Court Documents: LeMond Used Steroids!

And that's not all!

Excerpt from official Notice of Appeal on file with Minnesota federal district court.

In documents on file with the U.S. District Court in Minnesota, Jonathan Lee Riches of Salters, South Carolina alleges Gred Lemond used steroids during his last two Tour victories. Riches also states that Lemond had secret affairs with Tour flower girls, bought him speedos, had a secret drug compartment in his bike, and tried to shave Riches legs with a Trek razor during a rendezvous at a Chicago Econolodge.

[It's amusing lunacy, but you can check it out for yourself.]

Image by Bev Sykes. Some rights reserved.

Why does it cost . . .

• $938 for three people to take the train (spending the night in chairs and not including food) roundtrip from Denver to Chicago;
• $753 to fly;
• And less than $500 to drive?

Something is wrong. But you knew that.

Update: Obama & The World Series

The mighty South Platte River collects itself in the alpine Rockies, weaving a tapestry from the cold, tumbling streams - the children of mighty glaciers. Chutes and rapids, iced with white spray, push kayaks and rafts against granite boulders - boulders that defy man's paltry strength but which the Platte in its Spring glory jumbles as easily as the soft breeze stirs the leaves of the aspen trees which line the river's banks. And here and there, the Platte's transparent eddies are pierced by the line of an intrepid fisherman, whose heart pounds with the thrill of the hunt for the Platte's native trout.

Well, not really.

The South Platte does begin in the Rockies, but shortly after it hits the Front Range, there's little left of it. Eventually, on the Nebraska plains the South Platte joins the North, and the Platte continues on to Omaha, emptying into the Missouri.

Here's what the mighty South Platte River looked like just south of downtown Denver yesterday:

I suppose this dry gully is technically still the mighty South Platte River. Yet, what's of interest is that farther "downstream," the riverbed is nearly full:

No streams flow into the Platte between these photos. So where does the water come from? (Here's where "Eeeewwww!" comes in.)

=> Read more!

This is foul, and the inside is no better. On page 1, the flier announces "Obama Has Close Ties to Domestic Terrorist."

Here's the whole thing: Cover, pages 2, 3, and 4.

I know the inmates of the state asylum could be swapped for the state house Republicans without anyone noticing, but I thought they had some principles left. This isn't sent by some supposedly uncontrollable 527 or a bunch of crazies living in a trailer. This is sent by the Colorado Republican Committee:

When I called (303-758-3333), the fellow who answered the phone said he thought the flier was important for people to read.

I think so, too.

Update: John McCain says he's "proud" of a similar flier [youtube] being sent by the RNC.

Image by Brett Marty. More photos.

• The Palin campaign really does use smoke and mirrors. From FiveThirtyEight.com:

  Palin's rally featured . . . giant video screens showing the crowd the slowly turning campaign bus as it approached the cavernous inside venue. Finally, the fog machines hit high blast, the huge blue curtain parted, and the bus drove right inside the hall. As "Eye of the Tiger" blasted over the loudspeakers, Palin bounded on stage to a full-throated roar. . . .[(If] Obama tried it he'd have been ridiculed for behaving as a "celebrity").

  Fog machines?

• Bicycle Diaries reports on a race in downtown Chicago pitting:

  [B]iker against a taxi, The L, a private car, a horse, a bus, a street car, and a pedestrian. The course was a little more than a mile. . . .

  Who won? Here are the results. (The race was run in 1937.)

• BikingBis, who makes me wonder why anyone else even bothers to write about bikes, lists ideas for Fall foliage rides. There's one in Boulder that I have never done. . . .

What should we do with kids like this?

From the Colorado Springs Gazette:

Teenagers joyriding in a stolen pickup intentionally slammed into a 64-year-old bicyclist in Colorado Springs Friday night, seriously injuring the man on his birthday . . . Virgil Weixelman, of Colorado Springs, was westbound on his bicycle when a Dodge pickup drove up behind him and someone opened the passenger door, knocking him to the ground, said Colorado Springs police Sgt. Steve Noblitt.
. . .
Two teenage boys - ages 14 and 15 - were arrested Friday night on suspicion of first-degree assault on an at-risk person and placed in Spring Creek Youth Services Center, a juvenile jail, police said.

I don't even know how to describe them . . . amoral? sociopaths? evil? I think I'll go with "fucked in the head."

It's tempting to say send them to jail for a long time or take every cent that their parents might have. But would either alternative do anything worthwhile, aside from temporarily keep them off the streets?

