Big Joe's Soap Box

I don’t share my birthday with too many famous people. When I was a kid I would listen to the radio as they ran down the celebrities celebrating a birthday on my day and hear names like Charles Nelson Reilly, Penelope Ann Miller, and Richard Moll. Recently it has gotten a little better with race car driver Patrick Dempsey. I think he acts a little too. That is going to change this year with the introduction of the next generation of the Chevrolet Corvette. The news that the new car would debut on my birthday has thrilled me to no end. I have even sent tweets to General Motors to try to get them to organize a contest to give one away to someone who shares the birthday but with no luck.

I have loved the Corvette since I was a little boy, staring at them on dealership lots. In the late eighties they seemed like cars from the future with the wedge shape profile and countless creases in the bodywork. They also had the school boy favorite flip up headlights. Flip up headlights had to make you faster! I think that if you asked any American boy to draw a car at that time, that wedge shape with flip up headlights would almost always be the result. It was the American Ferrari, everything you could want in a car and sitting on a Chevy lot. You could almost believe that you had a shot in talking you folks into buying one. I remember looking at a black one thinking that it wasn’t that much more than the cars my family was looking at. Maybe if I got Dad at a weak moment I could convince him. After all, did he really need to take more than one other person with him at a time?

That allure still holds true today. I was recently at my local dealer and ran into this gorgeous Corvette Grand Sport. It was the same price as an LTZ Suburban! That entire American sports car pedigree for the same price as the family truckster! And, let’s be honest, the roof doesn’t come off the Suburban. I am not sure where I would put my son’s stroller but he won’t need it forever. Some compromises might need to be made, but I am sure my wife won’t mind having to wait for me to come back for her.

I love this car in its’ current form. It is as fast as a Porsche 911 for much less money. The difference is about the cost of a new Equinox, so you can buy the Vette and have something to drive in the winter. If that’s not fast enough for you, you can always buy the Z06 version, or the top shelf supercharged ZR1. I would choose the basic car. There is nothing wrong with 430 horsepower or going 0 to 60 miles per hour in 4.2 seconds. That is 80 horsepower more than the Porsche and .4 of a second faster to 60, all for about thirty thousand dollars less. Sure there are people that will only buy the Porsche. They consider the Chevy to be too rough around the edges in handling, too sparse in the interior, and too plebian. I agree, and that is exactly why I love the car.
I like rough around the edges. It’s fun, in a grin inducing power slide kind or way. I want the car that makes me smile, every time. If the Porsche is precise like a medical scalpel, the Corvette is a sledgehammer. Tim Allen never said he wanted less power! I love that about the Corvette. It is a huge hammer and it doesn’t apologize for being one.

I also like saving money. The interior is not crafted from virginal cowhide that has never seen barbed wire or hand crafted by wizened old men using methods of stitching passed down in sacred rights of old world tradesmen. It’s a place to site and drive the car. I want engineers to make it functional and move on. If I have to choose between genuine synthetic suede alcantara wrapped headliner or getting to 60 miles an hour faster, I will take the .4 seconds every time, especially with thirty grand in my back pocket. That helps the seat feel better every time.

I’m an American, and there is nothing wrong with plebian. Exclusivity comes at a price, not at a certain quality. People who pay thirty or forty grand more for their car to go slower need to hang their hat on something, but again, I would rather have the money back. I don’t mind of someone down the street has another Corvette. I hope they do because that means that Chevrolet is doing well and will keep building them.

With all of that being said, Corvette engineers have addressed the criticisms in the new generation. It will be the next step in the American icon’s development. The teaser videos on the web have already shown a more technological interior with thin film transfer displays. There will be new seats from Sabelt. The car will be even faster, even sexier, and even more efficient; all while still being the best deal in car buying history. That is an amazing accomplishment. I have never been able to drive a Corvette; I really hope that one day I will be able to drive the C7 version that I will share my birthday. The only real problem will be prying me out of the car after the drive!

