Youthful exuberance

Six of the top ten riders in this years Tour de France were Spanish (and thirteen of the top twenty-five). The winner of the Yellow Jersey is also the winner of the White Jersey (i.e. he's under 25). The winner of the polka dot jersey, and the most aggressive rider are also both under under 25. In fact when they had all the jersey winners up on the podium the only one over 25 was Boonen (who's 26). The face of the tour is changing. Spanish riders have always been among the best of the best. In fact the record Lance Armstrong broke (for Tour wins) was previously held by a Spaniard (Miguel Indurain), but the young guys at the top is new.

Lance Armstrong was 27 when he won his first Tour and 34 when he retired and that's a pretty good indicator of the average age. Presumably they have the under 25 competition because no one under 25 (usually) wins the overall competition. There's talk, even in the NY Times (my favorite periodical), that the baby faces on the podium is an indicator of the sport getting cleaner.

In the 90s (and probably before) doping was ubiquitous. Everyone knows about the 1998 Festina scandal that decimated the Tour that year and precipitated the current focus on cleaning up the sport. It was difficult at the time though. If they caught one or two top riders doping (or even an entire team as was the case with Festina that year) there was still dozens, maybe hundreds, of other riders doping and when you came up to the pro circuit you had to compete with all of them. So, it's been a gradual process.

Now though, young riders coming up aren't willing to risk their lives or their careers to possibly get ahead, and team managers won't put up with dirty riders, and the UCI and race organizers cracking down. In sports there's always going to be people who, through doping or winning the genetic lottery, can't be beaten, but it no longer seems to be the case that it leads to a downward spiral where everyone has to cheat, not to win, just to stay in the game. As more people who are used to the old way, where doping was the only way to get ahead, retire (or get caught and banned) the young riders can now face a clean field.

This years Tour was wide open. No Lance Armstrong, no Ivan Basso, no Jan Ulrich. The giants of the sport who couldn't be beaten have retired. It was great watching Lance Armstrong dominate the Tour year after year, but after a few years it started to become sort of routine, not as exciting. There may still be a long way to go to eliminate doping, for that matter, the seemingly clean youngsters rising to the top these days might not be, but it sure is fun to watch the race and not feel like the outcome is a forgone conclusion.

The wURLd according to me

I'm what I guess you'd call agnostic. I like to believe in a higher power, especially since the world is full of things I can't explain, but I'm just not sure. I've said, and it's true, that the one thing I really believe in is love and I suppose that is a higher power in a sense. It's an odd thing, being in love. It makes people do things that they never thought they would or things they never thought they could. In English we say we are in love "with" someone but as often as not you're in it all by yourself. Some people say that love hurts, that it always does, that it has to, but that's not true. Love, in it's purest form doesn't hurt at all, it's only when you start placing conditions on it and you're afraid that those conditions won't be met that it starts to hurt. Most commonly, you love someone but it's unrequited, and that hurts. Trust me, I know this, if you love someone, whether they're in it with you or not, it shouldn't hurt, it doesn't hurt, just the opposite really.

That was a side note sort of but it's important and I'll get back to it. For now it's important to note that it is a faith I have, in love and the fact that it doesn't hurt. I have no empirical evidence that love even exists, much less that it doesn't hurt. You can't see it, touch it, hear it, taste it or smell it. I say "touch" in defining empirical evidence as opposed to "feel" because the immediate response some people would have is that you can feel love. You can definitely feel it, but not in the empirical sense, not in the way that I, say, feel this keyboard under my fingers. So, the faith that I have in love is a lot like the faith that some people have in God (and in truth I can't say that I don't have a bit of that faith too). I can't prove that God exists, but I can say that I have a feeling that He does (to use the common monotheist parlance).

Mormons call this "feeling the spirit", because Mormons, like many Christian sects, believe in a holy trinity (Father, Son, Holy spirit). It's the main reason I became Mormon, and also the main reason I'm not Mormon anymore.