Bis has a thorough story on another Colorado underage driver who killed a cyclist.

Image by Jeff Youngstrom. Some rights reserved.

Gerty left me a note:

I don't know the ins and outs of the global economic crisis

Okay, one in and out
people have put money in
and it won't be coming out.

Here's the John McCain I know featuring, the Editor and Publisher of the Arizona Republic, former AZ Senator Dennis DeConcini, and the former head of the AZ Republican Party . . . .

Dashing Tweeds' Bespoke weaving division.

• "Morals of a Wheelwoman" - at Bicycle Diaries - is the latest in Wheelman's long series of delightful posts about early and golden age cycling. Here's Capt. Luke Colleran, Chief of the Chicago Detective Department, quoted in the NYTimes of May 1889:

  I most certainly consider the adoption of the bicycle by women as detrimental to the advancement of morality -- nay, even its stability. I have always entertained deep sympathy for the hosts of noble and honorable ladies, who while riding their wheels are frequently associated with women whose morality will not stand investigation and whose conversation is invariably coarse and undignified.

  The rest of the article and Wheelman's picture selection had me laughing.

• Whenever I spend much time at Bicycle Diaries, I find myself ready to don knickers and tweed, start speaking like a Monty Python character, and set off across the British countryside.

  According to an article and interview with Guy Hills in Momentum, "The magazine for self-propelled people," Guy's shop, Dashing Tweeds, should be my first stop. Apparently it was Gary Fisher's.

  Tweed is the original choice for sportswear: it tailors very well and holds its shape. Tweed also has a fun quality in terms of colour as well as being waterproof and breathable.

  We have an exciting men’s cape coming soon, as well as special trousers that can be worn as plus-fours (breeches) and trousers . . . .

• Heard this bike shop advertising slogan on the radio: "Rasmussen Bike Shop, they'll make your butt skinny."

• The LA Times reviews utility bikes.

• How can one resist reading "Sorry, Dad, I'm Voting for Obama", when it's Christopher Buckley writing and he writes prose like this?

  Dear Pup once said to me sighfully after a right-winger who fancied himself a WFB protégé had said something transcendently and provocatively cretinous, “You know, I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.”

• Also from The Daily Beast, comes an accurate description of the John McCain I know:

  McCain immediately turned to the woman and said between clenched teeth: ‘DON’T TOUCH ME.’ The woman started to explain...McCain interrupted her: ‘DON’T TOUCH ME,’ he repeated viciously. The woman again tried to explain. ‘DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM? DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU’RE TALKING TO?’ McCain continued, his voice rising and his hands now raised in the ‘bring it on’ position. He was red-faced. By this time all the action at the table had stopped.

  I was completely shocked. McCain had totally lost it, and in the space of about ten seconds.

Image by John Wiley. Some rights reserved.

I like the Sand Creek Greenway. It's usually uncrowded, often lovely (despite going through Commerce City's Devil's Triangle), and - except for the Denver stretches - typically well-maintained.

I also like the people who run Sand Creek Greenway Project, the non-profit that helps look out for the trail. They've done great work.

But the Greenway Project's latest fundraiser has me whacking my head.

You are invited to Sand Creek Greenway's

Old Friends, New Partners Reception

in honor of
United States Senator Ken Salazar
Colorado Attorney General John Suthers
Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge

Friday, October 17, 2008
The Denver Country Club

I suppose it takes all sorts to make a greenway. Nonetheless, it's bizarre that the Sand Creek Greenway - a bikeway - is holding its reception at The Denver Country Club. The Country Club remains a stubborn barrier to another majory Denver bikeway - the Cherry Creek trail. (Need I mention that Denver historian Phil Goodstein calls the Country Club's "blatantly racist history"?)

Because the Country Club refuses to acknowledge the public right-of-way along Cherry Creek, the Cherry Creek path must go around it. The path takes a nasty, abrupt right angle turn at the eastern Country Club boundary then shunts riders down a narrow sidewalk - bounded on one side by a tall chainlink fence protecting the Club's northern border and on the other by speedy, crowded, and dirty Speer Boulevard. Even Denver has pointed out "the high
potential for accidents" here.

=> Read more!

Last Wednesday, October 1, McCain voted against the bill containing Amtrak funding. (Part A is railroad safety; Part B is funding.) Obama voted for it. The bill passed and was presented to President Bush on October 6.

Brian O'Neill at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has more.

