Coming Clean

In the wake of all these recent doping scandals - Jan, Ivan, Floyd, Larry "not the Oakridge Boy but the champion sprinter" Gatlin, I feel I need to come clean with you about my performance.

No, not on the bike. Strong on flats and descents, piss poor on hills. Nothing changes there.

I'm talking about the blogging.

I realize there are some days where I perform pretty well. Other days, well, it's as if I had mailed it in, but couldn't be troubled to get off the sofa, put on my underpants, stagger to the corner and drop it in the mailbox. Yet a day later, I follow it up with something hilarious or mildly intelligent. How do I do that?

Frankly folks, I haven't a clue. I think it's God-given talent, just my unique ability to write. My boss notices the same thing at work. One day, I'm Clarence freaking Darrow himself, the next day, it's as if an itinerant autistic hobo with a weak bladder, a quart of Thunderbird and non-existent attention span was writing my memos.

I realize some of you probably expect this pattern stems from doping. After all, how can you explain such lousy performances, followed up by world class blogging?

I really don't know how I do it. As Phil Ligget would say, there are some days I just lawyer with rage, with fire in my belly, and with several empty espresso cups on my desk, the smoking heaps of my enemies' briefs smouldering on the floor. Bob Roll would tell you that with my blogging, sometimes when I get on the internet, I leave nothing but carnage out there, smoking, burnt red meat on the keyboard. Other days, well, not so much.

Yeah, some people detect a whiff of high testosterone in my writing style. But I assure you, I've always had naturally high testosterone. There's no needles involved here. I like to think of myself as following in the footsteps of other writers who had outrageously high testosterone levels, like Charles Bukowski, Ernest Hemmingway, and Gertrude Stein. Of course it's naturally occuring. Have you ever seen my back hair? Of course not, because I only take my shirt off when I'm around bears, among whom I feel less self-conscious. It can also be explained by my heavy drinking. Sometimes after a rough day, I offer myself a beer or six. "Here, Jim. Have a bunch of beer." "Thanks, don't mind if I do." We all know that alcohol raises testosterone levels, because Floyd said so, and the fans gave him a bunch of beers which he drank, and then he was detected with high testosterone levels. So it must be true.

So I want you all, including the European tabloids and Dick Pound, who has just about the worst name, EVER, to put an end to this whispering campaign about my erratic blogging. It's erratic precisely because I'm dope free. Y'all said for years you wanted a clean blog, y'all got a clean blog, so enjoy it. Hell yeah, it's unpredictable. But it's the best blog to come along in years. And it sure beats the hypodermics out of those other guys who are all jacked up on the juice, claiming to be great bloggers. They're just cheaters, and it's embarassing the way we let them eclipse the records of the pioneers without comment. I'm talking about those brave souls who rode out the flame wars of the Usenet, who competed in tough conditions in spite of inferior equipment. They didn't have Aeron chairs, they were stuck with something like 300 baud dial-up modems, yet still they tore up the T-3 lines with seminal emoticons such as ;-) and <:-<)> and !-(. Hell, Leet hadn't even been invented then and WiFi wasn't even a gleam in Vint Cerf's eye. These hard men were basically riding the equivalent of fixed gear bikes up and over the Mt. Ventoux of the DARPANET. You know, they did it without even having any Jolt or Red Bull? My hat is off my receding hairline, and I'm waving in the air in a drug-free salute to them.

No, the cheaters can never eclipse the great performances of those denizens of the Golden Age of Haxorzzz, and when I'm done, you're going to wonder how I did it without the juice. So lean back folks, and let's enjoy the ride together as two parts of a necessary pair: a clean, mean, blogger/reader machine, a horse and rider, or if you prefer a dog and pony.

And hey, would one of you bastards get me another espresso? A man involved in dope-free blogging sometimes gets a wee bit thirsty.