When I was a kid I only went to church with my friends families. My father wasn't religious, my mother was raised Catholic and then found out shortly before I was born that she was partly Jewish (the part that counts according to some) but she wasn't really religious either. So, I went to church with my friends families and most of them were Mormon. When I went to church I got a feeling that I can't really describe and because the Mormon church was the only one I'd really been to I bought in to their explanation about "feeling the spirit".

My mother wouldn't let me get baptised though, she said when I was 18 I could decide for myself. I might not have ever gotten baptised at all because between the ages of 14 and 18 I sort of...lost faith, I guess you'd say. I found it again because I had that same feeling, like being in church, when I met my ex. With all that faith back and no outlet for it (because the boy just didn't feel the same way about me that I felt about him...yet), and because two of my roommates at the time were Mormon I came back to church and started taking conversion classes.

Then, the day I got baptised, my previously unrequited love was revealed to be requited after all. Some people in the church wanted me to choose between the church and the boy and at first I just couldn't do that. How do you chose between two such similar feelings? He wasn't asking me to choose though (despite having been ingrained with a fairly large prejudice against Mormons), so I chose him both because he never would have asked me to choose and because having that feeling for him, that was so similar to how I felt in church, made me question the idea that there was only one right and true faith, and questioning that makes the entire foundation of religion a little shaky since they all claim to be the one and only right and true faith (except Buddhism and Judaism).

I thought, at the time, this feeling is the only proof I have and I'd be willing to bet that other people who belong to other religions have had this feeling too, in their places of worship or even about things other than religion (I had), so how can I say they are all wrong, their souls damned to eternal torment because they don't believe this one thing. That seemed absurd to me. I've since had the same feeling in Catholic and Episcopal churches and one night walking through St Jakob's Platz in Munich and in all sorts of other places having nothing to do with religious worship. The closest thing I can compare it to is love and I've had that feeling since too. Which just confirms my belief that there isn't any one true religion.

I recently said, sort of off hand, to someone, another agnostic, that maybe, instead of all religions being wrong, they were all right. I argued that maybe the differences (even between monotheistic and polytheistic religions) stem from the inability of man to describe this higher power. The only way we can think of to describe it is to make it an entity, like a person, or an animal, or several of either, or several of both, or an energy (like Chi), but perhaps none of those really hit the mark. My best stab at describing it is basically to say something akin to "God is love", but maybe that's off the mark as well. Perhaps it defies description.

Of course, things that defy description are difficult to understand, and we're all aware of the human tendency to fear those things we can't understand. Out of that fear is born the need to describe It and the variation in descriptions would have the tendency to lead back to something we can't understand, which, again, causes fear, unless you choose to believe your description is the right one and everyone else is wrong.

If you're a loyal reader (say hello to each other, there can't be more than two of you), then you may have read bits of this philosophy before and you likely know where I'm headed with this. You may also have noticed the change in my URL which so far just reflects my general philosophy but ultimately is going to have both this blog and my other one (this one being fear and the other faith) side by side as soon as I figure out the code that will publish both to the same URL(HTML isn't my specialty). If you've never read this blog though, you won't feel that sense of deja vu when I say that love, essentially, is faith (and logically, hate basically is fear).

That brings me back to the, rejected, idea that love hurts. I figured that out (that love doesn't hurt) because I was in love, at first unrequited but ultimately returned and it didn't hurt, not until the break up of the (7+ year) relationship and then only briefly and only because I was afraid, for about a minute, that breaking up meant losing him, and therefore that feeling, completely and forever. Of course it didn't mean either of those things, he's still a good friend and I've had that feeling for at least one other person since, but fear isn't always well founded. The minute that I decided, and make no mistake it was a choice, to let go of that fear and believe that it was for the best it didn't hurt anymore. It was the fear that hurt, not the love, and I was right, it was all for the best, so there was nothing to fear anyway.

Someone I know, put into words this philosophy of mine way better than I ever could, he said that true faith conquers fear. That same guy is fond of saying that faith is a choice and he's absolutely right. It is a choice and when you have a choice that means you have options. What I believe is that when you choose not to be afraid you are choosing faith. Maybe you are putting that faith in God, or maybe in Karma, or maybe just in yourself, but it's faith none the less. I have lots of faith. I'm not always entirely sure what to put my faith in, but it's better than the alternative.

