Steaming Piles of Bike Poo

For a couple of weeks I avoided the intertubes. Lots of work. Lots of riding. I DVRd Le Tour every day and rushed home from work to watch the action. Thank the gods for Digital Video Recorders. Three weeks ago I went out to the Rockies (Breck and Colorado Springs). Needless to say that daily rides above the tree line and ample supplies of liquids from Breckenridge Brewery put me in quite a state. It took me a while to catch up since getting back.

With the Tour over it's time to look at second half of the cycling season. Seems that while the rest of us are thinking ahead to Cross Season and counting the remaining days of summer, The 2009 Tour Champion is acting like an inglorious SOB!

“My relationship with Lance Armstrong is non-existent. Even if he is a great champion, I have never had admiration for him and I never will,” the Contador said. “On this Tour, the days in the hotel were harder than those on the road. It was a delicate situation, very tense, the two riders who had most weight on the team did not have an easy relationship and that puts the rest of the technical staff and the riders in an uncomfortable position.”

I've been a Contador fan for while now. They guy is gifted. Hard not to be impressed by a guy who's won all three grand tours. If you truly appreciate the sport you want to see guys like Contador ride. Guys like him and Armstrong are history makers. Contador is Kobe. Armstrong is Jordan. Get it?

So Contador mouths off like an immature jerk and what's Lance's response? Lance the arrogant prick. Lance, the guy who made fun of Pantani's "elephant ears." Lance, the man the French fans loved to hate?

“Seeing these comments from AC. If I were him I’d drop this drivel and start thanking his team. w/o them, he doesn’t win.”

“hey pistolero, there is no “i” in “team”. what did i say in March? Lots to learn. Restated.”

Sounds like a new Lance. I liked the old Lance. But I like this one even more. There's no "I" in team, Poonta! Look at the photo. Every one of those dudes left it on the road for you. EVERY one of them.



Time to switch gears. How about NO gears?

While I spent a week in Colorado with no bullshit the rest of the world was piling it on. As soon as I started catching up on my email I found a piece of spam in my in box that verified beyond all doubt that the hipster fixie craze is over: Urban Outfitters now sells Fixies.



Buy yourself a pair of skinny jeans, white leather belt and too small print hoodie, then plop a multi color bike in your shopping cart. Check out with your moms Amex and you're good to go. Hip has never so easy, thanks to the folks who brought you used Levis at new prices and flannel shirts only your grandpa would love.

For every stupid idea, though, there's a less obvious good one. Like oatmeal stout ice cream.



My old friend Bernie Chihuahua used to take his Founders Oatmeal Stout with a scoop of Hudsonville Vanilla. Probably just as tasty.

While I was dreaming of beer ice cream and sipping Fat Tire in Colorado Lance Armstrong was teasing hoards of cycling fan boys with a promise to be back next year with a bigger and better team. Looks like it's Team Radioshack!

Yeah, Radioshack! That place your dad bought his CB Radio, and your grandparents bought you that cool set of walkie-talkies back in the day.



While Lance was holding his tongue at The Tour. The little lady fought the good fight and managed to finish 5th at the Breckenridge 100 last week. Altitude sickness, nausea and some screwed up organization didn't get her down. Why is it so hard to properly mark a race course? The week before we were lucky enough to catch two stages of the Breck Epic. An award should be given to the Epic's promoter, who set a great example for how to mark a course: easy to see, bright and frequent signs with arrows at every intersection and turn!

To prove that performance ain't about the bike it's the motor, I submit the LaLond freak bike.

LaLonde's weapon of choice is what he likes to call the "GT Freak Bike", a GT Zaskar hardtail frame with a rigid fork, 29er front wheel, 26 inch rear wheel, and all of it is powered by a singlespeed drivetrain.

Mark LaLond has been crushing the field in the Midwest for years. And he doesn't need a 30 speed $7,000 plastic bike to do it. What's the moral of this story? Save your money, buy a six year old bike on ebay and throw half the components away. Oh yeah, then train your ass off and get fast as hell.