Takin' a Break

One of the great things about working for The Man is that they occasionally pay you to go places and do things you might have actually paid for yourself. I'm currently sitting on the fifth floor (I think) of the Chicago Convention Center at McCormick Place with a beautiful view of Lake Michigan. The Man, being the generous guy that he is, has paid for me to come out here and learn a thing or two about analytical chemistry and, specifically, chromatography. Sounds pretty boring and I'm sure that to most, it is. But Pittcon is the analytical event of the year. All the vendors on the exposition floor are eager to sell you on their latest and greatest (usually with the aid of some candy or swag). Every 30 minutes or so I chuckle to myself about how similar my experience is to the episode of The Office where they go to the paper trade show.

There are some interesting things afoot in the land of liquid chromatography so the first half of the day hasn't been too incredibly boring. I even chided a Waters rep for not offering a particular product. He told me I couldn't possibly use it for my intended purpose. I promptly informed him to the contrary and that I'd be using a competitor's product, to boot.

The unfortunate part about being here, however, is that I couldn't bring my bike. Even if I could have, my location in River North (just outside the Loop -- the middle of the city) would have prohibited me from riding it. I feel somewhat less guilty after having done a great endurance/tempo ride of 3 hours on Saturday. The feeling of complete exhaustion was a bit unfamiliar but not unwelcome. I can't wait to start pounding it up some of the climbs (I included my two favorites -- Washington Ave and Coppermine) when the weather begins to cooperate.

P.S. Ask the Ninja about plugging bad numbers/starting conditions into differential equations, it's quite a funny story.

The Invisible Hand

I'm quite dismayed at the officials' decision to neutralize the final two circuits of Stage 1 in the ToC. It seems oddly reminiscent of the Paris-Roubaix Controversy in 2006. Though, in the Paris-Roubaix result, I think the correct decision was made, i.e. the rules were applied.

It's very clear that the UCI 3km rule is good for rider safety. What's not clear is when you have officials arbitrarily deciding which crashes should affect the race outcome and which shouldn't. That's what the rule book is for. If officials are to be relied upon to "interpret the rules" (though this particular rule seems pretty spelled out), we might as well have the race run like an amusement park squirt gun game.

Completely disregarding having interpretations, sometimes you have to admit that life just isn't fair and doesn't always play out according to plan. In my opinion, the officials played favorites (here I go with the conspiracy theories again) with possible input from AEG Sports. AEG Sports and each host city stand to benefit from Leipheimer reaching each finish line wearing the leader's jersey. I'm not even going to comment on the apparent fudging of riders' finishing times. In my most humble of opinions, Ben Jacques-Maynes is the current leader of the ToC (well, maybe not now as I type this as I'm waiting until the TV coverage to find out the results of Stage 2).

Useless Commentary

I realized we're more than half way through February and I've only posted five times. Yes, February is a short month, but seriously, only five? I decided yesterday I should have much more to say on all things cycling. Here goes:

Daniele Bennati comes through for an amazing win in Le Tour Méditerranéen. We all knew the guy could sprint. If I recall correctly he finished top 5 in a bunch of sprints in Le TdF last year. He's definitely a fast man. What was so amazing about his win is that he crashed with 2.5km to go. He got back on with 800m and Ballan led him out for the win. Simply amazing.

I see Thomas Voeckler graduated with honors from The Wayne Rooney School of How to Age Poorly:

photo courtesy of Cyclingnews.

In other news:

Sylvain Chavanel is sooooo emo.

Amgen tries a new way to boost revenue for Q107 -- the EPO standard solutions are going to have to come from somewhere. Conflict of interest?

Mandy Lozano is hot.

Last, and certainly not least, karaoke is a go tonight.

What a Dick

I have a lot of love for our neighbors to the north. One of my best college friends is from Toronto. I was practically born in Canada. I used to play the game invented by Canadians (not curling). I enjoyed those nether years when crossing an arbitrary line made me responsible enough to consume alcoholic beverages within the letter of the law. When I worry about American rights and freedoms being eroded, Canada is usually tops on the list of countries in which I'd happily take up residence and citizenship. Despite all this, I see Dick Pound the way the rest of the world must see George W. Bush. The guy is a lunatic.

His mouth has got to be a perpetual motion machine as he's running it all the time. We've all got our opinions on the Landis T:E ratio result. And we're all entitled to an informed opinion on that or any subject. But when you're the head of a worldwide organization tasked with keeping sporting legitimate, you really need to limit your facetious hyperbole to discussions over beers amongst friends in the pub.

