I saw a few guys walking around at the criterium Sunday in Lawrence with broken collarbones. I’m always interested listening to the story about exactly what happened, from the rider’s perspective, how they perceived the wreck occurred and how they thought they could have avoided it. It is sort of weird, but all they guys I talked to, it was their first broken collarbones and they didn’t seem too bummed out about it. I like that – “Just a part of racing and I’ll move on.”

Anyway, I was talking to this one guy and he asked me how my shoulder was doing. He looked at it and say something like how gnarly it looked. I told him his collarbone might not heal all that perfectly either. I was talking about some of my thoughts about surgery or not surgery. I did agree with him that it didn’t look that aesthetically great and maybe, if anything, surgery might help with that. He said something like, “Dude, You’re just gnarly anyway, don’t worry about your shoulder.” It wasn’t exactly it, but that was pretty close. He was a super nice guy and seemed to mean it in a complimentary way, but it was going through my mind while riding yesterday what he actually meant.

When he said it, I thought that I am pretty scarred and broken up in general, so if I was only fixing this one drooping shoulder for aesthetics, it would be like putting a bandage on a sucking chest wound. But, thinking about it, I doubt this guy has any idea about how many broken collarbones, legs, etc. I’ve had through the years.

So, I’m not actually sure what he meant. Now I’m thinking of just gnarly in general. I’m not sure what that means, but I know he meant it nicely.

Anyway, I looked up the definition of gnarly and saw a million different definitions. Not until I got to the UrbanDictionary.com did I find a few that I hope he meant.

I don’t really think that much about describing myself. I’d hate to have to do a questionnaire that you have to come up with adjectives that you think describe your personality. But, if I would, I know I never would have used the word gnarly. But, after talking to this guy, I like it; so, maybe I would now. The after race interactions are sometimes just as memorable as the in race experiences. The sport is very cool.

This was the title of an “article” Velonews threw out there yesterday – Analysis: Armstrong investigation is ‘irrelevant’ for many at the Tour de France. Here is the link.

The article goes on to interview only two guys, Team Sky manager David Brailsford and Garmin’s Jonathan Vaughters. Brailsford is quoted as saying something about it being in the past and Jonathan is quoted as saying, “I don’t think it’s relevant at all. Zero relevance. It’s irrelevant to this Tour de France.”

What I’m wondering is why they included the word analysis in the title. This doesn’t involve that the least bit. I’m not even sure why they wrote the article. It is complete bullshit and a waste of energy. It like someone came up with an idea; “Let’s take a couple quotes from two team managers and apply the answers to the whole Tour de France.”

Plus, I have no idea why the managers replied in the way they did. Why can’t these guys say something that is believable and honest. Something like, “Cycling have processes to deal with accusations like these. I think we should let those processes to deal with the issue.” Or, “I have no personal knowledge of the allegations against Lance and Bruyneel, so I don’t have anything to say.” Maybe Jonathan couldn’t honestly say that, but you know what I mean.

I wonder if Jonathan thinks that the Radio Shack team, the team who is currently protecting the yellow jersey, not having it’s team director, Johan Bruyneel at the race, is irrelavent to “this Tour de France?” The manager who has “led” 9 Tour de France Champions? I’d hope not. And I assume Brailsford knows that Johan Bruyneel is the current team director of the Radio Shack team. Not just in the past, but currently.

I know that Velonews has to write something about the sport. Maybe, in the future, they could write something that might be news worthy and not something just made up for some unknown reason.

Jonathan on the cover of Velonews with all the other clean riders.

Maybe David and Jonathan have already read Johan’s book, so they don’t need him around at the Tour.