Tour Magic: Injuries and Alliances

The crashes in this years Tour are out of control. Every year there are a couple of crashes but this year is insane. On stage one Cavendish collided with a spectator, on Stage two there was a gigantic pileup including the race leader Cancellara, on stage three Steegmans crashed, Noval, McEwen, Kloden and Vinokourov are all racing with injuries. I don't think I've ever seen a tour with this many crashes. The race goes on though.

And yesterday Boonen finally won a stage. I have to explain a bit about what I love about Boonen and cycling in general. For starters, unlike a lot of top riders, especially sprinters, he's really laid back and humble about it all. In an interview with Versus he said that you have to love riding for it's own sake, it can't be all about winning. He said that if he thinks back to when he was a kid and first picked up a bike he didn't do it because he wanted to be a professional and win races and make money off it, he just liked to ride. I think that goes a long way towards explaining his attitude. Win or lose he always just seems really happy to be doing something he loves which makes me happy to be watching someone doing something they love so much. He's just so cool. Of course, I also have to acknowledge my, already well documented, opinion that Boonen is also nice to look at in those tight bike shorts. Seriously, if Boonen had been alive in the time of Michelangelo we'd have a statue of him instead of the David. He's pretty.

So, that's why I love Boonen, now how is Boonen an example of what I love about cycling in general (aside from looking good in spandex)? Two days ago Boonen lost the green jersey (the one for sprint points) to Erik Zabel (a German rider who I also love). Yesterday, Boonen, understandably wanted to win the jersey back and he went after it. There was a one man breakaway (British rider Bradley Wiggins who was, at one point, 17 minutes ahead of the field), but Boonen sprinted for, and won, the 2nd place sprint points at some of the sprint points out on the course to the point that he pulled even with Zabel in points. Zabel rode up next to him and asked him not to try for the points at the next sprint, to save it for the end of the stage so they could compete straight up against each other in that final sprint for the stage win and the green jersey points. Boonen agreed and they both held back until the finish. He took the stage win and the green jersey. Those kind of deals struck between riders out on the course fascinate me.

Only one guy can win each stage, each points jersey, and only one guy can win the overall classification, but out on the course riders work together (both within their teams and across team lines) or they agree not to work, it's all very strategic. There will be a breakaway of 5 or 6 guys, all from different teams, but they will agree to work together so they can stay away, until the end when it becomes every man for himself. Or if the teams who have great sprinters want to bring it back together for a big sprint finish then they will agree to work together across team lines to bring the breakaway back.

There's a code among riders of the peleton. If one of your main competitors crashes, or has a mechanical problem, or has to stop to pee, you slow up a bit to give him a chance to get back into the race in earnest. It happened a couple years ago in the Tour. Ulrich crashed and Armstrong didn't take that opportunity to attack, he slowed up until Ulrich was back in it. There's a tacit agreement.

That gentleman's agreement doesn't really cover the situation with Boonen and Zabel yesterday. Boonen wasn't obligated, even by tradition or politeness, to agree to hold off on going for the points out on the course, but he did it anyway, both because he's a really great guy, but also because the win would mean that much more if hinged on one sprint rather than the strategic accumulation of points throughout the race.

It's that complicated balance between sportsmanship, strategy and straight up competition that makes me love cycling and keeps me captivated throughout the month of July. Plus Boonen's nice to look at.

Beautiful

Fabian Cacellara said, of his teammate Dave Zabriskie, that on a time trial bike he is beautiful to watch and I can't put it much better than that. It's a sort of man/machine fusion. Everyone says he's the most aerodynamic man in the peleton. Zabriskie, often nicknamed ZMan, is a rising star in cycling (and an American) and, as previously noted, beautiful on a time trial bike (not to mention beautiful in general), all of which are reasons I am particularly interested in following his career. Then there's his dramatic entrance on the Tour scene in 2005 when he won the prologue and wore the yellow jersey for several days only to lose it when he crashed in the Team Time Trial (just barely outside the 2 kilometer safety zone). Of course there's also funny interviews he used to post on his blog, though unfortunately he's quit blogging. Apparently, the ZMan found internet connections hard to come by in Europe (a problem I'm now well acquainted with myself).