One of the best rewards of guest blogging for CycleRecycle has been virtually meeting people from all over the world. New people have been following me on Twitter and I have enjoyed getting to hear about life in the United Kingdom. I don’t always understand everything I hear, but it is great fun making new connections that would have never existed without cycling and writing. Though they might not really know me, I have begun to think of my new friends as part of my daily electronic routine. I go through my Twitter feed and hear about cycling in the winter weather, how the traffic was, and how everyone is doing that day. It is a little strange to be hearing about days half over when mine is just starting out, but it has become something I look forward to each morning.
December 14, 2012 seemed like a black day for my cycling friends in Britain, despite some great news. The Tour de France is going to stage the Grand Depart in the county of Yorkshire with a stage ending in London. Everyone seemed to be ecstatic for this news, even if they were crushed about other news. Two court verdicts were being discussed, specifically the punishments for drivers in the death of Sam Harding and the accident that injured Times journalist Mary Bowers. Both drivers received minor penalties and were cleared of manslaughter charges. These verdicts came after BBC 1 aired “War on Britain’s Roads”, a television show that featured altercations between motorists and cyclists. Much has been written about the accuracy of the show, and I can’t do the issue service here. Google “War on Britain’s Roads” for many articles about the veracity of footage used and the framing of the topic. The result is the same no matter how true or not the program was; public perception shifted and the rhetoric seems to have escalated as a result. The proof of this is found on Twitter. Many motorists have taken to using the service to vent and threaten cyclists. You can log onto Twitter and look at the timeline of @cyclehatred to see what people have posted. Motorists threaten to run over cyclist. They have threatened to stab them as well. There have also been personal attacks on individual users, such as @cyclingdad who was called a homosexual with an invalid opinion because he rode a bike.
I can honestly say that I was happy not to have to ride in the United Kingdom at that point of the day. I wrote a quick note about not engaging internet trolls to cheer @cyclingdad and went on to my next Christmas errand. I wondered if the problem was the amount of road users in the cities, or if most of the problem was my perception. I was only seeing the vocal defenders of cycling highlighting the worst of the offenders, not the (hopefully) vast majority of the road users. I hoped that life in the U.K. was like life in the U.S.A. and that the vast majority of people try to do the right thing every day and a small cross section of belligerent drivers can ruin the perception of the rest of the population. Every time I watch BBC America I hope that the U.K. understands that we are not all a bunch of fat inbreeding hillbillies.
I checked Twitter again before entering the next store and couldn’t believe my eyes. There seemed to be a shooting at an elementary school. I thought that it must be a mistake and the initial reports had one person injured. After finishing up I checked again and had to sit down. I went to the story one person had linked. Reports were showing that multiple people had been killed, and many were children. Details were still scarce, but it was happening in a town 45 minutes from mine. A town called Sandy Hook. I had been there many times, and it is the stereotypical New England village. I couldn’t believe that there would ever be a problem there, let alone a devastating tragedy like this. Over the next few hours the police released the horrific details. Twenty children and six adults killed at the school. The shooter had committed suicide there as well. He had killed his mother before going to the school. No reason has been uncovered for the shooting. The authorities have said that the shooter suffered from a mental issue. I am still having problems processing all of the emotions. I cannot imagine what it must be like for parents to loose young children eleven days before Christmas. I cannot imagine what it must be like to lose your loved ones who went to work and never came home. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be a first responder called into that scene.
Somehow, in all of this darkness there are lights. There is the teacher, Vicki Soto. She shielded her students by telling the gunman they were in the gym. He killed her, but she saved her entire class of children. There is Mary Bowers father. He managed to shake hands with the man that killed his daughter. Mr. Bowers found the strength to forgive the driver enough to hope he was spared a jail sentence. There are also the countless people that are reaching out to victims and offering support. In their strength and heroism these stories inspire us, and help us heal. A local media group had started a toy drive for the surviving children in an attempt to help their families. Local families in a neighboring town are volunteering to help prepare temporary classrooms for students so they don’t have to go back to the school right away. Teachers are going back to schools to be with kids, no matter how scared they feel.
It is four days after that black day, and I am still not sure what to think. No one will ever really know why any of it happened. Why was Mary Bowers critically injured? Was the driver distracted, poorly trained, or something worse? Her poor father has a daughter he describes as worse than dead, in 24 hour care at a hospital more than a year after her injuries. Why did the driver open his door sending Sam Harding into the path of a bus killing him? Was he not paying attention or something far worse? Sam Harding was moving in with his girlfriend that day. How hard must it be for his girlfriend when he never came home? Why did someone go into an elementary school and end the lives of so many children and adults? How can their families ever cope with that? How can any family deal with loosing loved ones, especially this close to the holidays?
I don’t know what to do to help any of this from ever happening again. I am sure there are laws that can be passed, or stiffer penalties to deter wrongdoing. I don’t know how effective any of that will be, but I hope our leaders try. I don’t know if someone who loses their temper and uses their car as a weapon would stop if they know they might go to jail. I don’t know if someone who snaps and walks into a school to kill children would be deterred by stricter gun laws.
I do know what I can do to help, at least as much as one man can. I need to drive and ride better on the roads. I need to make sure that I keep a calm temper and even extend a little compassion to my fellow road users. I need to think more about others and remember that we are all struggling under some burden. I don’t think a stranger’s kindness would have stopped the shooter, but it wouldn’t have pushed him further along either. I think that will help, and not only for myself. There is someone watching me now. My son loves going for rides in the car. I need to remember that I am an example to him, and not just with showing him the right way to use the roads, but in life. Brennen is already learning from watching me. I need to make sure he is learning the right lessons. Last weekend when the despair crept in from the shootings I took him to a grocery store. Together we bought food for the local food bank and dropped it off at a collection point. It’s a small step, but needed right now. I don’t know if we can change much of the world, but I know our kids can. I am going to do my best to teach Brennen to love everyone and treat them with kindness and respect. That will help, at least a little. That is what I have to hope will be enough because we can’t keep going on like this.

This blog was never going to be about cycling alone. It is going to be about all of my passions, and my life. There seems to be a lot going on in my life right now, but mostly it is about finding a job. The irony is my continued unemployment is the last thing that I want to talk about. I have been concentrating on bicycling because it has been my focus as I try to become healthier, but today I would like to talk about my first love.

She was born in 1979 in Michigan. I don’t know how she came to Connecticut, but the first time I met her she was at the house of a family friend. She was in the front yard when I got there and it was love at first sight. Once I had seen her I realized she was everything that I had been longing for in my fifteen year old brain, and the only thing I could think about once I had seen her. She ignited one of my passions in life and was the first of many more to come. She was a 1979 Mercury Cougar XR-7. She was my first car. Beautiful, huge, and loud, the Cougar was a stereotype of American cars of the 1970s. Our family friend sold her to me for $500 and my mother drove her home to sit until I turned sixteen. I started the car once every couple of days to keep the battery fresh, but that was an excuse to sit in the car and imagine what it would be like to drive it.

