The best battle to date where this was displayed was the man-to-man, balls to the wall racing between him and Michael Rasmussen on the slopes of the Col de Peyresourde in July 2007. This also happens to be his favorite climb.


Contador keeps his focus on the Tour, but unlike Armstrong, he keeps sights on wins in lots of races throughout the calender. He really enjoys his racing. He has also told the press that he would like to win one day classics in future.

6. Income : How much does Contador earn? Well, for the 2007 Tour de France winner's prize, he received an on-the-spot 600,000 dollars. Add to that similar amounts for the other three subsequent Grand Tours, myriad endorsement deals (eg, Sidi), contracts worth a million or two and air time on tv shows and all that...and you would bet he could buy a lot of fancy bike parts, or let his fiance pick two, maybe three designer handbags on her next mall visit. Or maybe he would like to help in treating his physically challenged younger brother? Whatever he decides to do, he has enough stash to repair all his flat tires with Euro bills for a long time.

7. Love life : Alberto goes out with a 23 year old, slim brunette named Macarena. She is a staple in Alberto’s lifelong gang of friends. She was fifteen when she met Alberto, who was seventeen. Nine years later they’re still together and now frequently travels to see him race and win the big ones.


Folks from Pinto are ordinary people who keep their friends and have faith in them. This concept has lost its meaning in America.


8. Hobbies : Contador loves hunting in his spare time. He has a fascination for birds, keeping personally bred canaries and goldfinches at home. He is reportedly careless about organizing his room and personal things but loves to clean his bike and keep it in great condition. Apart from cycling, he also likes to play soccer.

Contador has a blog. He has also been profiled by several of his fans who have seen him in person to be a very careful writer. He takes great care and exhibits a need for perfection to sign an autograph or write a few words for a fan.

It must also be mentioned that he loves hanging out the beach.


Which comes to the now famous tale : he was enjoying his vacation on a beach in Cadiz, Spain last year when he got a call on his phone just 5 days in advance to go and ride his bike in the grueling 3 week Giro d'Italia. He wasn't even in his peak form and had hardly touched the bike during that vacation. It turned out he didn't just ride that bike race. He took the title along too for a few memories.

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14 'Decommisioned' Bicycles & Their Waste Stream

Keeping in with our theme of spills, crashes, injuries and utter turmoil, it has always struck me as to what people do with their destroyed carbon fiber bikes after a crash. Do they trash it in the dumpster? Do they try their best and send it somewhere for a repair? Do they salvage some parts and try to use them in a different application and setting? What would you do?

This blog has shown you a number of instances in the past where bikes and bicycle components have failed. Now often there is a legitimate reason for these occurrences which I don't want to go into. But what happens afterward? What do you do with this pile of seemingly junk metal and carbon fiber?

Recently, a reader and fan of this blog - Anthony Hendrickson, with Materials & Process Engineering at Boeing Rotorcraft Systems, sent me a photo of his friend's high end Pinarello. This rider went into a turn about three wide at speed and got pushed to the outside. He wound up going into a ditch/gully running parallel to the road and the bike just broke into two pieces. Take a look :


If something like this happened to a professional bike rider, he would of course get replaced immediately with a new one. The rest of us in the world may not always have this luxury. But as bike riders, we don't want to sit without a bike for long. Eventually, the money will come and we all will get a new bike, somehow. What happens to the old one?

If it is indeed decided that it should be disposed of, is there any possibility for carbon fiber to be recycled? This is an interesting subject because it turns out it isn't so easy to do this. I have captured two different thought processes when it comes to carbon fiber as a "clean" and recyclable material for the environment. I think they will interest you because most of us call ourselves 'clean' to the environment and fans of sustainable sports and transportation. But is that really true?

A. Repairing, Reusing And Recycling Disadvantages : "Carbon fiber falls short for three strategies in the field of waste reduction - Repair, Reuse, Recycle. Repairing a carbon fiber frame often requires more expertise and time than the frame is actually worth; if it can be repaired at all. Reusing carbon fiber tubes similarly requires the same advanced skills and technology to use them for some other function. Recycling it into its component parts may be feasible in the future, but the environmental and energy ramifications of that are unknown. Carbon fiber is one of those “monstrous hybrids” the Cradle to Cradle authors deplore. When you combine organic elements with inorganic elements you often create materials that don’t break down and can cause serious problems to living systems. Carbon fiber isn’t nearly as bad as say, dioxin, but it’s still a hybrid, and the authors argue that organic nutrients and “technological nutrients” need to be kept separate." - Admin, Bicycling Is Better

Now here's an opposite viewpoint, shedding a more positive light on carbon fiber's prospects for recycling.

