Monthly Archives: January 2011

It started with 4 and just grew from there

There was certainly no indication at the start of this morning’s ride that it was going to become a larger group with some new guys showing up; just myself, Eric, John and Ludo. No sign of Kevin or Nigel or Karl or any of the other semi-regular guys. Since it was a Thursday (which are nearly always easier than the Tuesday editions), I was fine with riding up through the park which, once again, had the gate at the bottom already open. Even at our “easy” pace I was still a bit winded by the time we got up to Kings, where we found Nigel and Mike (who apparently arrived a few minutes late; if you’re planning to show up for our ride sometime, please note that we leave at precisely 7:45am, not 7:47, not 7:45:30. When my Garmin GPS says it’s 7:45, we’re off!)  I actually couldn’t remember so I had to check the video; yep, so far, so good. On the run across Skyline we added Millo, his friend Jeff and another accomplice whose name I didn’t get. I think that’s the tally for this morning!

Yet another cloudless day with a view stretching all the way to Hawaii. Got to love “winter” in California! Supposedly we could get some rain this Sunday, but I’m thinking not. It just doesn’t feel like it’s ever going to rain again (which, of course, is a really dumb thing to say, given that both February and March be be very wet months).

Contador loses 2010 Tour de France title, banned for 2011, and a sad look at teams gone

And so it goes. I figured they’d give Contador a token 4 month suspension and take away his 2010 Tour de France victory, but I think he miscalculated and pushed his “innocence” too far. My guess is that he could have cut a deal early on, but went for broke. Maybe he could have skated free if not for the plasticizers they found in his blood (plasticizers being something you pick up from a blood bag during a transfusion, and there are no longer any legally-permissible reasons for transfusions short of one supervised by a doctor for medical conditions that must be documented and demonstrated to be extremely serious).

While looking through links on the New York Times Contador article, I came across  their Tour de France page here.

What’s sad is to go through the links for the various teams (found well down the page, on the right-hand side), many of which are gone. For example-

At least they have a page saying good-bye. Many others simply go 404.