The Cougar sparked something inside me that had lain dormant. I was not the type of child that hung car posters in his room, or one that really thought about driving all that much. I always had older friends that drove me around, and my parents were always willing to drive if I couldn’t find a ride. Cars were an appliance to that younger me until I had one of my own. Suddenly I needed to get my license when I turned sixteen. I began to badger my parents to take me out driving. I talked my older friend into letting me drive. It was reckless, but I had to be behind the wheel. The joy of sitting behind the wheel and controlling these massive lumps of metal and making them do exactly what I wanted was immensely satisfying.
The cars themselves began to matter to me as well. I still had no love for exotic cars that I would never see, let alone drive, but I fell in love with the Firebirds, Camaros, and Mustangs of the 1980s. Cars I could actually afford to buy and insure. There were others as well. One of my favorite cars was my friend’s pick-up truck. It was a tiny little diesel Toyota. It might have had 50 horsepower, but it was what I learned to drive standard shift with. We took that truck all over the east coast. We baked in the summer and froze in the winter with no air-conditioning and not much more heat. Nothing really worked in the truck but the engine and transmission and we loved it because it took us everywhere. I think my friend might say that it was his favorite car growing up.
I was always far less practical than he was. The Cougar was just the beginning of my automotive choices that were equal parts poor and wonderful. I have owned Firebirds and Trans-Ams. Camaros and jacked up Blazers. Two door Dodge Avengers and sad little Saturns. I have owned my own pick-up trucks and SUVs. Almost all of them have managed to find a place in my heart, even if it is more out of pity then respect. The poor choices also led to positive results. I had to learn how to fix what I shouldn’t have bought in the first place. I am not mechanically inclined in many ways, but I know how to install a new blower fan on a Chevy Blazer so I could have heat again in January. I know how to drive a standard shift car with a bad alternator without stalling to limp it to the garage to avoid paying for the tow truck. I know how to jury rig a carburetor to keep working when I am fifty miles from home. I have learned the sometimes misplaced confidence of knowing you can fix whatever has broken long enough to limp the car home. I have also learned when something is over my head to call the experts because they will tell you when your attempt at fixing something has actually cost you more money than just going to the garage would have in the first place.
Cars have not defined my life, but they have been there when I did. They were often the costars in whatever was an occurring at the most monumental moments in my life. These are the cars that took me on epic road trips to amusement parks all over the east coast with friends as we tested our freedom. They took me to high school and college. They took me to concerts and athletic events. They earned me dates with high school sweethearts and one poor little Saturn sedan took me on my first date with my wife. They brought my son home from the hospital and amused him as he sat on my lap pretending to drive.
I know that the role of the automobile in the world is changing. No one can really claim that climate change isn’t happening and urban congestion is leading to other issues with cars. We will drive cars less and even the idea of what an automobile is will change. Hydrogen and electric power will replace gasoline and large land yachts will become micro city cars. That is a good thing. Adaptation is the key to survival, and that is what is important to me. I still love cars and I want them to be around for my son to love them as well. One day I want him to feel the thrill of taking that first solo drive just like I did in that old Cougar.

Why I ride:
Up. Wash face. Skip shaving. Think about cost of Electric Shave. Wonder why I do this. Think about still not having a job. Pull on chamois. Hope they hold up for a few more months. Think about the cost of replacing them. Wonder why I haven’t found a job. Eat. Think about cost of bagels. Grab protein bar for later. Think about learning how to make my own. Out to the garage. Pull on my shoes. Look at the straps as I pull them tight. Think about how long they will last. Check the bike. Tires look a little worn. Think about the cost of replacing tires. Add air and check the rest of my gear. Helmet is okay, but felt bits are falling out. Stick them back in. Don’t think about the cost of replacing helmet. Wonder why company that seemed like a perfect fit hasn’t called. Worry about mortgage payment. Worry about stress of unemployment on marriage. Worry about forgetting water. Back inside for water and remember wallet for ID and iPod. Back to garage and re-pack bag with forgotten supplies. Open the garage door quietly so I don’t wake my son. Worry about him and how to pay for his school. Worry about attempting a career change. Worry about not being able to be a writer. Worry about how to make writing a paying passion. Worry about not being good enough.
Quietly close the garage door. Worry about not making it home in time to help my wife. Worry about how little I have been able to help her while unemployed. Think about how supportive she had been in the drought. Mount up and head down my street. Think about which loop to take. Decide to push myself. Worry that I won’t lose enough weight to ride my new bike when it arrives this spring. Worry about paying for the bike. Wish I didn’t put the bike on order being too fat and broke to make it work. Pump harder as the street rises up to the first hill. Time my approach to the first light so I ride through on green to avoid losing my momentum up the hill. Finally see the start of the sunrise through the light fog. Laugh as my breath clouds my glasses. Feel the burn in my legs on the first hill. Wonder why I manage to start the ride on the hill. Remember that there is a bike in my future that demands better of me. Smile in appreciation of an up-tempo song on the iPod. Better to match my cadence to it for the rest of the hill. Quickly take a drink, feeling the cold water hit my throat and make it contract a little. One of the joys and tortures of an early morning fall ride, the air keeps the water cold enough to almost hurt as you drink. Think about capturing the moment later to share with readers. Start to sweat as the miles begin to pass. Worry that they seem to be going so slow as my legs seem to protest the trail that I have turned onto. Eight more miles of hill before the trail levels off. I bargain with myself, it is only a slight grade; the converted rail bed doesn’t climb that sharply. If hundreds of others can do it, I can too. I may still be fat and slow, but I am ahead of my pace one month ago, six months ago, and a year ago. A year and a half ago I would never even ride, let alone think that 35 miles is a great way to start a Saturday. Three years ago I weighed 50 pounds more and smoked three packs a day. I feel happy that my son will know I smoked one day, but he will grow up knowing a father that is trying to be fit and pass that on to him.
Check the cycle computer and see a larger number than I expect. Realize my time is good for this part of the ride and push the next two miles into the rest stop. Eat a protein bar and drink deeply. Look at the new bridge and trees and thank myself for levering my butt out of bed early enough to see the sun climb through the trees. Start to bargain with myself to push the ride a little longer and head out of the rest area. Feel the miles fly under the bike, quietly singing under my breath along with the songs on the iPod, only one ear bud in to hear faster riders approaching. Smile when I realize that I am passing more people than are passing me. I think about a year ago when EVERYONE passed me. I could only ride 8 miles at a time. I gasped for breath all the time. I thought I was going to die. Everyone encouraged me, my family, friends, especially strangers in the bicycling community. Happy I embraced the change, hopeful about changing careers and writing. Hopeful that others may see value in my communicating what I see and hopeful that I can do it well. Gliding into the turnaround I see that my time is good and I take a shorter rest, choosing to eat the protein bar on the go. Seventeen miles down, seventeen to go. I can do this.
Finish the last small hill and begin to feel less effort as the trail dips down to begin the eight miles of downhill terrain to my house. Remember that this is why I start with the large hill. Laugh as the speed picks up. Shift into the big ring for the rest of the ride. Enjoy the sun dappled trail bed as I search for treacherous sand and soft spots. Start to worry about what a crash would mean, then stop. There is too much joy in the decent, too much joy in being a fat man flying down the trail. Feeling all the benefits of lugging that extra weight up the hill, it pulls me down the trail faster and faster. I don’t think until the trail ends and I am back on the road, gasping for air and laughing like I was twenty years younger and my biggest worry was getting home for supper. I ride onto the road and smile with anticipation of the road bike and new adventures. I am still losing weight, I will make this happen. I will be able to afford it and everything else. My son is calling to me from the porch, breakfast is ready and the day will be a good one.
I open the door and can hear the dog barking and running back and forth anticipating my arrival. I can hear my wife talking to my son. I take off my helmet and earphones, stowing them away for the next ride. I feel the post ride stiffness in my legs that lets me know that I pushed just hard enough. Enough to hurt, but not enough to cause any injury. I feel the endorphin rush subsiding, but not the positive feelings it brought. There must be some way to accurately describe the post ride feelings I have, but the closest I can come to is in terms of Zen-like calm. After experiencing a version of the “no mind” I feel as if I still have problems, but they are surmountable. Things will work out. A company will offer me a job soon. Someone will read what I write, and it will connect. I have accomplished some of my goals, I can accomplish more of them. It just takes time, energy, and the willingness to keep pushing even when I feel discouraged. It is working on the bike; it will work in life as well.