Zabriskie is a time trial specialist, and the reigning US time trial champion, but he didn't win the prologue in this years' Tour. His teammate, and the reigning World time trial champion, Fabian Cancellara took the prologue. I know I've talked about the CSC team before but the team is so spectacular that they warrant more mentions.

You may know that I had the good fortune to attend the Paris-Roubaix a couple months ago, a race won this year by another CSC rider, Stuart O'grady, and last year by none other than current Tour de France leader, and CSC teammate, Fabian Cancellara. I am an unabashed fan of this team and the doping scandal (with Basso, and Riis, and Jaksche) has done nothing to diminish that.

I think Riis' statement makes it pretty clear, without actually pointing fingers at any other riders, that doping was rampant in cycling in the 90s. He says that he did what he had to do to compete at the top level. Of course that's the catch 22 of doping, if everyone is doing it then you can't compete without doing it, so you do, but then you're responsible for perpetuating it because you've become part of the "everyone" who is doing it for the next generation of riders to try to compete with. Luckily for the sport of cycling, for the current generation and the next, the organizers of the sport have decided they are serious about cleaning up the image of their sport. Do I have faith that my favorite team, despite the admission of their director and the accusations of one of their former riders, is riding clean? Yes. Again I have to question though whether or not I really care if they're clean or not. The sport is exciting, it's entertaining, and that isn't diminished for me by thinking the riders might be enhanced.

The thing about doping is that it's dangerous. EPO and blood doping dramatically increase risk of heart attack and stroke. Other more traditional drugs (like steroids and amphetamines) have well documented health risks, also including risk of heart attack and stroke. So, when athletes use these procedures or substances to enhance their performance they're risking their lives. That's fine by me. If they want to risk their lives for my entertainment (and their own profit) that's okay with me. If I had a kid though, and he told me that his greatest dream in life was to one day win the Tour de France, I might change my tune, but maybe not. After all, even a totally clean rider can crash at 35 mph over the side of an Alpine (or Pyreneean) cliff and crack his head open (RIP Fabio Casartelli) so just getting on a bike and competing at all is a risk.

Since I doubt I'll really come to a conclusion on the doping front I'll just enjoy watching the Tour and the beautiful CSC team.

Bunnies

Not far from my apartment there are two huge parks, two of the biggest in Seattle. One, called Greenlake park, is skirted (on it's West side) buy Aurora Ave (Hwy 99) and is largely occupied, as those with literal minds might imagine, by a large (green) lake. The other, called Woodland Park, is bisected by Aurora Ave (Hwy 99); its East half is mostly wooded (as predicted, again, by the literal minded among you) and its West half is home to Seattle's Zoo. Woodland Park is part of, in fact most of, Phinney Ridge, which is to say that the whole park is pretty much all up hill. Where Aurora Ave starts it's incline is the beginning of the park (on it's North end) and if you turned off Aurora onto 50th you'd continue uphill for several blocks along the South end of the park.

These two parks are like a map of my childhood, or adolescence at least. My 8th grade class had our end of year picnic at Woodland Park. When I was 14 and 15 I rowed crew at Greenlake in the summers. In fact I had a run in with an overly friendly frat boy who helped out coaching our crew team there. Near the Bathhouse Theater I went skinny dipping for the first time when I was 16. I spent a lot of time at that spot, by the Bathhouse, my Junior and Senior years in High School. Friendships were forged and others were broken there. To this day, I always go there when my life seems out of control. Things never seem any clearer there but it reminds me of a time when my life was quite a bit more out of control and that helps.