B. Thermal Decomposition Possibilities : "When it is time to decommission CFRPs they cannot be melted down in air like many metals. When free of vinyl (PVC or polyvinyl chloride) and other halogenated polymers, CFRPs can be thermally decomposed via thermal depolymerization in an oxygen free environment. This can be accomplished in a refinery in a one-step process. Capture and reuse of the carbon and monomers is then possible. CFRPs can also be milled or shredded at low temperature to reclaim the carbon fiber, however this process shortens the fibers dramatically. Just as with downcycled paper, the shortened fibers cause the recycled material to be weaker than the original material. There are still many industrial applications that do not need the strength of full-length carbon fiber reinforcement. For example, chopped reclaimed carbon fiber can be used in consumer electronics, such as laptops. It provides excellent reinforcement of the polymers used even if it lacks the strength-to-weight ratio of an aerospace component." - Wikipedia entry on CFRP's.


In light of these two statements, do you think there's a distinct possibility that carbon fiber from our trashed bicycles could be recycled and reused, or is the technology still catching up with us? Is the bicycle industry studying solutions to make this happen, or do they really want to take opportunity of this 'repair and reuse' handicap? That would mean more sales for them in terms of new bikes and equipment, so why should they bother, eh?

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71 Was It Jens Voigt's Steerer Tube? [NOPE]

Photo Courtesy : Graham Watson

Rumors are flying out left and right that the certain "something in the road" that caused Jens Voigt to crash on the final descent in today's stage was infact not on the road but on his bike. His steerer tube snapped or so, it seems. I have no clue. Now I have immense respect for Jens as a bike rider and like many around the world, was absolutely horrified at the crash. According to some of the official doctors at the Tour, his main injuries seem to be mostly all around the face. We can't tell for sure what he's broken until the scan results come out from Grenoble, but suffice to say - Jens' Tour is over. Let's focus a moment on what happened to the bike, if that's what caused this mess. Does anyone have any clue? Feed any information you have here. We'd all appreciate it. Any of you in France at the moment? Bonjour!

Here's a video, magnified and played in slow-motion courtesy of Sporza. Seeing this makes you doubt that this crash had anything to do with a bike failure. Just keep your focus on the back wheel and then onto Jens' left hand. Check out how he changes his hand position from the hoods to the drops at precisely the wrong time, when the bike had that short 'bounce'. The time frame of importance is between 0:12-0:18 secs.




3 collective observations from me and people who commented :

1) A distinct 'bounce' of the bike as he rides over two different road surfaces, one possibly old and one new. The bike slides out a fraction of a second after this road demarcation, as it comes over the white road surface marking. Whether the white marking was slippery due to motor oil or wet paint is debatable and not factual at this point. The crash happened on the descent near La Rosière and the weather in these alpine areas do get wet. For example, there's a 40% chance of rain at noon there on Wed, July 22.

2) His left hand momentarily lost contact with the handlebars and his body bounced away from the saddle thus losing two critical points of body-bike contact. How often can you stand on a bike with simply a right hand on the drops?

3) I suspect his right hand, which we cannot see, exerted a force on the bars causing the wheel to turn leftward and completely slide out. I think what Jens was trying to do when the bike bounced was to get to the drops as soon as possible to bring the bike to stability. It didn't happen the way he wanted it.

UPDATE :

The most clear picture of the bike's front end yet. Thanks to Luc and others for the pic. Handlebars are intact. Steerer tube ok, yes because the wheel and fork are still attached. Jens does not look good. Right cheekbone fracture and concussion. But no other fatal injuries. Jens is going to love it when he gets up from that hospital bed and reads this.

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6 Tour Of The Highlands

100 Miles
5000 Ft Climbing
7.5-8 hours saddle time

I'd like to report to you that I recently relocated myself, three bikes and little bit of money I have to Rochester, NY. Personal reasons. Now I was overcome emotionally with the move. Having found a climber's paradise in Cattaraugus, where I lived before for a year, this new area sort of first felt like having the urban feel to it, flat and fit for the street smarts. I wondered whether I would ever see valleys and mountains again.

I may have been right about the fact that there is a certain absence of long climbs. But I tell you, the terrain south of Monroe County can be punishing. The relentless rollers provide endless interval training. And if you keep riding your bike southeast, you'll find the great area of the Finger Lakes. If you don't know what it is, consider it New York's answer to the Napa Valley area in California. Simply put, it is NY's biggest wine producing region. And lot of hills out there.

So I decided to check into the region's mysterious landscape, said to have been carved by glacial activity over a long period of time. The agenda was to visit Canandaigua and check out the Lake Canandaigua, the first of the major Finger Lakes. Then I would climb what the locals warned me about - Bopple Hill or L'Alpe de Bopple. The tower of asphalt, gaining 600 feet in just 0.8 miles, would be interesting. They told me that people come from far off places just to ride the damn hill and that it would be a sound achievement if you could simply climb it somehow, leave alone climb it without stepping off your bike. Then I would visit the little town of Hanoeye and also hang out at the beach in front of Lake Hanoeye. But to get there I would have to take some pretty steep valley roads. After all this adventure, I would have to find myself back home somehow (which I did).