That is why I ride.

Lately I have been struggling with motivation.  There are still days I want to jump on the bike, but there are others that I will look for any excuse to avoid it.  I mean any excuse.  I raked the leaves in the yard the other day with the thought that it would qualify as my physical activity for the day thus excusing me from getting on the bike.  I have spent extra time cleaning around the house and even volunteered to help tow a moving container for my sister-in-law two mornings in a row in what would normally be my time to ride.  Normally I would just ride another time, but now I seem to be using these activities as excuses.

I didn’t have this problem when I first started riding.  Two summers ago I began riding as a way to get into a little better shape, but also as something to do when I was laid off from my job.  It was a great feeling to get out and ride.  I was able to concentrate on riding and not worry about anything else that was going on.  I was just starting out so eight miles seemed like a huge accomplishment.  I soon was able to push myself up into double digits and then twenty-mile rides.  This seemed like huge progress to me.  Looking back it seems less like success and more like a nice place to start a journey, but it seemed huge at the time.  Motivation was much easier to maintain when goals were falling fairly easy.  It was nice to be able to look at a twenty-five mile ride and think it was an accomplishment when I couldn’t ride ten miles at the beginning of the summer.  By the end of the summer I had a better bike and felt like I had accomplished all of my goals.  Once fall came I put away the bike for the off-season and forgot about riding until the spring.

At the beginning of this year I made a resolution to be much more serious about my cycling and set out some fairly lofty goals for myself.  They might not be lofty for others, but for me they were pushing what I thought I could do.  My wife also bought me a great Trek hybrid bike to help me accomplish them.  I wanted to do a metric half century which is about 31 miles.  I also wanted to do a few solo rides of 30 plus miles to be ready.  By spring I had also bought myself a trainer following a friend’s suggestion to help me ride when I was short on time or the weather was rough.  By mid-summer I had pushed my average distance to 30 miles and had a great solo ride in Philadelphia of 35 miles.  My only real issue was that I realized I should have bought a road bike as I was quickly leaving the trails behind.  I was able to finish out my year with a few charity rides and my metric half century on Martha’s Vineyard.  The ride was amazing and was the highlight of my cycling year.

Now I seem to have hit the wall.  I just don’t feel the need to ride right now.  I want to talk about cycling, I want to be involved with cycling causes and write about cycling.  I just don’t want to climb onto the bike right now.  I have managed set my goals for next year, and this time I think they will push me harder than this years set.  I want to ride the metric century at the Martha’s Vineyard charity ride as well as a couple of solo century rides including one in Philadelphia.  My amazing sister-in-law also challenged me to train for a two-day ride from Miami to Key West in Florida.  It is a 165 mile ride over two days.  I have all of this to train for, and yet I have managed to avoid the bike for almost a week after my last ride, and that was a few weeks removed from the ride before.  The last ride I went on was a Thanksgiving Day social ride that I will write a ride review for a future post.  I just can’t seem to get back on the bike right now, and worse, I can seem to figure out why.  I want to ride and train, and I need to lose more weight, but I feel apathy towards getting back on the bike.

This is the first time I am attempting to train through the off-season.  I have set my trainer up in front of my computer and cued up movies on Netflix, but I can’t seem to coax myself onto the bike.  I know that part of my apathy is mental.  I am still struggling to find a new job and that brings unique stresses to my life.  Part of it may be bike fit.  All year I have had trouble finding a seat that didn’t hurt after an hour or so.  My local bike shop has spent a ton of time helping me and I think it might be that I am bent over too far forward to be comfortable on a hybrid.  I have a riser handlebar on order to see if that helps.  It is hard to be motivated to sit on a bike that is uncomfortable, but I know that it is an excuse as I have been on it all summer and fall.

