Now that the TdF is over, I can get back to reading National Enquirer in the evenings. I found out today that Whitney Houston has a $6500 / day drug habit. I don't know about you, but I'm more in awe, than shocked by that figure. I wonder if she had to sell all her bikes on E-Bay to buy the drugs? I hear that's how ballas do it these days.
-------------------------------------------------
Tour Wrapup: It was a good race, and Radio Shack accomplished their season priority, apparently, which was winning the Prestigious Team Competition
™. My friend Ryan wrote a very perceptive discussion of the TdF at The Service Course and it actually shamed me into writing some coherent thoughts, rather than just raving about what an ass some of the GC and Green Jersey contenders were in select stages.
I liked the unpredictability of the early stages and that goofy out-again-in-again format in the Pyrenees. The stage people thought was totally unpredictable - Stage 3 - was actually kinda predictable if you thought about it. Now stop for a second - which teams in the Tour are strong classics teams that perform well in the Northern classics, with domestiques who kick ass on the cobbles? Yeah, that's right. Saxo, Quickstep, maybe Cofidis, and wherever Flecha is riding right now. Both Schlecks are very strong Northern Classics riders (though they prefer their roads a tad smoother, e.g. Liege, Amstel) and the cobbled crew also happen to be the top rouleurs on the team - Stewy and Spartacus. JensDiesel doesn't quail at flat, rough roads either. So a strong Stage 3 throwdown by Saxo was perhaps the least surprising thing I saw that day, other than random flats and crashes.
I also liked how the wily, aging, step-or-two slower Petacchi managed to snare the green jersey, parlaying steady good performance into a great Tour. Granted, winning the green jersey is not the same as winning the Prestigious Team Competition™, but for an aging sprinter it's a great, great result. I wonder what the Superman of yesteryear, Robbie McEwen, thinks about Petacchi's win.
Garmin can't catch a break. Except for Ryder the Rider, who had an awesome tour riding, near as I can tell, unsupported. What's up with JV and the long run of bad luck this team is having? I don't get it.
Jens bitched about the uphill dirt road TT in the Giro a few years ago and about one of the goofy mountain stages this year. These were very exciting rides and really made the races in which they were inserted. The measure then, for how tough & random the "shake it up" stages ought to be to make a grand tour fun to watch, is "hard enough to make Jens Voigt cry." Are you not entertained?
Footon's uniforms make them look like a leatherette a futon, setting a low unrivalled by any kit that has appeared post 1995, but my wife said that AG2R had the first team kit she's ever seen that looked really, really good. Nicholas Roche & John Gadret had nice tours as well. This can only mean two things: they’ll have new, ugly uniforms next year that put Futon to shame, and (b) Roche and Gadret will move to a more upscale team with ugly, non-descript kit.
I don't give a shit that Lance rides to beat cancer. You don't change your kit on the startline and delay the race. Hey, if this is the new norm and if I drop my pants and start waving my schwantz around at a wedding, will saying "I did it to beat cancer" keep the cops from arresting me? Sorry, it was a dumb publicity stunt. I appreciate that part of the intent that was good and wholesome but wish that Lance would ride with the class we expect from a former world champ and a Tour champ.
Like Cadel. He rode a couple weeks and a couple thousand miles with a broken elbow. Sometimes the World Champ jersey destroy's a man; other times it turns him into the Pope of the Peloton (Bettini) or into superman. Cadel's rainbow jersey seems to have turned him into a tough racer. I mentioned it before but it deserves another mention; his performance this year has turned my opinion of him around 180 degrees.
The only way to roll is to DVR the morning coverage on Versus. The evening coverage is unspeakably worse. They even manage to make Bobke sound dull. And why is Craig Hummer - who is getting a lot better - doing play by play, while Robbie Ventura is out wandering around doing human interest bits? Seems to me that should be the opposite way.
The GC competition was good but with serious letdowns in it. This is exactly why they have the other jersey competitions, and why the TV and press coverage needs to focus more on the one team that was going for an unprecedented with in The Prestigious Team Competition™.
-------------------------------------------------
There's a guy who runs a blog called Busted Carbon. It's funny because he gets people to send him all these pictures of carbon fiber bikes and parts that have busted. This is funny because they all insist that they weren't doing anything wrong when it just blew apart. Sometimes this happens - but most of the damage is crash damage, and at least half the crashes appear to involve driving the car into the garage with the bike on top. Shit, you do that with an aluminum or steel bike, you'll probably wreck it. FWIW, I've been riding a relatively inexpensive Giant TCR since 2006. My weight has never dipped below 250 since the day I bought it; it has upwards of 20,000 miles on the frame and fork, and I wrench on the damn thing when I do jumps and starts, throwing around 1600 arm-and-back-assisted watts at times, enough to have broken many chains and three chainrings. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of the frame not breaking under that load, and even if I did it wouldn't be very interesting blog fodder. Sometimes there are manufacturing defects in carbon bikes, but a lot of these photos are crash damage, or show the marks of faulty maintenance or installation. The fact is anything will break in a crash or if you install it wrong, and carbon fails catastrophically rather than gradually, and it's easier than many metals to install improperly. So you probably shouldn't ride carbon if you aren't technically competent to maintain it, or if you plan on crashing or dropping it hard or against sharp edges, or running it into your garage door frame while mounted atop your car. And yes, although I'd love a Fisher Superfly, carbon fiber mountain bikes are *just asking for it*.
