Whew. Long couple days in the velo-barrel. Sorry about the radio silence, but I had to save my dwindling supply of japes for the paying customers. Trying to wrap up a column for Bicycle Retailer today I looked nearly as grim as Big Tex did going backwards on the Alpi di Suisi.
Clusterfuckery follows this guy like flies trailing a garbage scow. First it was the hoopla over finding a lever to get him into the Gila; now it’s a team-kit change six days into the Giro. The UCI must love seeing his name pop up on the old caller ID.
Big Tex aside, I’ve been having a fine old time watching the Giro online at Universal Sports. It’s amazing how we all demand Enterprise-class flat-panel monitors in the living room for watching dumb-ass sitcoms that rework “The Honeymooners” for the umpteenth time, yet quickly adapt to watching a complicated bike race unfold on a laptop. The video is good, much better than cycling.tv, and it’s free, too. There’s also a pay version, which reminds me of the TourTracker deal the Amgen Tour of California provided, but the gratis model suits me and my budget just fine.
Mad Blog Media 
Well if you are going to have a bad year in racing then better, I guess, at the end of your career than the beginning or middle.
The team kit change, does that mean Armstrong (it is OK again to use his name right?) will stop wearing black socks?
JB: Lance, I gotta a great deal for you…
LA: Listening…
JB: You’re going to race again…
LA: Yeah…
JB: And I got a great team around you…
LA: Still listening…
JB: And you’ll promote cancer awareness…
LA: Sounds good so far…
JB: And the Kazakhstan Tourist Bureau will be writing the checks…
LA: Click.
Why do super-famous celebs morph from just mostly ego-centric and asshole-y in their younger years to hyper-egotistic and just plain nuts in their later years? Somehow LA is beginning to remind me a lot of, ah, whatshisname, the Jesus guy… oh, Mel Gibson. They should start a club, and invite Chuck Norris, Charlton Heston, and Britney Spears to join. Yes, Spears is young, but given the age at which she started the whole famous thing…
I can’t wait to see good old Colorado nice guy Dave Wiens destroy Lance in the Leadville this year. Hooray for understated and genuinely nice heroes!
Hey, any word on Lance’s Colorado Love Child? Should be due soon, yes? This should make Cheryl Crowe feel extra special since Lance called out her biological clock as the reason they split up.
This Universal Sports free coverage is awesome. Dish Network doesn’t carry Universal Sports, so I just watch it on my desktop in the a.m. until it’s time to head out to work. I’m quite spoiled with it.
I’m assuming the new team sponsorship for Astana will be Mellow Johnny’s/The Armstrong Institute for the Advancement of All Things Armstrong. I sure hope Lance’s pockets are really, really deep. We know his ego is.
You know, the constant Lance bashing is getting kinda old. Reminds me of the zen parable of the old monk and the young monk who come across a lovely young woman trying to cross a stream. The old monk carries her on his back through the water to the other side and the monks continue on their way. The miles go by, and finally the young monk says “How could you touch the woman and carry her across the stream?” And the old monk replies, “I set her down on the other side. Why are you still carying her?” In other words, all this bother is in your own heads guys.
MD, one post and five comments hardly qualify as Lance-bashing. Zen also teaches us to “be completely alert; never neglectful, never indulgent,” and anyone who’s following that dictum is bound to notice that Mr. Armstrong is getting a good deal more positive attention than his recent racing résumé warrants. He’s a big boy; he can stand the pitiful outburst of BTUs from this little corner of the velo-universe.
MD,
Oh, agreed. I’ll set him down when I’m good and ready. For now, my LA-oriented comments are a combination of healthy contrarianism, boredom, and genuine dislike of both his public persona and what I know of his private personality (from several friends who work on the road side rather than my dirty side of the sport). Keeps things interesting… otherwise all we hear is over-valued LA drama stories and the screeching of his fawning chamois-sniffers. If I’m going to check VN once in a while, I’m going to read the adoration files – so I may as well throw some antidote out there, at least until I come up with something better to do with my off hours here in Deutschland.
LA being part of our sport is fine – I just don’t like him (or anyone) being The Face of cycling to the general American public. Where’s the public recognition for, say, Todd Wells? Or Adam Craig? Or Georgia Gould? Mary McConneloug? (All MTB Olympians, in case you don’t know either.) Hell, even Levi’s name doesn’t have any recognition factor to your average Fred. Lance does. And Lance is a washed-up celeb, not a current top cyclist. Tying cycling so tightly to one name, one face, especially one on the long, inevitable downhill slide, is akin to tying something you care about to a rock and tossing it in a lake. As Lance goes, so does the American public’s awareness of cycling, and that, MD, is a problem.
What do you think?
Joey, Joey, Joey, don’t you know Chuck Norris is so cool that when he walks to the refrigerator to get a beer, the door opens by itself just as a means of self preservation? Or when he rides a bike, the bike goes because Chuck Norris is on it? Or that if Chuck Norris was in your club, he would be the club?
Don’t besmirch Chuck Norris wirh associations of Heston, Spears and Tex….that’s offensive to Chuck Norris.
(Man, I’ve been waiting to post a “Chuck Norris” response for days no thanks to the comments being down)
MD,
Would you rather the post was NOT about LA? Hating and not liking are two completely different things. I hate close minded fools, but I dislike riding in the rain. I hate arrogant bike geeks, but I dislike cauliflower. I hate cyclists who fail to stop at stop signs, but I dislike getting mad about it.
In other words, I might not like LA as a person, but I can respect him as a bike racer. I might hate the ego that he seems to have developed over the past decade, but I can dislike his uber-domination of one bike race in July at the exclusion of all other bike races.
But what I hate most of all is that to read, see, hear or absorb ANY article in the news about cycling I am more than likely going to have to hear about Lance Armstrong – even if he has no passing need to be mentioned.
I dislike the fact that this whole “Lance bashing” is even an issue. As Patrick said above, “he’s a big boy” so let him be a hater, Zen master, defender of his faith, whatever it is that he needs to be. Honestly I think he finds it humorous that so much is sadi about him. As any PR pro will tell you: “any news is good news.”
When LA shows up for a bike race in France, the French will tremble in fear because Chuck Norris is right behind him….