Shadows at MoMA - Marcel Duchamp - Bicycle Wheel, 1913. Image and caption by flavio rucci. Some rights reserved.

Marcel Duchamp on "Bicycle Wheel" and bicycle wheels:

To set the wheel turning was very soothing, very comforting, a sort of opening of avenues on other things than material life of every day. I liked the idea of having a bicycle wheel in my studio. I enjoyed looking at it, just as I enjoyed looking at the flames dancing in a fireplace. It was like having a fireplace in my studio, the movement of the wheel reminded me of the movement of flames.

Arturo Schwartz, The Complete works of Marcel Duchamp, London: Thames and Hudson, p.588.

Obviously this is where Denver's Mexican-German community hangs out and drinks Coronasteiner.

Image by John X. Some rights reserved.

There are more photos in the set.

Image by Pieter Pieterse. Some rights reserved.

From the NYTimes:

WASHINGTON — An investigation by the military has concluded that American airstrikes on Aug. 22 in a village in western Afghanistan killed far more civilians than American commanders there have acknowledged, according to two American military officials.

. . .

The military investigator’s report found that more than 30 civilians — not 5 to 7 as the military has long insisted — died in the airstrikes against a suspected Taliban compound in Azizabad.

We interrupt the constant, mandatory, unthinking "honoring of the service" of our glorious killers in uniform to ask yet again: why is killing innocents more acceptable when we do it by dropping bombs on them? How amoral must one be to order things like this or carry them out?

I try to imagine what this would look like or how it would feel if it took place in my neighborhood. The police kill everyone on the block to get the Crips hiding in a few doors down?

No matter how I twist it around in my brain, I can't make it reasonable. I can't understand it. I can't make it anything but unconscionable and criminal.

October 8 Yehuda Moon by Rick Smith.

Kim West's comment on the Yehuda Moon cartoon above:

dave's mom is a bitch

(You might need to read a few previous comics to get the context.)

Kim has a radio show and a radio show blog which he uses, among other things, to excoriate bone-headed Iowa officials and nit-witted lawyers for trying to ban RAGBRAI and slams cupcake bike advocates for not doing their jobs.

BTW, the comments on each Yehuda Moon strip have become one of the most interesting places to get a dose of reasonably readable bikey opinion.

This blog is konjac-free. If you are after konjac, you will need to go elsewhere.

Some of Hannover´s bike messengers and friends on a Sunday evening ride to the Kronsberg. Image and caption by T.MoE. Some rights reserved.

• Boulder goes platinum. Fort Collins goes gold. Arvada joins the League of American Bicyclists' Bike Friendly Communities list at Bronze. (According to the LAB press release, "fully 50 percent of [Arvada's] arterial streets have bike lanes for cyclists.")

  Denver which was named a Silver level city when bikes still had solid tires (actually it was 2003) and slipped to Bronze in 2005, doesn't do anything. Not a surprise but disappointing nonetheless.

• Veloswap in Denver on October 25:

  20th Annual Subaru Denver VeloSwap
  Denver, Colorado
  Saturday, October 25, 2008
  National Western Complex
  Time: 9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.

• Biking Colorado's Wine Country - Nice riding. Mostly awful wine. If you are thinking of going, The Colorado Winefest (held in September) is low-key fun, and there's an organized ride.

• Best Post of May 2007, from Freewheeling Spirit:

  Dear Dr. Gridlock:

  I strongly oppose motorists sharing the road with cyclists. It is not only unsafe, but inconvenient for cyclists.

  Motorists tend to act as though the rules of the road don't apply to them. Not only do they hog the entire road, forcing cyclists off to the sides, but they are always hitting cyclists, pedestrians, and each other. The number of people that motorists kill every year is astounding. Motorists belong on race tracks and nowhere else.

This could be you! Image by Scott LaPierre. Some rights reserved.

From Cycle Jerks!

So you wanna be a courier?

WIN THIS RACE!

I’m leaving the messenger world two weeks from Monday. We are holding a race for my position . . . . Winner will get a recommendation for a job. Job placement not guaranteed.)

Update from Jen in a comment: The race has been moved to THIS Saturday, Oct 11th!

More information and a flier are here.

Image by Todd Lappin. Some rights reserved.

From the Las Vegas Review-Journal:

In late January, Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., told the Boston Globe that the thought of McCain being president "sends a cold chill down my spine."

"He's erratic. He's hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me," Cochran told the newspaper.

. . .

