Too Vanilla For You

Another bad day for cycling as one of it's top riders once again tested positive. That's right, this morning it was announced that I was caught with too much Kozy Shack in my blood. Or, really, too much Kozy shack in my mouth.




Seriously though, does something seem wrong with this process? Isn't the testing process supposed to eliminate bias and shield the rider from fallout from false positives? Isn't (or shouldn't?) the rider supposed to remain anonymous until after the B-sample so that if it was a false positive there's no repercussions for the rider. These days somebody from the supposedly "independent" labs always leak the news that a rider has tested positive, and before you know it there's irreparable harm done to the rider's reputation. Even IF the B test proves otherwise, people will always assume that I'm a Kozy Shack addict, always high on rice, can't control myself around the Shack smack. I mean...Floyd...Kozy...nevermind.

So last week I'm getting ready to close the store, it's 7:45, I've got the bikes inside, the window gates closed, and somebody from Vancouver calls and asks what time we close. I tell him 8. Then he asks the price on something, I tell him, and he says "ok, I'm coming in to check it out". I said "sooo...you've got 15 minutes to make it in". He gave me the ol' "what the hell" comments and I was about ready to write it off as another crazy Vancouver-ite when I looked at a clock and noticed that it was actually only 6:45.

Oops.

You see, my watch is one of those fancy un-digital ones, and to make matters worse, there's no numbers on it, only hash-marks where the numbers should go. How is anybody supposed to tell time with something like that?

The second funny story actually happened to Ping Pong. So he was riding his mountain bike around town the other day when he kept hearing this "tick...tick... tick" sound. He's thinking he should check to make sure his crank arms are tight when the left one falls off.

Morals: Don't ask me what time it is, and don't let Ping Pong work on your bike. He's only good for cleaning.

I'm never letting Mr. Pong update my blog again. This was his shining chance to step up to the plate while I was gone, show everybody that he can blog well, and that's what he gave us? We went from the shining moment of the blog, the calf-off, to a picture of a chubby asian kid in 5 posts. That's shameful. So let me apologize to everyone who had to read that. Plus he sucked it up big time at the short track on Monday. And I mean really sucked it up.

Slaven apparently had some bad luck too. He didn't finish off so hot, and spent the whole next day at work muttering something about "being elbowed by a tree" or something like that. I don't know.

Italy was good. It was hot. So hot that a few times I pressed myself up against a rock cliff to try to find some shade, and to try to get cool. Who here likes prosciutto? and white wine? Those are similar to what you Americans call "bacon" and "grape juice with alcohol", except italy-er. The world cup was pretty insane too. Walls of screaming Italian fans on the streets in Rome. If Ping Pong doesn't do better next Monday I'm going to try that Zidane head-butt move on him.

So today was the Tabor circuit race, I tried to top myself off with a bunch of water and food, and I left my house at 158 lbs. I proceeded to enter Tabor, drop out, then ride for a couple hours. When I got home I was a mere 152 lbs! Beat that, Atkins diet! A couple more days like that and I can start eating again.

But seriously, I drank 4 bottles of water over 3.5 hrs of ride time, and still lost 6 lbs. WTF? Was it really that hot today? Got home feeling a little woozy, have been drinking water ever since, and I was finally (4 hrs later) able to pee. That can't be good.

Shannon's coming back on Thursday.

Peace out,

Ping Pong