I liked the unpredictability of the early stages and that goofy out-again-in-again format in the Pyrenees. The stage people thought was totally unpredictable - Stage 3 - was actually kinda predictable if you thought about it. Now stop for a second - which teams in the Tour are strong classics teams that perform well in the Northern classics, with domestiques who kick ass on the cobbles? Yeah, that's right. Saxo, Quickstep, maybe Cofidis, and wherever Flecha is riding right now. Both Schlecks are very strong Northern Classics riders (though they prefer their roads a tad smoother, e.g. Liege, Amstel) and the cobbled crew also happen to be the top rouleurs on the team - Stewy and Spartacus. JensDiesel doesn't quail at flat, rough roads either. So a strong Stage 3 throwdown by Saxo was perhaps the least surprising thing I saw that day, other than random flats and crashes.
I also liked how the wily, aging, step-or-two slower Petacchi managed to snare the green jersey, parlaying steady good performance into a great Tour. Granted, winning the green jersey is not the same as winning the Prestigious Team Competition™, but for an aging sprinter it's a great, great result. I wonder what the Superman of yesteryear, Robbie McEwen, thinks about Petacchi's win.
Garmin can't catch a break. Except for Ryder the Rider, who had an awesome tour riding, near as I can tell, unsupported. What's up with JV and the long run of bad luck this team is having? I don't get it.
Jens bitched about the uphill dirt road TT in the Giro a few years ago and about one of the goofy mountain stages this year. These were very exciting rides and really made the races in which they were inserted. The measure then, for how tough & random the "shake it up" stages ought to be to make a grand tour fun to watch, is "hard enough to make Jens Voigt cry." Are you not entertained?
Footon's uniforms make them look like a leatherette a futon, setting a low unrivalled by any kit that has appeared post 1995, but my wife said that AG2R had the first team kit she's ever seen that looked really, really good. Nicholas Roche & John Gadret had nice tours as well. This can only mean two things: they’ll have new, ugly uniforms next year that put Futon to shame, and (b) Roche and Gadret will move to a more upscale team with ugly, non-descript kit.
I don't give a shit that Lance rides to beat cancer. You don't change your kit on the startline and delay the race. Hey, if this is the new norm and if I drop my pants and start waving my schwantz around at a wedding, will saying "I did it to beat cancer" keep the cops from arresting me? Sorry, it was a dumb publicity stunt. I appreciate that part of the intent that was good and wholesome but wish that Lance would ride with the class we expect from a former world champ and a Tour champ.
Like Cadel. He rode a couple weeks and a couple thousand miles with a broken elbow. Sometimes the World Champ jersey destroy's a man; other times it turns him into the Pope of the Peloton (Bettini) or into superman. Cadel's rainbow jersey seems to have turned him into a tough racer. I mentioned it before but it deserves another mention; his performance this year has turned my opinion of him around 180 degrees.
The only way to roll is to DVR the morning coverage on Versus. The evening coverage is unspeakably worse. They even manage to make Bobke sound dull. And why is Craig Hummer - who is getting a lot better - doing play by play, while Robbie Ventura is out wandering around doing human interest bits? Seems to me that should be the opposite way.
The GC competition was good but with serious letdowns in it. This is exactly why they have the other jersey competitions, and why the TV and press coverage needs to focus more on the one team that was going for an unprecedented with in The Prestigious Team Competition™.
-------------------------------------------------
There's a guy who runs a blog called Busted Carbon. It's funny because he gets people to send him all these pictures of carbon fiber bikes and parts that have busted. This is funny because they all insist that they weren't doing anything wrong when it just blew apart. Sometimes this happens - but most of the damage is crash damage, and at least half the crashes appear to involve driving the car into the garage with the bike on top. Shit, you do that with an aluminum or steel bike, you'll probably wreck it. FWIW, I've been riding a relatively inexpensive Giant TCR since 2006. My weight has never dipped below 250 since the day I bought it; it has upwards of 20,000 miles on the frame and fork, and I wrench on the damn thing when I do jumps and starts, throwing around 1600 arm-and-back-assisted watts at times, enough to have broken many chains and three chainrings. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of the frame not breaking under that load, and even if I did it wouldn't be very interesting blog fodder. Sometimes there are manufacturing defects in carbon bikes, but a lot of these photos are crash damage, or show the marks of faulty maintenance or installation. The fact is anything will break in a crash or if you install it wrong, and carbon fails catastrophically rather than gradually, and it's easier than many metals to install improperly. So you probably shouldn't ride carbon if you aren't technically competent to maintain it, or if you plan on crashing or dropping it hard or against sharp edges, or running it into your garage door frame while mounted atop your car. And yes, although I'd love a Fisher Superfly, carbon fiber mountain bikes are *just asking for it*.
