Over the week, this has all unraveled. First is Floyd testing positive (which if you haven't seen or heard about merans you're even more unplugged than me). I'm sick about it. I hope that the B sample comes back negative but even Floyd doesn't expect that. He's going to try and prove his innocence and I'll give him a chance but the whole affair has completely shaken my belief in professional cycling and it's fairness. There are voices that say that they all dope and I'm beginning to really believe them. I wonder if all the Americans in Girona have their "connections" and maybe that was disrupted. Who knows. I don't even want to think about it anymore. If I could get ahold of the pros I might just bang a few heads together and drag them to a Georgia Cup race where a bunch of us poor slobs are grinding it out in 100 degree heat for little more than some Applebee's gift certificates and some bragging rights and campfire stories. I'd show them what they are betraying. It's not their sport. It's ours and they are dragging it down into the slime of big money desperation and loathing. I want Floyd and Basso and Ullrich and all the others to look in the eyes of some Master's class rider who's just spent three hours out dying on the tarmac of a Georgia steambath and see the love he has for the sport and the honor he finds in the competition. Maybe these guys are too far gone in their delusion to see it but they were supposed to be our heroes and they have failed us. They have betrayed the beauty of our sport if they have cheated when we have struggled through the pain and suffering to cross a finish line with few sponsors and only wives and relativves cheering us on. The punishment for this type of cheating should be more than a ban from the sport but to have to attend local racing events and to drive the wheel trucks and hand water up to the riders in the feed zones and to stand in the heat keeping an intersection clear. They should have to see the beauty of the competition in it's pure form and understand what they have really sullied. Tyler should have to spend the rest of his life watching others do what he once did but then took for granted. And if they all do it then we'd have a lot more volunteers. Let's throw out the teams and the multimillion dollar contracts and let the beauty be found in the grassroots racing found in office park criteriums, backroad road races and industrial tract time trials.OK, enough of that.
The other bummer is that my wife's class got rescheduled. She doesn't have any vacation right now so we're stuck here at home for the next week and I'm bummed. Getting out of Dodge would have been nice for a few days. Oh well, I'll try to enjoy what I can here and save up my dollars for a Columbus Day trip or something.
I'll try to write more soon but until then, have a great weekend.