From Cyclingnews:

"He was 11 minutes behind or something, and all of the sudden there's this Herculean effort, where he's going up mountains like he's on a goddamn Harley," Pound told journalist Michael Sokolove. "It's a great story. Wonderful. But if it seems too good to be true, it probably is."

And he follows it up with this gem, also from Cyclingnews:

"You'd think he'd be violating every virgin within 100 miles. How does he even get on his bicycle?"

Holy Hell, Dick! Did you not realize you were talking to a reporter? Well after that brouhaha back in early January, it seems those close to DP of the more sane variety talked some sense into him, or at least found some sort of magically invisible muzzle. Mais au contraire, mon frère! He's found some way to weasel out of his magically invisible muzzle and fire up that perpetual motion machine again, this time at the expense of Armstrong.

Again, from Cyclingnews:

"These are documents. This is an accredited laboratory that found EPO in [Armstrong's] urine from 1999 and it's been matched with forms you signed so if the analysis is right and the forms aren't forgeries you may have something to explain," said Pound. "He [Armstrong] has done nothing about the L'Equipe article and has done nothing except complain about me for some unknown reason. I've said those are the facts."

If I'm not mistaken, Armstrong was cleared of those '99 Tour samples. In addition, is it every rider's responsibility to respond to each and every accusation thrown about by sensationalist papers? When a finance columnist suggests a company is a takeover target and rumors get reported that so-and-so is in merger talks with the "takeover target," are there comments from either company? Generally, no.

One might wonder how Dick is still walking around given the number of times he seems to have shot himself in the foot. The guy must not realize that he is tossing any and all credibility of WADA out the window with every time he opens his mouth. Or maybe, just maybe, that's what he's actually trying to do? There's your conspiracy theory, do with it what you will. Personally, I think the guy should be put on Abilify (an anti-psychotic you can apparently get from your GP -- ask Craig).

How about that? A cycling-related post!

Windfall Profits

Yesterday before going to The Harvest Moon to celebrate one AngryVegan's successful completion of the much-anticipated and always-feared Graduate Oral Examination, I viewed my checking account balance at the ATM. (Sidebar: now that Mark's proficiency in English is fully recognized and certified, I'm sure he'll have some authoritative-sounding comment to make regarding the construction of the previous sentence). Much to my chagrin, my account balance was a wee bit lighter than I had expected. I crossed my fingers and hoped that only meant that my rent check cleared and not that I had been out excessively galivanting despite my best attempts at being anti-social of late. The good news is that my rent check did, in fact, clear.

The even better news is that, upon checking my account online today, I was pleasantly surprised to see that my 20% "true-up" portion of my 2006 bonus had been deposited. Better still is that it completely covers this month's car payment (with about $1.20 left over). Oh joyous rapture, that means I can now expedite my plans for tackling my aforementioned list.

In related news, it looks like at least the first half of next week will play out depressingly similar to the past two weeks at work. Despite my best efforts to the contrary, it looks like I may not be able to pull off being a mediocre, average worker after all.

So Tired

Work is killing me.

But I gave my bike a nice bath on Sunday and lubed the drivetrain. Now she runs like butter. I thought my power had dropped off the last week (overtraining, maybe) but turns out I just had a dirty, salty, dirty, dirty drivetrain that needed some lovin'.

So many projects, not sure which to work on first:

1. Put together new road bike with Rival groupset (minus the crankset plus FSA crankset)
2. Home shop setup (e.g. bike stand, truing stand, tools, etc)
3. Roof rack
4. Sleep
5. Gettin' some action

Where my shame gland is supposed to be, there's actually a second awesome gland. True story.

Incroyable!

I require that my future wife have this ability.

Kara-no-ke

Tonight will be the first time I skip a karaoke night in months. It almost feels like skipping a day of training, except with more guilt (my teammates are depending on me at karaoke?). However, I made this decision days ago.

1. Work this week has been brutally long and hard. I think I had already put 40 hours in by around lunchtime today. It has been pretty much non-stop, too, and any slow moments were filled with playing catch-up in my notebook.

2. Related to 1., I am exhausted. Last Thursday I was up until 3, then Friday I was up until 7. Each day this week I've gotten up at 6:30 (about an hour early for Winter) to watch the Tour of Qatar (a.k.a. Tom Boonen's Playground). I planned to sit back and actually relax after work today but decided instead to do laundry/sort mail/pay bills/clean the apartment. So I need a break.

3. Related to 2., if I want to get up at 6:30 again tomorrow, I need to get in bed by 10 tonight. This precludes karaoke. My apologies to those on the edge of their seats, hoping for the radio star to be killed again by pictures or watch me feeling fine as the world (as we know it) ends.

I can abuse myself with the bike or I can abuse myself with the bottle. I cannot do both. Good night and good luck.