Mostly I think that my extreme lack of motivation might have something to do with all of the easy goals are accomplished and the difficult ones seem so far away.  I am in the winter doldrums and I am not sure how to snap out of them!  I keep thinking that something will change or pass and I will feel that fire again, but I also know that it’s not going to happen until I force myself up onto the bike and get riding again.  That’s why I have set the goals that I have, and why I have ordered the riser bar.  I know that it would be too easy to wait until the days started getting longer and warmer before training again.  I will be behind on the training with more ground to cover because it’s not like people eat less over the holidays.

I would love to know what other cyclists do to keep motivated over the off-season.  Are there goals that you set to keep you on the bike over the winter, or do you take a couple of months off before coming back to the bike?  Do other cyclists try to work off of the “work/reward” system to earn sweet holiday treats?  Is it the constant threat of more ground to make up if you back off of training that keeps you going?  What works best for you?

I really want to stop writing about Lance Armstrong.  I had actually vowed to leave the story alone after my last two blog posts, but then a few things happened to change my mind.  The first was a story of the English town of Edenbridge that burned an effigy of Armstrong on November 5^th as part of the celebration of Bonfire Night.  I do not see anything wrong with this, but I might also be missing something as an American.  We tend to enjoy public spectacle over here and we don’t put too much significance in it as long as it ends peacefully.  I did find it very interesting that a town in England would care enough about the story to burn the effigy.

The second story that changed my mind about writing more on this subject was actually a tweet from Lance Armstrong.  It was a picture of Armstrong laying on a couch under seven yellow jerseys.  I don’t care that he still has the jerseys, and I am not sure that anyone can take them away from him.  I don’t care that he still has them on display at his home either.  That is Armstrong’s prerogative.  I did find it interesting that the tweet came out after a relatively quiet time where Armstrong hasn’t been in the cycling news lately.  The tweet was his way of getting attention, much like my two year old.  If no one is talking about him, he will do something to get attention back on himself.  The tweet has had the intended effect.  Bicycling Magazine has the article on the tweet, and thousands of people have commented on Twitter, both in support and condemning the photo.

I believe that someone can tweet or write what they want, as well as burning someone in effigy.  I couldn’t continue to write opinion pieces about the sport if I didn’t believe in that right.  I also feel that we all have a right to only pay attention to what we are interested in.  The longer we pay attention, the longer the story drags on.  I am not saying that we don’t need to talk about doping, because we do.  I am heartbroken that Jens Voigt had to write a column for Bicycling Magazine detailing how and why he DIDN’T dope (http://bicycling.com/blogs/hardlyserious/2012/10/30/turbulent-times/).  I am annoyed that Bradley Wiggins was questioned during the Tour de France about doping.  The allegation was that he was performing too well.  I cheered when he exploded emotionally and defended himself and the sport.  Yes there were problems in the past, but cyclists are among the most tested athletes in the world of sport.  Testing procedures have been refined to catch what was once missed.  The culture has changed and doping is no longer condoned.

I think we as cyclists are getting tired of this ongoing soap opera.  Major League Baseball has gone through the same type of scandal.  Baseball moved on and people accepted that.  We need to move on as well.  Cycling used to have a huge problem with doping, now cycling has a huge problem with Armstrong and the story of doping.  He is refusing to go away despite a lifetime ban from cycling.  All of us have the same problem because our friends and families ask us what happened and we tell them.  The media can’t let Armstrong go.  We need to do it for them.  We need to focus on the positive strides that cycling has made, and the clean athletes that are performing amazing feats.  As cyclists we need to remember that things have changed and be ambassadors for our sport.

We can’t make Armstrong move on.  I hope he continues to help people with cancer, but I hope he does it somewhere else than the cycling world.  We can’t make him stop tweeting photos of his jerseys, but we can stop paying attention.  It is the attention he craves more than anything, and the attention is what he deserves to loose for what he has done to the sport.  I am going to promise to never write about him again and do my best to ignore whatever he tries to do for attention.  I want to do my small part in this.  I hope others can join me in saying “Lance who?” when I am asked about him.  I would rather talk about Wiggins, Voigt, or Tejay van Garderen.  I want to talk about the positive future, not the negative past.  I think it is time to move on.    Please join me.

Lance Armstrong and countless other riders have made talking about cycling very difficult these days.  You almost need a medical degree just to understand what they did and the lengths they went to hide their transgressions.  It is difficult to even talk about what should happen to all of the vacated titles.  Do you leave them empty in the record books to show how tainted the sport was?  Do you award them to riders that supposedly cheated less, or at least less effectively?  It is difficult to talk about the sport’s leadership and governing body.  No less that Greg Lemond is calling for UCI leadership to step down.  Even the Tour de France’s new conference unveiling the route for the 100^th edition is peppered with questions about the state of the sport and the cheating.  It is hard to remember why we want to be involved or follow a sport with all of these issues.

I want to step back for a little while.  I want to remember some fundamentals about cycling that make it worth spending so much time on a bike.  I want to talk about the most basic tenant of our sport and how it will never change.  Courage.  There is courage everywhere in our sport, and not just at the highest levels.  Perhaps there is less there anyway.  Lance Armstrong is currently defined by this scandal, but even in writing about his cowardice in cycling you have to admit his courage in fighting cancer.  We don’t need to talk about the courage it takes to ride the Tour de France.  It does take courage, but that is also the rider’s job.  Get on the bike and climb that mountain.  It is no one’s job to fight cancer.  No one is sponsoring someone’s attempt to live and then regain what they have lost in the fight.  There is courage in doing what you must to survive even when the outcome is in doubt.  So as we castigate Armstrong for what he has done to cycling, we must admit his courage elsewhere.  Perhaps that is what makes this a true tragedy.  A fallen hero that had the courage to do the impossible, but not the morally correct in another situation is a more difficult story than the evil doper that did it for the money.

