Serious argey-bargey

That's what Paul called it, "serious argey-bargey". I checked the tape to be sure. But in a post stage interview Julian Dean, the recipient, had no complaints. "That's just sprinting", he said.

On the subject of dopers, while looking for the photo that I published yesterday I had occasion to look at some really old blog posts. It turns out that the picture had NOT been posted previously. I have a print on my refrigerator so I scanned it.

If memory serves, and it doesn't very well anymore, that photo was taken with a disposable camera, remember those?

Anyway, in looking at old posts I came across this bit of information, a quotation from an article published in 2007 by Sports Illustrated:

"If Armstrong is ever proved to have doped, he will have abetted his own unmasking. On Oct. 25, 1996, doctors opened Armstrong's skull to cut two cancerous lesions off his brain. Two days later the 25-year-old cyclist was in a conference room at the Indiana University Hospital. His Motorola teammate Frankie Andreu and Andreu's fiancée, Betsy Kramar, were among some half dozen of the Texan's friends in the room. When two doctors entered, Betsy's inclination was to give Armstrong his privacy, but, she testified at the SCA hearing, he bade her to stay.

One of the doctors, Betsy recalled in her testimony, asked Armstrong, "Have you ever used any performance-enhancing drugs?" Recalling the scene for SI, Betsy says that Armstrong was seated, gazing downward and holding his IV stand with his left hand, as he ticked off five drugs: EPO, growth hormone, cortisone, steroids, testosterone. Frankie Andreu, who married Betsy in December 1996, backed up her testimony."

You can't lie to the doctors who are trying to save your life right after surgery.

This will be one of the last pictures ever taken of this tree. Change is coming to the field next to our house. A new, regulation size, fenced softball field is being constructed by the land owners, the Roseville Area School District. The school district already provides over 20 fields for baseball, including a regulation full bells and whistles field next to the high school. As of this date the school district provides ZERO regulation fields for fast pitch softball. Someone finally complained and the district is preparing to take the very first step towards rectifying this can you believe this is still possible this late in the day imbalance. I have seen the plans, that tree, if left in place, would be just to the right of the pitching circle, in fair territory near the third base line.The removal involves a forestry technique that is new to me but that I suppose makes sense. They are removing a bunch of the roots before actually cutting the tree down.Other activities on the site include moving the fence in on the already existing youth baseball field. This is necessary to shoehorn a full sized softball field into that corner. It does seem just a tiny bit strange that they couldn't just replace that youth baseball field with the new softball field. Still, I have seen the plans and TOPWLH and I are generally OK with it all. If you want to control what happens on that land it is best to own it.

Here is an unusual use of rent a fence.I spoke to that state fair electrician and he told me that the fence in this case is not to prohibit people from coming into that area. On the contrary, there is a horse show going on there this weekend but the majority of the Fairgrounds will be used for another of our annual giant car shows. That fence is to keep the horse people IN.

There was no ride yesterday but that doesn't mean there was no bicycle activity. I complained earlier in the year about a flat tire on the NewLOOK after only 636 miles. I was worried about durability of the tires that came with the bicycle. It worked out OK though, I got to yesterday's mileage of 1,844 without further difficulty. I had those blue ones in cupboard anyway and although I was not yet having the usual wear problems (flat tires) I went ahead and made the change.I think the blue nicely offsets the graphics on the fork and tubes. I might be tempted at some later date to try the red sidewall tires but for today, as I say, I had those already in the cupboard. The result of yesterday's activity is that today I went out and wore some rubber off a new set of tires. Anyone who cares about such things and I for one am certainly in that category will note that the valve stems now line up with the center of the logo on the tire sidewall. I feel better.