Steve Tilford

It sort of amazes me how intolerant and impatient we can all be sometimes. You’d think Americans would be more tolerate than not, but in my opinion, that isn’t the case.

I was out riding yesterday, Sunday, and twice during the ride, guys flipped me off. I have no idea why. I was riding by myself, close to the right side of the road, I hadn’t run any lights or stop signs. And still, honk, then finger. That is pretty unsual in Kansas, but it’s becoming more common, which isn’t a good sign. It’s funny, or maybe not, that I seem to get these types of encounters more on Sunday mornings than any other day of the week.

I wonder why so many people get worked up about such nothings. I realize that I sort of live in a little bubble, not really participating in “normal” life like other people and I am pretty far removed from all the anger and rage that people tend to display when certain subjects come up. As far as I can tell, those subjects are, gun control, abortion, politics, and now healthcare. There are lots more, but those are for sure.

The healthcare thing is weird. The post I did last week was just about the acknowledgement that the healthcare system was broken. And that it was time to address that. Then so many people started going off about how screwed we were because of Obamacare or just the opposite. That wasn’t the intention of the post. I think everyone agreed, does agree, that our healthcare system is majorly fucked up, but when someone wants to address it, then everyone is up in arms.

What if you have a leak in your roof and you live somewhere it rains all the time. And the leak is right over your bed. All night it rains and you get wet and can’t sleep. You get up the next morning, having not slept and have to drag through the day. If you just keep status quo, eventually something is gonna give. Your health, you job, your roof, something. So, you decide it is time to fix the leak. You might not know anything about fixing roof leaks, but you need to try, to attempt a fix. So you go up on the roof and survey the situation and then do the best you can to fix the leak. Hopefully you do an okay job and you fix it, but since you don’t know anything about roofing, it is most likely it is more complicated than that. So you learn from your mistakes and then do it again until you do fix it.

That is the way I see the healthcare issue. The problem, problems, are huge and very complicated. The system is substantially broken. But, we needed to start to attempt to fix it. Like I wrote in my post, I really don’t have any idea if the Affordable Care Act is a good thing, a great thing or a complete bust. But, it is at least climbing the ladder to try to fix the leak. If it doesn’t work, then everyone should use it as information to try to do it better.

It is going to take a long time to get the healthcare system corrected. It isn’t going to be a short term thing. But the way everyone, all of us, seem to have such intolerance towards the process, it seems that we are all sabotaging the process of fixing the very thing that, we all agree, isn’t close to right originally, by being intolerant of ideas that we really don’t know much about.

The same goes with our politicians in Washington. We hire them to work for us. To have different view, but to be open to what is best for all. But, that isn’t the case anymore. They have taken such permanent sides that the system comes to a stand still. Nothing gets done. It’s all finger pointing and posturing. If Washington DC was a private corporation, all the officers would be fired by now. But they don’t, because there aren’t any repercussions to their unwillingness to compromise. Life always has small compromises. It should be no different in politics. Intolerance and politics are like oil and water. It used to be different, I don’t understand the change.

It seems to me that as we age, we should be more tolerate and open to new ideas, but it seems to be just the opposite. As people age they seem to be more set in their ways. You think that over the years you’d have so many more experiences, with so many more outcomes, that you’d realize that they are lots of solutions for the same problem. I’m not sure why we don’t use our life experiences and apply them to other problems?

Anyway, most of the people reading this have something in common, the bicycle. The love of the bicycle. It is such a simple thing. A silly thing that makes us happy. We put a lot of importance on it. We all use it for different reasons and get different pleasures and results from the one common thing. We are part of a big tribe. We need to understand even though we all have one common bond, we also think a lot different than one another. But, those differences shouldn’t be deal breakers. We need more tolerance.

The guys flipping me off yesterday seemed pretty intolerant to me. It was a weekend and I wasn’t slowing them down at all. I’ll never understand why a guy riding a bike can bother somebody so much that they get enraged. It seems to be the way our society is heading now. Maybe after the healthcare issue “is solved”, we can work on that a little.

Yesterday was the date when Johan Bruyneel was going to get his chance to defend himself against the evil USADA and all the riders that they coerced into testifying against him and Lance, by offering a lighter sentences. It doesn’t surprise me much that I don’t think it started. What surprises me about it is that I haven’t heard a peep about the non-event, or event, from any of the cycling media. You’d think that there couldn’t be much bigger news around than the start of this hearing, or the non-start it seems. But, nothing.

It doesn’t really surprise me that Velonews didn’t do an article about it.* Many times, Velonews seems to be more like stenographers than cycling reporters. A lot of the times when I read an article there, it looks like the person being interviewed wrote it himself and the questions being asked are pre-arranged, not to upset the status quo. But I would have thought that there would of been something on Cyclingnews about it.

I don’t think that Bruyneel is ready to spill his guts. I think he will eventually. But, it might be more than a decade before he feels so inclined. I very much doubt that his tell-all book is going to tell-all. It takes a while for these guys to get mad enough at each other that they feel no loyalty and obligation to keep mum. Plus there is always the threat of civil liability to keep one quiet, until all the statutes of limitation run out.

USADA alleges a 14 year span of doping violations. That is a least as many, maybe more, than they pursued Lance for. I wonder if Johan is going to feel that a lifetime ban is too harsh of punishment for that, like Lances does.

Lance did an interview with La Gazzetta dello Sport earlier this month. He said that “My punishment is a thousand times bigger than the ‘crime’ I committed.” I wonder if he really, truly believes that. If so, I’m not sure what to think.

Let me think, Lance won 7 straight Tour de Frances. He amassed a net worth somewhere over $130,000,000. He was arguably the most famous athlete on the planet for a period of time. During that period, he was flying around the world in his private jet and hanging out and dating rock stars. Or he was flying around on Air Force 1 and going to the White House, or riding MTB bikes with George Bush at his ranch. He pretty much was doing whatever he wanted with whoever he pleased for close to a decade.

And the penalty for the fraud he committed to obtain all that, the fraud to the sport, his fans and the world in general, was that he can’t race bicycles anymore. That is 1000 X worse than doping in the sport for over a decade? I think not. Not even close.

I agree that not being able to compete athletically in any sanctioned sport would hard for me to endure. But his idea that the punishment for what he has admitted doing, and penalty for doing it, a lifetime ban, is too severe, is just plain ridiculous.

The civil lawsuits are going to take a chunk of the money back, but not close to all of it. They will all be settled and Lance will be a gazillionaire still. I hope in that respect, he would admit that he did alright. And his lifetime experiences, I guess he doesn’t have to give them back either. Too bad they can’t just erase a person’s mind when they steal life experiences from others. That would seem just.

*Velonews did this little blip just now. Guess they decided not to actually talk to anyone to find out what happened. They used the line- “Two separate United States Anti-Doping Agency staffers — CEO Travis Tygart and media relations manager Annie Skinner — both declined to comment on the Bruyneel case in recent days.” Recent days, beautiful.