There are simpler, and powerful, displays of the courage in cycling.  There is the story of a man in Massachusetts that is changing his life by climbing onto a bike.  Ernest Gagnon started cycling in 2010 as a way to regain his life.  He weighed 570 pounds.  He had to loose weight or loose his life.  He talks about being depressed, isolated, and unhealthy.  He turned to cycling to regain his life and found so much more.  I can’t begin to do his story justice, but please check out his blog.  Ernest became a philosopher as well, creating his Spandex Theory.  Paraphrased, it is that one must display who they truly are to ever be happy or change.

There is the story of my friend Katie as well.  Again, her blog tells her story far better than I can, but I want to touch on it here.  She didn’t learn to ride a bike as a kid like most cyclists.  She started to love cycling by watching the Tour.  She had to borrow a bike to learn how to ride, and to overcome the fear of falling.  We all have that fear as we ride, especially after we have fallen a few times.  You never get over it, but you know how to fall, and how to ride, so it is easier to live with.  Katie didn’t know any of that, but she learned to ride anyway.  She kept picking her feet up and trying again.  It is easy to learn to ride when you are a kid.  You don’t know how hurt you can get from falling, and the ground is a lot closer.   She learned how to ride when the mental stakes were so much higher than they were for most of us, but she did it anyway.  That is courage.

These are the stories that inspire me and the people that I think about when I hit the wall on a ride.  They are what keeps me going when I hit 35 mile an hour wind on Martha’s Vineyard or when I found the courage to wear spandex when I ride myself.  If Ernest can, so can I.  If Katie and learn to ride, I can push into the wind a little while longer.  How can you not respect other’s courage with a little of your own?

So it is difficult to talk about professional cycling these days, but perhaps it is the rest of us that will make it a little easier to talk about cycling in general.  Maybe we spend too much time admiring the riders as they climb the Alps and not enough time seeing the courage in each other.  Anyone can cheat.  Not everyone can change their lives when it would be so much easier to stay the same.  Let’s take some time to celebrate those that make the effort.

I am writing a blog about cycling, so I knew that I was going to have to write about Lance Armstrong for a couple of weeks now.  I wanted to wait until most of the players had their say, and with the decision of the UCI to ban Armstrong for life, this seems like the time to write about the story.

First, I would like to give my opinion on Armstrong, because everyone who follows cycling has one.  There are two general camps in the cycling world, the people who believe that Armstrong is clean, always has been and always will be.  He is their hero, the man who beat cancer to win on the cycling world’s greatest stage.  There is the opposite camp.  There are the people who believe that he doped from the start and is nothing but a sham.  He is the worst thing to ever happen to cycling and all of the sport’s problems with doping lay at his feet.  To be entirely fair, there is a third camp.  The one that does not follow cycling and only knows Armstrong as an athlete that founded Livestrong and became a star.  Until recently, I would have fallen more in the third camp than the first two because I didn’t follow the sport.  All I really knew is that Armstrong became famous; left his wife, dated a few stars, and then seemed to become something like a strange uncle.  It was his “dating an Olsen Twin” phase.  If I thought anything about him it was annoyance that he seemed to toss away his wife to be a famous.  I once seriously debated if I should buy a pair of Livestrong Nike sneakers that were on clearance in my size.  I wear size 14, so when you see Nikes on clearance it’s normally a good bet, but the image of Armstrong bothered me.  It wasn’t the doping at that time, it was everything else.  If pressed, I would have said I thought he was clean as I believed his claim to have never failed a drug test.

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of cycling news, and not for good reasons.  Armstrong is not the only rider whose image was tarnished or destroyed.  There were eleven other riders whose names appear in the USADA’s findings on Armstrong.  Eleven other people who admitted their own doping and claimed to have seen Armstrong dope, pressure them to dope, or gone to frightening lengths to avoid discovery.  Some are retired, but at least one has lost his place on a top team due to the scandal.  The news hasn’t focused on these riders, but to be fair, most people don’t know their names where Armstrong is a celebrity.  Armstrong’s story is also more compelling because he has lost all of his Tour wins, any other record of his cycling, been banned for life, and lost all of his sponsors.  He was the focus of the USADA.  Bringing Armstrong down was their goal, not the other riders.

I believe that Armstrong’s punishment fits his transgressions.  I want to be clear on that point, because once you move past Armstrong himself things get cloudy quickly.  Any athlete that dopes and pressures his teammates to do the same deserves to be punished.  Any athlete that goes to Armstrong’s level of doping and pressure needs to be removed for good.  The question I have is what about his teammates, team doctors, team managers, and the rest of the supporting cast?  There are people who are fighting the allegations, so I will withhold judgment on their situations, but Armstrong’s former teammates are another matter.  They were not given immunity when they came forward, but their punishments have not been as severe, and in many cases have already been served.  Perhaps Floyd Landis is an exception, though he was never banned for life, he just couldn’t get a place on a team after his own scandal.  I do not want to diminish what other riders are going through, but they have not been banned for life, even if they have lost Tour wins or their position on a team.

It is time for cycling to move forward.  There are so many questions that are raised from the USADA’s findings, and most of them are going to be difficult to deal with.  What should happen to Armstrong’s former teammates?  What about the others that came forward to talk about their place in the scandal while implicating him?  Should they be allowed to compete again?  Is there ever a sliding scale of guilt and punishment?  What about the culture that led to the doping scandal?

There may be a corollary to Major League Baseball in cycling’s scandal.  Both sports had rampant PED usage and a culture that didn’t treat it as cheating at the time.  There were rules against doping and PEDs, but the system was easy to beat and teams were expecting results and not asking questions about how they were achieved.  The analogy runs into trouble there though.  In baseball managers turned a blind eye to questionable conduct as long as the home runs and dominate pitching kept happening.  The USADA findings show that in cycling team managers and doctors were the ones administering the drugs.  It would be like the entire major league roster of teams lining up for steroid injections.  I believe that this is part of the reason that the UCI has decided to leave the seven Tour victories vacant.  Almost every other cyclist that would have been in line to inherit a victory has also been involved in a doping scandal of their own.  At what point do all of these individual doping scandals point to a larger problem?  This many people can’t be cheating and someone in the governing body not know about it as its happening.  There are already stories of Armstrong avoiding testing or positive test results disappearing after donations.  Perhaps the real question should be if everyone was doing it, how did they get away with it for so long?  Why did it take the USADA to catch one of the most pervasive doping programs when the UCI should have caught them seven other times, at least?