There's a small strip of grass surrounded by trees right where the two parks meet, at Aurora Ave, that used to have dozens (possibly hundreds) of bunnies in it. They made their burrows under the highway and, I hear, in some cases even burrowed all the way under the highway and up into some of the animal cages at the zoo. I loved these bunnies. That section of the park is a tiny triangle of grass bordered on the South by N 63rd St, on the East by W Greenlake Way, and on the West by Aurora Ave N. It was on my way home from my parents house (among other things) and every time I drove by and saw all the bunnies I smiled.

Then I started to hear talk a couple years ago about how the city wanted to eliminate the bunny problem. Though apparently there had been talk for many years, decades possibly. You see the bunnies weren't wild to begin with, they were pet bunnies that people abandoned there. So it wasn't a natural bunny habitat, so to speak, which wasn't good for the bunnies or the habitat. Over the years people had tried to adopt the bunnies or relocate them but those efforts couldn't keep up with the expanding bunny population (bunnies being bunnies after all). Apparently, in recent years, the bunny burrows under the Zoo had become so numerous that they were a hazard to the more valuable zoo animals by making the ground unstable. There was a fear that one of the African Savanna animals, a zebra or giraffe or something, would accidentally step in one of the burrows and twist an ankle thereby having to be put down...or something like that. I understand that, and the much more logical argument about the burrows potentially making the highway unstable and prone to sink holes, all of which are threats to the bunnies as well anyway. So, I understood the need to do something about the bunny population, but I felt like eliminating it all together seemed extreme, and, of course, it made me sad because, you know, bunnies are cute and stuff.

There was much talk about possibly killing the bunnies, just like there had been with the geese a few years back, but bunnies are cute and geese are not so I think the impetus to come up with a more humane solution was higher. In the end a more humane solution was found. There's actually a bunny sanctuary in Redmond, specifically designed to house all those abandoned Easter gifts that people foolishly buy for their kids (which were the source of the Greenlake/Woodland Park bunny problem to begin with). They relocated the bunnies this past winter. It was actually hard to tell. There was a big storm this year that knocked down a lot of trees including a large one in the bunny zone (as I used to call it). This huge tree lay there for about 3 or 4 months, all winter basically, when all the other debris from the storm had already been cleared. With the tree there, taking up a majority of that tiny strip of park, the bunnies weren't as visible, but a couple months ago, when they finally cleared the tree from the park I realized the bunnies were gone.

I know the parks are better off and the bunnies are better off but I kind of miss them.

It's that time of year again.

If you follow my writing here, as I'm fairly certain pretty much no one does but there may be a few of you out there, you're probably asking yourself, "What the hell, July is almost half over and she hasn't said word one about the Tour de France?". To be fair, it was kind of a later start this year than usual. It's true though that I haven't been following cycling as much in the last couple months as I normally do. I got much more excited about the Classics this year than the Tours mostly because I was in Europe in the springtime and actually got to go to one of the best of the Spring Classics, the Paris-Roubaix. I didn't even watch the Giro (though I hear my favorite, Zabriskie, rode well even in the mountains which makes me happy). I am watching the Tour, of course, and I am excited about it, maybe even more than usual, or at least in different ways than usual.

If you watch the Tour in the US you probably watch it on Versus (formerly the Outdoor Life Network). They made a big deal, in their opening coverage, of the fact that there isn't a single former Tour winner in this year's pelleton. Landis is, of course, still awaiting the results of his doping case and therefore can't compete. Basso and Ulrich are both out voluntarily (retired) though under suspicion of doping. Last year, being the first post-Armstrong year, it was said that the field was wide open and anything could happen. I think that might, if possible, be even more true this year. Anything can happen.

What I love about the grand Tours is the drama. All sports are dramatic, of course because sporting events have built in conflict. Cycling though is especially dramatic and the cameras catch it all. In the Tours that drama is drawn out for three weeks, every day. You get to see partnerships made and broken and rivalries played out. I'll likely have more to say about the race itself when it gets into the mountains, but for now I'll just say that you really should watch the Tour de France. It's a good show.