-------------------------------------------------
Totally random incident here.
Pastor Rick Warren - the Purpose Driven Life guy, accidentally burned his eyes with the toxic sap of the Firestick Plant.
You see, this is why you should be widely read. I found out in Wikipedia that
The bible, while it's a very important book - possibly more important than the Saris Powertap Owner's Manual for the PT SL - doesn't cover everything. I’m thinkin’ if the good book had a warning about Firestick Plants (“trim ye not the red succulent bush with tiny spikes, lest the fruit of its loins smiteth upon thy peepers mightily”) that he’d have avoided it. But he doesn't, so now he's sittin' at home, waiting for his sight to be miraculously restored by God, or the passage of roughly 7 days (a religiously important number, BTW) which is how long the Wiki says it takes for the blindness to clear up.
This is what happens when you rely on the Bible instead of reliable sources like Wikipedia and random web sites. You bin warned...
Pastor Rick Warren - the Purpose Driven Life guy, accidentally burned his eyes with the toxic sap of the Firestick Plant.
You see, this is why you should be widely read. I found out in Wikipedia that
The milky sap contained in this plant is corrosive and extremely toxic. Contact with skin causes severe burning; contact with the eyes may cause severe pain, and may cause temporary blindness for up to 7 days.Now Pastor Rick, he reads him some bible, probably in a bunch of languages. But does he cruise the web all the time, hit Wikipedia, and read random stuff on blogs? Probably not. If he did, he'd be safer.
The bible, while it's a very important book - possibly more important than the Saris Powertap Owner's Manual for the PT SL - doesn't cover everything. I’m thinkin’ if the good book had a warning about Firestick Plants (“trim ye not the red succulent bush with tiny spikes, lest the fruit of its loins smiteth upon thy peepers mightily”) that he’d have avoided it. But he doesn't, so now he's sittin' at home, waiting for his sight to be miraculously restored by God, or the passage of roughly 7 days (a religiously important number, BTW) which is how long the Wiki says it takes for the blindness to clear up.
This is what happens when you rely on the Bible instead of reliable sources like Wikipedia and random web sites. You bin warned...
7 comments:
My favorites are the guys who won't ride all-carbon forks...but...the failures are often the carbon fork separating from the alu steerer. Soooo, no help there. Most bikes on the road have carbon, doesn't seem to break all too often. But-I agree, metal off road seems prudent.
I sympathise with the Pastor, but as my old metalwork teacher put it: "Wash your hands before you piss, because if you get iron filings under your foreskin, you'll be sorry". Not all the best advice is in the Bible.
Doug, I don't know if carbon off-road is imprudent. I think it's in the category of things that you have to expect will break due to the nature of off-road riding, so when it breaks in a crash (the most common occurrence in MTB other than leg hair sightings) you aren't allowed to bitch about it.
Uncle Bob - yep. No warning in there either about not licking metal in 10 degree temperature either.
Thanks, Jim. Similar to the old "is it better to be loved or feared" question, if someone asked me whether I'd rather my writing motivate or shame people, I'd go with shame, 100%.
Also, Garmin needs to win something. Big. Soon. Three years on, being the quirky upstarts just ain't enough anymore.
We live in a sanitized, safe world where all the sharp edges have been sanded off. This kills our caution and dulls our reflexes.
You have to think, though, way in the back of your mind where the limbic system occasionally flickers, that the elders had an actual reason for calling a plant the, "firestick."
@ Ryan:
>>Also, Garmin needs to win something. Big. Soon.
You mean like the Prestigious Team Competition™?
@ RTW: I think it has to do with the urbanization of our culture. We've kept old badass sounding names, but they've lose their meaning because we've assigned them to the harmless stuff in our lives. "Firestick" used to mean a gun or a particularly nasty sort of cactus; now it's also a carbon fiber golf club, or it was for a while. "Natural disaster" used to mean "a small country is now gone"; today it means "people were inconvenienced and FEMA has been called out to wipe the tears away." And "epic" used to mean a tale of war and destruction where entire legions were wiped out, with only the hero, or some of them, returning home, and then to a scene where his farm's been burned, the women raped, the animals slaughtered and the kids sold into slavery, or baseball's low minors. Now it means a three hour L2 ride where you run out of Heed with a half hour left, and your mouth gets sorta dry, which sucks epically.
Garmin used to win all the time back when they sponsored sexy runners with epic nicknames :-)
Post a Comment