We went through Kansas City yesterday and watched most of the Banff Mountain Festival. I would of loved to have stayed and watched all of the films, but by 6 pm we had to take off. We still had 9 more hours to drive up to Cable. The drive went pretty good. Bill and I hit a pretty crazy lightening storm driving through Iowa. We stopped for java and didn’t really run out of juice until we were nearly to Hayward.

We were crawling into bed at 3:30 am. The temperature in the Kansas Garage was in the mid 50’s. And it was much colder than that outside. That was a 50 degree temperature change from when I rode on Sunday on gravel. It feels really cold. I brought some Smartwool socks and one warm jacket. Not enough.

Bromont was crazy and had to get outside and run at the crack of dawn. It’s now 11 am and I have only seen him maybe 10 minutes all morning. Anyway, when I dragged out of bed at 9:30 am, I dug out my pile jacket (that I’ll be wearing for the next week straight) and walked over to Dennis’ house. I stuck my hand into one of the pockets and there was an unfamiliar wad of something. I pull it out and it’s was a pile of money. I thought, “sweet”. It was big. I started flipping through the money, thinking it was a fortune, but it turned out to be only one dollar bills.

You could torture me for days and I could never come up with an explanation why I would have a wad of 41 one dollar bills in my pocket. It might of been left over from my pole dancing gig last winter. But if that was the case, there would of been some 5’s and 10’s in there too since I’m such a great dancer. Anyway, one of the best things about losing your mind are these small discoveries that will forever remain mysteries.

Sources: anti-doping authorities preparing cases against up to two-dozen domestic racers.

That was the headline at the Velonews article that Neal Rogers wrote yesterday. Click here for the full article. I hate articles like this. I’m going to know a lot/most of these guys. It is going to depress me. And anger me. There is no question in my mind that everyone that Joe names is guilty of something. Guilty enough that they should move on and do whatever they were planning to do after cycling. Maybe euthanizing animals, since they are so familiar with needles and such.

Two dozen guys. Shit. That is 25% of a 100 rider race. And that is just the number of riders Joe Papp was selling drugs to. It is amazing. And master racers? WTF? There is no justification either way. If you need to take drugs to race again a bunch of masters, then you should probably just be spend your weekends smoking pot, sitting on your couch, watching Baywatch. It is the same amount of fulfillment.

The line I hate in this article is – “The names will not be announced publicly until and unless the individual cases are resolved against the riders” Screw that. If they are being charged with a doping violation, then charge them and make it public. They can still defend themselves.

Come on guys, this is getting so, so old. I’m sick of it. There is no shame riding your bike slower. And shame doesn’t even come close to being a word to describe what you’re doing to your friends and sport.

And this article about Lance and his defense. You’re in a bad state if you have to hire a political spin doctor to speak for you about doping violations.

Obviously the penalty for the doping violations isn’t close to enough to persuade guys from using drugs. That needs to be addressed. Again. That is going to take awhile. I see that Floyd is going to World’s in Australia to talk at the anti-doping conference there. I’d like to have a seat at that conference.
That would be worth the plane ticket.