Enjoy the pics of the highlands in the Finger Lakes valley. Most of the pics were taken while riding, an artform I call cyclophography. If you have any questions, ask away!! Come ride around the Finger Lakes. Its great for cycling.

Click to Zoom In

Check out the wild terrain. I think the only flat section I rode on this day was the run into my new home, at around the 95 mile mark...

Pinnacle Road

Rush-Mendon Road (251)

Mendon-Ionia Road (64)

Passing another cyclist on Rt. 64, towards the town of East Bloomfield. home of the Northern Spy apple.

Bristol Valley Road

Montanye Road to Cheshire

Deuel Road towards Canandaigua Lake

Lake Canandaigua

Seneca Point Road

Check out the hill on the right - Hicks Road

BOPPLE HILL

The run into Bopple Hill

Start climbing. This is it.

1 mile climb (1.6 km) at 11% average gradient. I think it maxes close to 20-23% a little after midpoint. That final steep section runs all the way to the peak. Now to get just get here, you need to climb the 2 mile long Miller Hill, at ave 4-5% gradient. There's a small downhill and a flat section along the Lake (Seneca Point Road) before the official climb starts as you see above.

When you're climbing Bopple, and look behind you, this is what you see. Beautiful.

As always, something ominous at the peak - a grave site! For cyclists?

Bristol

This is the Bristol Ski Resort

Egypt Valley Road

Mosher Road

1.2 mile climb (2km) at 7% average gradient, reaching max of 9-10% in places

Check out the views from Gullick Road

Towards the town of Hanoeye

Hanoeye Lake!

Its a Sunday. Great day to be out at the beach.

The relentless Rt.20A

Route 15A

East River Road entering Henrietta

Crittenden Road back to home sweet home.

MORE RESOURCES :

Climbs Of The Western Finger Lakes
Highlander Cycle Tour - Supported Ride of 100 Miles & 10000 feet of climbing

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0 Winner Of AllModern 'Who..What...Why' Contest

Good morning. I checked in with the jury from AllModern.com who helped me run the competition and looks like we have a winner. They put the total number of comments in a random number generator and apparently, comment#28 has the prize!

The comment belonged to Michael from Seattle. He handles commercial aviation insurance for companies all over the world and enjoys riding bicycles of all kinds be in track, mountain or road. He discovered Cozy Beehive through a link on another site and likes to keep coming back for something different. As winner of the contest, he gets to pick anything in the 100.00 dollar price range from AllModern for his home or office.

Michael, please contact me as soon as possible to further discuss how you would go about this. Email me at cozy(dot)beehive(at)gmail(dot)com. The link to my contact is also on your left side under my handsome face.

A big thank you to everyone who came out and participated and especially to AllModern who provided this opportunity. Just before you go...take a look at the bummer news of the day. A Chinese cyclist on a world tour since 1997, just got deported out of Somalia because he didn't have his visa to enter the country. Make sure when you set off to do something like this, you carry your documents with you. Just because you're a cyclist with an agenda in mind doesn't mean you may enter the borders of another country for free. Just sayin'... :)

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3 Saturday Stupidity V

Good morning.

Our acrobat, a certain Olympics gold medal winner from Switzerland, is seemingly in a breakaway in the Tour de France. Of course, not many took notice as all this happened way behind. A video essay of the day's hard work....behind the peloton :



In other big news, two prominent persons broke their wrists in the world this week.

One came out of plain overuse, as this picture, this picture, this picture and this picture suggests. Isn't it said, "Thou shalt not use that arm in vain"?


The other was borne out of trying arm wrestling with Alberto Contador in order to get under his skin. Il resulto :



Somewhere else, a winner's ordeal didn't get over with the race :


But another one's ordeal ended in rightful emotion.



In the style category, to the ladies --> this is how to dress and walk past a cyclist. The cyclist's appreciation is then administered thus :


AND NOT, I repeat...NOT... like this :




It seems teams are not just limiting the yellow color to kits, bikes and urine bottles.

Yellow food. For God's sake, when will this stop?



The other headlines to grace the pages of the Web is something I get a kick out of. So Hinault says Armstrong will win this year's Tour, not.... The Frenchman, who was once a badger, also says he doesn't give a badger's bottom about Armstrong, adding "There’s also the language barrier, so we’ve never been able to speak man to man."

I thought Armstrong was fluent in French? LOL.

So what's wrong?

Upon closer observation, it seems it's Mr. Hinault who is at fault because he got the Crest toothpaste's punchline all wrong.



See, 'You Can Say Anything With A Smile' becomes true if you'd only......

.....brush your teeth (Ouch...)


Even though they don't talk much to each other, I'd imagine the invisible conversation between both would be a Nike Driven struggle of this order :












FOR OTHER INSTALLMENTS OF STUPIDITY, SEE :

Saturday Stupidity I
Saturday Stupidity II
Saturday Stupidity III
Saturday Stupidity IV
Saturday Stupidity V
Saturday Stupidity VI
Saturday Stupidity VII
Saturday Stupidity IX

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