Lance Armstrong, cycling

I love this guy's perspective on the Lance Armstrong scandal.
He sort of epitomizes what I've been saying all along.
It's too late to make a deal out of this. He won seven Tours and didn't get caught then. How far back would we go to strip champions who have doped through history? More and more evidence about more and more world greats comes to light....where do we stop?

Once again, I compare Lance to Thomas Jefferson. Should we negate what Jefferson said about freedom because he owned slaves and heartily believed that slavery was wrong? Do we write Jefferson out of the history books as a result? It's a moot point.
Let the record stand and clean up the sport now. Even if lots of my die-hard cycling friends don't like Lance, nobody can dispute what Lance did for the sport.

You want to ride the Tour de France even with performance-enhancing drugs? You think you could do what he did?  Let's let him be a hero.

Riding, writing

Yesterday, my friend's dog peed on my living room carpet--quite out of character, but enough to push me over the edge: YES, I need to rip up the carpet NOW, and have a nice wooden floor--or at least a clean wooden floor--with rug(s) before Alec comes to visit and crawl around on it.

So, in the next days: I need to mow (before the next rains come), finish second and third drafts of Slider's Son (the pen and paper version is second, translated into computer for third), rip up carpet (doesn't that sound fun?), do a reading/signing at the New Ulm Public Library (5:15 Friday the 15th if you're interested and that will be fun), ride every day (finally feeling almost like my old self on the bike--why does it take half the summer!?), and watch the Tour (cause I'm addicted). Good news: I can watch the Tour and rip up carpet at the same time!

Oh, I have been riding in the mornings or mid-day most of the summer. Yesterday, I stole a 20-mile ride right before dusk, and saw two deer (in my path on the downhill--had to brake to avoid them) and a raccoon (on my path on an uphill so he saw me in plenty of time). Might need to ride later in the day more often to check the wildlife! Not sure if the raccoon's extra time to get out of the way was an indication of his speed or mine uphill. Ha.

Oh, and my man Voeckler is still riding in the yellow jersey today. Haven't seen the results today yet.

Back to work.