Presidential Politics

It doesn't take much to determine which way the political wind is blowing these days. The president is unpopular, if his approval rating keeps dropping it will soon be in single digits. Now, logic will lead you a lot of places from that one piece of information. Next year is an election year and, while this president can't run again, he doesn't want to be a handicap for his party. Too late for that, obviously, he already is a handicap for his party so now it's time to limit that damage. The one thing he could do, barring win the war and bring all the troops home which is kind of outside of his direct control anymore, would be to actually get something done, ideally something important that would highlight a commitment to, or at least a passing interest in, domestic issues as well as foreign policy. That would explain his devotion to the immigration bill, despite his own party being, primarily, responsible for its demise.

There are conspiracy theorists out there who think that the republican party has some trick up its sleeve, perhaps some high level terrorist already in custody that they can stage capture of around this time next year just in time to resurrect their chances at keeping the white house. Dick Cheney's ridiculous antics lately (4th branch, man-sized safe, etc) don't do much to deter that impression. Speaking of which, if it's not true that they're hiding something big (something good), Cheney should really know better. When you've become such a national joke that Maureen Dowd joins John Stewart and Steven Colbert in making fun, well, it's a pretty bad sign. It's fairly clear that Cheney is hiding something and whether or not its something good that he's just waiting to reveal because he hopes it will be politically valuable or something bad that he's hiding because it would be politically detrimental (or potentially prosecutable) is irrelevant, at least to the pundits and comedians.

A quick glance at the front page of today's NY Times pretty much sums up the bizarre state of the republican hopes for a presidential win next fall. The top two headlines are "Bush commutes Libby sentence, saying 30 months 'is excessive'", and "Short on money, McCain campaign dismisses dozens". The first illustrates that Bush seems to have just given up on trying to limit the damage. He was likely to commute the sentence (or even pardon Libby) regardless, but the timing shows either an astounding lack of familiarity with political spin or resignation to the idea that spin will no longer help. The former might not be such a stretch, I've mentioned before that it doesn't seem like this administration has any idea how to highlight their accomplishments or cover their mistakes, but I'm inclined to believe it's the later.

That second headline is kind of sad actually. I know, I'm a fervent Democrat these days, so I'm reluctant to admit it, but I think McCain would be the most effective president of any of the current potential candidates (on either side). He's far more politically savvy and experienced than the rest. He knows the value of compromise, and spin, and he knows how to prioritize and actually get things accomplished. You can bet if McCain were president he would have been able to get the votes to move the immigration bill forward (if it was important to him). Though I doubt McCain would make it a priority, in the waning months of his term, with an unpopular war on, with such extreme division in his party over it. McCain would know enough to wait until he had something to rally people around (or something to hold over them) before he brought it to a vote.

McCain is losing this primary election though. He's losing because he doesn't appeal enough to the "base", he alienates evangelicals, he's too moderate. It's indicative of exactly what is wrong with many people's logic when choosing a candidate in the primaries. The general populace tend to be idealistic politically; which is to say that they have issues that they believe in passionately and they give their political support to candidates who share their passion. This is a perfectly reasonable position in a general election, but in a primary election you have to balance your desire to support candidates who share your passion, say for banning abortion and gay marriage, with the candidates ability to get elected (i.e. their appeal to swing voters). If your political party is doing well, and/or has a solid, popular position on an issue that's important to swing voters then it's less important and you can put up a candidate for president that appeals to your most polar ideologies, but if your party is unpopular you have to worry about electability more.

The electability issue is a fragile one for Republicans right now because they are indebted to their, largely evangelical, base for getting out the vote in the last election, but that's not who's going to win this election for them. In all likelihood they won't win this election, but if they do it will be because they put forward a candidate closer to the middle ideologically. One who appeals to swing voters.

I don't know why I care really. I can't vote in the Republican primary, as I am a registered Democrat, and I likely wouldn't have voted in the Republican primary anyway. I just find it odd that people don't seem to consider, what I feel, are two of the most important factors in choosing a candidate: electability and efficaciousness. I mean I'm as ideological as the next girl (maybe more so than most) but I don't see the point in voting for someone that can't get elected, or that won't be able to get things done if they were elected, just because they share my passion for certain issues.