This is a sad story for the sport of cycling, and it will be worse if Armstrong continues to be the scapegoat for the UCI.  There are only two ways to go from here.  Demonize Armstrong and blame everything on him.  Ban him for life and then close the books on the past scandals.  Pretend that it is all over.  Or, use Armstrong to start a new chapter in cleaning up the sport.  Find out why cyclists were doping and not being caught.  Standardize punishments and then follow the standards consistently.  Move on from chasing the past and start focusing on the present and future of the sport.

I think that the USADA persecution of Armstrong went too far in some ways.  Why were they continuing to chase a retired rider?  I believe it was a witch hunt, but there was really a witch at the end of the hunt.  I don’t know if that justifies it.  I believe that Armstrong doped, and so did his teammates.  I believe that some of the punishments fit the crimes, but not all.  I believe it will all be a waste, the USADA findings, the rider’s confessions, the UCI decisions, all of it; if it is not used to change the culture of pro cycling.  Only time will tell if it will change, but I hope it will.

Last Sunday I tackled my most ambitious ride of the season, the 50 kilometer Cycle Martha’s Vineyard ride.  There were two versions, the 50 and the 100 kilometer.  The 50K came in at just over thirty miles.  The route was well laid out and should have been fairly easy.  I say should because the weather played a bit of a role in the level of difficulty.  The ride was especially nice because my father in law rode with me and Katie and my father took the trip with us.  I am a little short of photos for this post, but there is a gallery on my Facebook page of some of the scenery.

We began the day at 4:30, leaving Manchester, Connecticut on our way to Woods Hole,

Our little ferry

Massachusetts.  It was cold, dark, and rainy.  Perfect travel and cycling weather.  Fortunately, the weather was scheduled to improve.  We arrived at Woods Hole in time to take an earlier ferry to Martha’s Vineyard.  For those who haven’t been to the island, there are a few different ferries.  Most are large boats where you drive inside and then go upstairs to various seating areas, including outside if the weather is nice.  There is a snack bar, tvs, and WiFi.  We didn’t get one of those boats.  We got a little ferry that had enough room for a couple of rows of cars on each side of the central tower where the boat’s crew rode.  Did I mention the cold, the rain, and the wind?  It was a choppy ride over.  Everyone but me stayed in the car.  I was too excited and had to watch us leave the docks and make our way across the bay.

Once we got across we headed to the start point to check in.  The organizers were very friendly and even gave us a few suggestions where we could eat breakfast before the ride started.  We ended up at a great little breakfast spot named Biscuits.  We also found out that the tourist season was over.  It was the last day that they would be open until the spring.  That would actually become the theme of the day.  All of the year round residents of the island were closing up and getting ready for their long winter break before working like mad through another tourist season.  Everyone was happy that the end was here.  All of the gift shops were selling whatever was left as cheap as possible to get rid of their stock.  Not much was left, but if you could find something you wanted, it was yours.  About half of the stores never even opened.

These conditions helped make the ride amazing.  The lack of traffic along the route allowed the riders to focus on the ride and the scenery.  The rain finally stopped just before we left for our ride.  The people riding the 100K route had a little rain, but we escaped it.  The wind was a completely different matter.  I can honestly say that I never thought about what riding against 35 mile per hour gusts would be like, and I would be okay to not to that again.  There were points that we were leaning sideways into the wind to not be blown over.  There weren’t too many times we had to fight it, but there were points that it became silly.  At one point we were riding into the wind along the water and I could feel my legs burning with the effort.  I looked down and saw that I was only going six miles an hour!  I tried to call back to my father in law, but he couldn’t hear me.  Later the woman in front of me said that she was glad I said something about struggling because she felt better knowing it wasn’t just her!

That story also brings up one of the best parts of group rides.  Starting a ride with fifty or sixty other riders and knowing there are almost one hundred on the other ride is a great feeling if you normally ride alone or with one other person.  Getting to share your story and hear others share theirs at rest stops makes the ride more engaging and enjoyable.  It is a great feeling to know that you are a part of something that the island knew about and was talking about was great.  People at breakfast knew about the ride, and were commenting on all of the riders they had seen around the town.  This ride was had all of the “Event” status that the Tour of Hartford needs to recapture.

The rest stops were as much of an event as the ride itself.  The first rest stop was at Morning Glory Farm.  They had just had their annual Pumpkin Festival and there were hundreds of pumpkins decorating the stop.  The food was all fresh baked cookies and breads.  Everything smelled warm and delicious, which was twice as temping after the first 15 miles of the ride.  The volunteers were friendly and inviting and everyone left with a smile.  This was also where the 100 and 50K rides came together, so we were able to talk to the people that had tackled the harder ride.  This was past their half-way point.  They inspired me to go for the 100K next year!  The second stop was at a local bike shop.  It was closer to the normal charity ride rest stop in that it was a simple table with some snacks and water, but again, the volunteers went above and beyond in helping riders get whatever they needed.  If the entire ride had a hallmark, it would be the friendliness of the organizers and volunteers.  They really did everything they could to make our little band from Connecticut feel welcome.

