Lance

It was wrong but I can’t blame him.  Honestly, I can’t. Yes, it’s wrong on many levels, ethically, morally, legally…it’s all wrong. But I can’t blame him really, and here’s why.

I’m no better than he is. Just puttin’ it out there in extreme honesty.

When put in that same situation, can you blame him? Sure some of you will take the moral high-ground but honestly, put yourself in his shoes. Would you be able to withstand the temptation? Knowing full well that you are, at this point in your career, the best you will EVER be and it’s not good enough to get you where you want to be. Could you resist the temptation to cheat? Especially if you knew you could get away with it?

Think about it like this.

You bust your butt for years studying in college. Spend all kinds of money making yourself better, stronger, smarter; to be the best that you can be in your chosen career field, to be better than the guy in the cubicle or office next to you. You climb that corporate ladder, you want to be on top! You get noticed here and there by the bosses but nothing really that is going to get you that promotion or raise.

Then it hits you. From out of nowhere, you’re sick, really sick. Like,you’re going to die and leave your family with what(?), sick. You fight like hell to win this battle for your life and to be honest, it scares the hell out of you but you do survive.

You’ve studied so hard, put in too many hours to walk away from it now. This is how you support your family and make a living. This is all you know. You’ve struggled hard to move ahead in this game. You’ve spent years working long hours each day and on weekends, reaching for your goal but you know in your heart, you’ll never make it. Why?  Cause you know that the overwhelming majority of your colleagues are fudging the numbers on their weekly reports, rigging the quarterly matrix to make themselves look better to the boss and better than you. No one says anything but it’s happening. There is no way you will ever make it to that next level when they are cheating.

 

To this, I say to the majority of you reading, no. You would be hard pressed to resist. I, like all of you have the luxury of being on this side of it and we find it easy to judge and say, “I would never cheat.” But the reality is, given the right circumstances, most of us would.

The reality of it is that Lance is no better than the rest of us. We are no better than Lance when put in the same scenario.

So think about this before you judge him too harshly.

I am not advocating that if everybody is doing then it’s ok. Not at all. Wrong is wrong. There is no gray area in this matter.

I think why so many people are mad at him and hate him is that we believed in him. We want so desperately to have a champion to cheer for to lift high on our shoulders and say to the world, “I’m with him!”. We have these expectations of our heroes that are so ‘pie in the sky’ big, that the reality is that no one could live up to them. Seriously, the Tour de France is a race where we expect the bicyclist to race between 80 to 130 miles in A DAY and do this for 21 days in a row with maybe a day or two of rest in there somewhere. Seriously? Most of us would get saddle sores DRIVING that much much less pedaling our butts up and down mountains. 

Expectations ruin us all. Maybe that's why the Dutch are the happiest people in the world, cause they admittedly have no expectations of life.

He doped, he won, he got caught, he got banned for life, he admitted it.

Get over it.

What’s left for Lance is to make restitution to those who are legally owed. Morally is another question that only he can answer.

What’s left for us as fans is to view this through the appropriate lens. What you consider that to be is entirely up to you.

Kona Sutra

Well, with all the talk and dreaming of the Salsa Vaya one would have thought that’s what I would have bought but no.

Short version. I wanted something different than what everyone else has like the infamous Long Haul Trucker by Surly which is followed closely by the Trek 520 in the world of loaded touring. Hence my keen interest in the Salsa Vaya.  I love the Vaya but it was just a touch out of my price range. I looked on C-list and found a 2013 Bianchi Volpe for $850 with racks.  Very interesting but I wanted to ride one before committing to buying it. I sought out the local dealer and checked it out. Nice bike, very nice but it didn’t really fit me as I am short in leg and long in torso which when it comes to road bikes it means that I either ride a 55 or 56cm so it fits my legs or I ride a 57 or 58cm which fits my torso. I usually opt for the fit in the legs and put a longer stem on it but this can be problematic as my hands are so far forward that the handling becomes twitchy at best. So the Volpe was out even though the price appealed to my cheap a** ways. I was mulling things around when I saw a bike with racks on it in the corner. It was the Kona Sutra (2012 model).

I immediately pulled it out and threw a leg over it and it felt good, it was a smidge snug in the stand-over but nothing ‘pressing’ to deter from investigating further. I took it out for a spin and fell in love. The comfort of this bike is unsurpassed. The bar end shifter were a little odd as I have never owned a bike with them. The BB7 disc brakes are incredible. When I got back from the ride I looked intently at the bike for flaws of any kind and that’s when I noticed the bike was not a 55 or 56cm. Neither was it a 57 or 58cm.  It was a 59cm!  What???  How can that be?  Well, obviously the top tube (as you have undoubtedly noticed in the picture above) is sloped taking on a more mountain bike frame look and feel that a standard straight bar road bike does not. Also, the head tube is really tall, like really tall. Add to that the spacers on the steering tube and the length of the top tube and well, you have a perfect bike for my short legs and long torso.  Now I know why it was (is) so comfortable for me.  It fits great in the legs and the long top tube allows for me to be really stretched out making it very comfortable for me. Everything about this bike I like, well almost.  The cranks are 50-39-30 which is a bit too high for my liking.  I’m not a speed demon so having large cranks is not that important to me. Getting up the hill is important to me. So more than likely I will at some point in the future, change them to a 48-36-26 crank set. At the very least I will swap out the 30 with a  26t or even a 24t.  We’ll see.

As for other changes, the only immediate change I will make is putting a Brooks B-17 aged saddle on it.

 

Future changes will be obviously what was mentioned above, the cranks. I am also looking at increasing the tires from the OME 32c to 35 or even 40s if I decide to take off the fenders but not sure if I will do that. Tires would change from the Continental Contacts to the Schwalbe Marathon Supreme HS.

I am also looking at changing out the handle bar to the Ragley Luxy bar. Think of the Salsa Fargo’s Woodchipper 2 handle bar only slightly wider and with more flare on the drops.

And if I’m going to do that, then I will seriously look at changing the shifters/brake levers to  the Retroshift CVX levers.

So the bar and levers would look something like this…(only these are the Woodchipper 2 bars)

 

 

These are basically ‘thumbies’ attached to the lever.  These are becoming very popular with the CX crowd.

BTW, these pics were downloaded from a really cool bike blog site called, www.g-tedproductions.blogspot.com . Check it out.

Just hit me that I have not posted a picture of my bike!  Yikes!!

Actual bike at my house…

So there it is.  My touring rig with a list of changes to be made.

I look forward to a three state park loop tour in March.  Until then, it’s training rides around the hood!