From our Good News and Bad News Department:

First, the Colorado Supreme Court told the knuckleheads running Black Hawk to stick their bike ban where the sun don’t shine, opining that cyclists have every bit as much right to the road as do busloads of bluehairs itching to flush their Social Security checks down a two-bit casino town’s loos.

Next, not everybody was delighted with the recently concluded world cyclo-cross championships in Kentucky. Take Steve Tilford, for example. Tilly should have every reason to rejoice — after all, he won the Masters 50-54 title — but he’s seething over what he says was the organizers’ failure to provide functional bike-cleaning equipment in what proved to be an incredibly filthy contest.

Now, I have no interest in casino towns. I consider gambling a tax on stupidity, which should be painful, if only in the wallet pocket. But I’m forced to take note when the highwaymen who run these shitholes tell me I can’t pass through unless I’m in an officially approved vehicle. So chapeau to the cyclists who got ticketed and fought the sonsabitches all the way to the Supremes, and won. They should celebrate with a bicycle parade through Black Hawk, the bigger the better.

As for worlds, well, I wasn’t there, but from a distance it looked like a fairly hellish weekend for all concerned, especially the poor sods struggling to keep the rising Ohio River and Beargrass Creek from turning the course into a water park.

That said, having raced nearly all of my “career” as a masters racer, I got used to shabby treatment early on. Masters racers are the equivalent of the casino’s bluehairs — the marks, the rubes, the suckers, genial nitwits who amble in to get fleeced and then shooed out to grow a fresh coat so the promoters can keep the lights on for the main act. I never raced a world championship, but there were plenty of times when nobody in authority could be bothered to tell me how I placed, much less help me keep my bike operational.

They always managed to cash the check, though.