The end of the ride was a party, complete with a full bar, pig roast, and live band.  We stayed for a plate of food and the headed out to the ferry.  We were hoping to get out early, but due to one of the ferries breaking down we couldn’t get an earlier one off the island.  We ended up exploring a little more and finding a place to eat dinner.  Finally we caught our sic o’clock ferry back to the mainland.  We also caught an amazing sunset.  We had one of the large ferries, but I still rode outside most of the way back.  The sea was still choppy and it felt like a roller coaster ride in the front of the boat.  At one point the spray came over the edge and almost knocked me over!  It was a longer ride home soaking wet, but it was worth it.  We finally made it home at 9:30 at night.  It was a long seventeen hour day, but it was a great adventure.  I can’t wait to do it again next year, but I think we will be staying in a hotel to avoid trying to do it all in one day. That 100K ride leaves earlier in the morning too….

Saturday September 30 my father in law and I took part in the annual Discover Hartford Bike Tour, presented by Bike Walk Connecticut.  We have ridden this tour before and it is always an interesting time riding through downtown Hartford and most of the parks in the city.  It made for a rough start to the day with temperatures in the lower 50s and a heavy mist felt almost like rain that hung in the air.  The mist was thick enough to cut down on visibility and cover some of Hartford’s higher buildings.  The view must have been pretty interesting up there as well.  There were fewer people riding this year than last, but I think the weather must have had an effect on attendance.  We saw many hard-core cyclists that were ready to ride and were equipped for the weather.  They looked like they would ride through anything, and a little wet weather wasn’t going to ruin their morning.  There were very few casual riders out, though I did see a father with three young boys getting ready to tackle the ten-mile version of the ride.

We began our 25 mile ride from the gathering point in front of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection after a welcoming speech by the Mayor of Hartford and The Director of the Connecticut Science Center.  It was nice to see that both Mayor Pedro E. Segarra and the Science Center found it worth while to be involved in the event.  It was also nice to see that some major corporations sponsor the event, such as Travelers.  Stephanie  Simoni from WTNH was even there to cover the event.  It was great to see all of the excitement at the start of the ride.  It made the event feel like something special.

Once we started the ride, we were treated to views of Hartford that most cyclists never see.  The Hartford Police Department shut down intersections and allowed us to ride down the middle of

Stephanie Simoni and Janette Baxter

Main Street on our way to Riverfront Park.  It is strange to ride down a busy city street surrounded by hundreds of other cyclists.  You get to see the street from a new viewpoint and really experience the buildings as you pass, not having to worry about cars and other hazards as you normally would.

Once we arrived at Riverfront Park we were able to watch Hartford Envisionfest setting up.  There were vendor tents and displays being set up, as well as food trucks everywhere.  It was very tempting to jump off the bike and grab a hotdog or some other treat.  The organizers of each event did a great job of cross promoting with the other events.  We were reminded by Bike Walk Connecticut to stay after the event and check out all that Envisionfest had to offer.  It was good to see that event organisers were working together instead of against each other.

After riding by the Connecticut River we headed west to our first organized stop, the Hartford Circus Fire Memorial.  This is the spot of a terrible circus fire in 1944 that killed over 160 people and injured over 700.  The memorial marks the spot where the fire happened, and is made up of memorial bricks with inscriptions for the people who lost their lives.  It is hidden behind a school next to the playground and makes for a slightly surreal sight.  I wonder if the kids understand what the memorial really means, or if it is just some bricks near where they play?

After that stop it was time to head out on our way to the first rest stop.  I didn’t take many pictures of places that we didn’t stop, so I am going to gloss over those areas.  There were plenty of cool sights as we traveled through many of Hartford’s city parks, but the volunteers made the day.  Not only at the two rest stops, but at intersections and entrances to parks.  They were there with smiles on their faces and often times music from radios to keep everyone happy and positive as the miles wore on.  I don’t think enough good could ever be said about their support for the people on the rides.  They truly made the day a better one everyone riding.

The Biker’s Edge also lent a hand with a SAG Wagon and mechanical help at rest stops along the way.  I managed to break a couple of spokes and they helped me finish the ride.  My local bike shop finished the repairs.  Manchester Cycle is a great shop, I highly recommend them.

One amazing site that I did stop to sneak a picture or two from was a wedding in one of the parks.  It was a great place to have one, and I wish the Bride and Groom all the luck in the world.  I wonder if it is good luck to have a couple hundred people ride by your outdoor wedding?  Everyone looked very happy, and by then the weather had started to improve.

Our final rest stop was in Trinity College’s stadium.  It was another surreal moment standing on the track eating bananas where real athletes normally run. 

After Trinity, it was a quick ride to South Hartford and a trip through a huge cemetery.  This place was huge and full of challenging hills.  It almost seemed cruel to spend miles in there after riding through Hartford, almost into Bloomfield, along the West Hartford line and down to Wethersfield.  Our legs were burning by the time we reached the last decent to the exit of the cemetery.

From there, we rode north back to the river, through downtown and back to Bushnell Park where we started.  It was a little strange to pass CL&P’s Hartford Area Work Center.  I realized how much I miss working for the company when we passed the yard and I could see all of the electrical equipment in the new yard.

Overall the ride was a blast.  My father in law and I had a great time.  We enjoyed the scenery and seeing different parts of Hartford than we might normally see.  We were disappointed by the number of people who came out to ride.  As I said, a lot could be chalked up to the weather, but I think it was much more than that.  There was no visible marketing of the ride in the city.  There were signs for the Hartford Marathon, and Envisionfest, but nothing for the Discover Hartford Tour.  I also didn’t see or hear anything on radio, television, or most importantly the internet.  I know that Bike Walk Connecticut has a web site that promotes the ride, but even their Twitter feed was fairly silent in the weeks leading up to the ride.  I feel like a larger push would have helped bring more riders out.  I know that I spoke to other people who I saw riding the Hop River Trail and none of them knew about the ride.  That is a huge shame.  The year before this had at least double the people and that was more fun and made a larger impact.  The ride is put on to promote Bike Walk, the city of Hartford, and what a positive impact cycling can have on the city.  The more people who come out, the better all of those goals are accomplished.  I did take a survey and volunteered my time to help market the ride, I will let you know what I hear back from Bike Walk.