Yearly Archives: 2011

Nature Valley and Euro Riders, Positve Drug tests

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Nature Valley Grand Prix announced yesterday that they were only accepting 6 rider teams for their race in 2012. Dave LaPorte, the director of Nature Valley, has always been at the forefront of leading changes that are good for the sport of cycling. I don’t know how much, if any, I had to do with this, but Dave has been bouncing ideas off me for the last few years and this has been one of my main themes. I absolutely hate it how each and every stage race in the United States has turned into a tempo session for nearly every stage. This isn’t European bike racing through the Alps where the terrain splits up the fields. It is sometimes as short as a weekend event, with the same teams setting tempo the whole race and a bunch of field sprints occur. This new rule will make this race much more exciting hopefully.

Some more North American guys are getting popped for EPO. A Master’s National Champion, a young guy from Canada. I honestly think that they are catching maybe 2% of the cheaters, so it is pretty ugly still.

I’ve often wondered about why the American riders that race in Europe tend to be GC riders in stage racing while the Australia riders that race internationally, minus Cadel now, tend to be sprinters and green jersey contenders. What makes me think this is strange is because we ride a ton criteriums in the US and most the races in Australia are road races and stage races. You’d think that we’d be producing the fast sprinter types and they would have the GC riders. I have no idea why it is like this, but it is.

Okay. Just putting some thoughts down here. That’s it for now.

Mail/FedEx/UPS

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I don’t really hardly ever open mail any more. I rarely get a letter that I’m surprised to get. And when I do, I’m pretty surprised. When the subject of eliminating Saturday mail delivery, most of the people I talk with are against it. I couldn’t care less. They are losing billions of dollars a year and if it is going to save a bunch of money, then I think they should consider it. I guess most people are against it because no one likes to lose a service, even if that service isn’t being used. I guess the internet has really hurt the mail big time. It is sort of sad, but I guess that is progress.

FedEx and UPS are different. I get packages all the time. And I always look forward to the packages. I look more forward to the packages when I’m not expecting a package, when the doorbell rings and I can see the FedEx truck out front. The internet is just making these companies more and more busy. Shipping has increased dramatically the last decade.

Yesterday was a prime example. Doorbell first thing in the morning. Small package for Trudi. She had no idea what it was, then she saw it was shipped from Europe. Inside, a Tour de France yellow jersey from Cadel. Pretty nice.

Today, was my turn. It wasn’t a surprise. I knew last night. UPS has a new RockShox 29’r fork for me. But, no, when I went to UPS website this morning and put in the tracking number, it says the plane has a mechanical. That’s all. I need to leave for Berryman tomorrow morning, so I hope that plane gets fixed.

I’ve always respected UPS and FedEx. They seem to have their shit together. They seem to work like a finely tuned clock. At nearly every bikeshop I’ve been associated with, the UPS guy is a standard fixture. Usually the UPS man will hang there a bit when he’s ahead of schedule. I’m not sure why that is, but it is common. Maybe they just like bikes.

It does seem sort of strange that we have 3 companies doing are essentially the same thing. I don’t know why the post office never got the package delivery service down. They tried about 10 years ago with the 2 pound, 2 day, $2 thing. But, that didn’t work. Probably because they never delivered it within two days. And there was no tracking. It seems to me, if some guy is coming to my house, everyday, bringing something, they should be able to leave a letter or package. But, that isn’t the case with the USPS.

I’m so racked from riding rocky singletrack two days in a row that I might not even ride today. Yesterday I was better than the day before. Hopefully I’ll be back up to snuff by Saturday. And that UPS does their magic and gets that fork to me sometime soon, like today.