Jon Hinz said he got an early taste of McCain's temper while serving as executive director of the Arizona Republican Party. The most memorable encounter came on the night in 1986 when McCain was elected to the U.S. Senate in a landslide.

After his acceptance speech, McCain flew into a rage because he felt the podium he was standing on made him seem short, Hinz said. The Republican official had to come between McCain and a campaign worker who McCain was loudly scolding and poking in the chest.

. . .

"It's not a temper issue, it's an integrity issue," Hinz said.

=> Read more!

From Outside blog:

Bike Commuter Act Rides the Bailout Bill

It's law! The Transportation Fringe Benefit to Bicycle Commuters got tucked into the 451-page, $700-billion bailout bill that passed the House a few hours ago. While Wall Street breathes easier, bike commuters can expect $20 a month in tax benefits.

The relevant text is not yet codified.

Biking Bis, as usual, has a good description and the details.

T-shirts given by Denver police union to every Denver police officer to commemorate the professional job they did "beating the crowds" at the DNC.

Will anyone ever get the Denver police under control?

I doubt it but sacking the unprofessional sociopaths that find this t-shirt appropriate would certainly improve things.

From the Denver Channel (via Midway Cyclist):

The back of the shirts reads, "We get up early to beat the crowds" and "2008 DNC," and has a caricature of a police officer holding a baton.

The front has the number 68 with a slash through it, a reference to the Recreate 68 Coalition, which organized several demonstrations during the convention.
. . . .

[Detective Nick Rogers, a member of the Police Protective Association board] said each Denver officer was given one of the shirts free and others are on sale for $10 each at police union offices.

He said the union expects to sell about 2,000 of them.

Rogers said he hadn't received any previous complaints about the shirts.

=> Read more!

Wind Powered Bike Safety Lights (Battery-free) from dealextreme.com.

Bicycle Spokesman unearthed the "bicycle accessory page" at dealextreme.com.

He is really on to something. If you want a "Cute Translucent Bicycle Bell (Large)" or a "Cute Translucent Bicycle Bell (Small)," this is the place to go - only $2.22 with free shipping. There's also a turn single indicator - whooo baby! - and an assortment of led bike lights - one with 53 leds(?).

=> Read more!

A friend remarked the other day, "I am really sorry that McCain has fallen into this Rovian trap. It just doesn't fit. He's too nice."

I almost swallowed my tongue.

That's not my experience. That's not my experience in any way, shape, or form. And that's not the experience of others who have had to work with him.

I found McCain a vindictive, nasty man ready to double-cross his colleagues to get his way. Nice to see other people who haven't had to deal with him are starting to get to know him.

At Talking Points Memo, Josh quotes David Nather's description of a recent Obama/McCain encounter on the Senate floor:

[Obama] walked over to where McCain was chatting with Republican Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida and Independent Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut. And he stretched out his arm and offered his hand to McCain.

=> Read more!

Image from Bicycle Riders Journal.

• Bis has a post about a new record for a human-powered vehicle - 1/10 speed of sound.

• David Goes To America reminds me of Yehuda Moon's driving experience.

• Via Cycle Jockey, a thing I would never buy but somehow find uncomfortably fascinating:

  Packaged power bars made to your recipe.

• Via bits and bikes ("Compute, commute. Rinse and repeat,") a fascinating thing I would love to buy but won't:

  Monkeylectric m132s LED Bike Light.

• From Mark Strosberg, who goes off-road on a Bikfiets and blogs at Bikes as Transportation, Bicycling turns chore into exercise, fun. Yep.

• The couple at Bicycle Riders Journal has taken another ride. I genuinely enjoy reading the descriptions. They don't ride anything like I do. He seems to pay a great deal of to her, and they both seem to pay a good deal of attention to what they pass. I find myself aspiring to their pace:

  I try to keep just barely ahead of Vicky on our rides, and know that if I speed up, Vicky will also speed up. This keeps me going slower than I really want to at times. Yesterday I hit a top speed of 15.8 mph.

  My character just isn't strong enough to emulate them. I always end up like H.G. Wells:

  I came out for exercise, gentle exercise, and to notice the scenery and to botanise. And no sooner do I get on that accursed machine than off I go hammer and tongs; I never look to right or left, never notice a flower, never see a view - get hot, juicy, red - like a grilled chop. Get me on that machine and I have to go. I go scorching along the road, and cursing aloud at myself for doing it. ~H.G. Wells, The Wheels of Chance