Truth or Fiction

On my way back from Colorado I picked up the magazine Road to read on the plane ride. The couple of times I've picked up this mag it seemed to be an advertisement for whoever provided bikes to review, without much real meat. The magazine seems to have improved slightly with some interesting training articles and interviews, but still includes a lot of advertising/review type articles. This month they included an interview with Floyd Landis and members of his defense team. It seemed to be a propaganda type piece for Floyd, but did provide some insight into his battle. While I would love to believe he is innocent, my head tells me that when half of the Phonak squad was busted for doping over the teams history that Floyd was most likely cheating. The big problem I see is that it seems that Floyd is not getting a fair chance to defend himself. He has requested documentation and testing data from the USADA and has been told that they do not have to provide him with any of this information. He may guilty, but doesn't he deserve a fair trial? Any way, this blog has a lot of interesting information on his case:

http://trustbut.blogspot.com/

Snowed Out

I am heading out to breckenridge, colorado with kelly, my parents, and aunt paula. we are leaving the frigid midewest for hopefully temps in the mid to upper 20's. Can't wait to get out on the slopes. Breckenridge is a great town and the skiing at Breckenridge and Keystone are top notch. I will be off the bike for a week, but I consider it a sort of altitude training camp with some core and leg workouts thrown in.

I am in the process of fianlizing my early season racing schedule. It will be a mix of road and mountain biking, with my main focus being the WORS Marathon race (Big Ring Classic) up at Wausau, Wisconsin.

The Good, the Bad, and Da Bears

Sunday didn’t end up the way us Chicagoans were hoping, but it wasn’t a total loss.

The Good: Kelly and I ventured west to Naperville to watch the game at the parent’s house of my good friend Mike. It was great to see some old friends and share in the festivities. The Hartmann’s always put on a good party, with lots of good food and beer, so the day wasn’t a total loss.

The Bad: I always like to check out the TV commercials during the Super Bowl, but there weren’t many ads that really jumped out at me this year. It seems like the last couple of years the ad people are trying to be super clever with their ads, and don’t always have a message, or fall short of actually being funny. I did like the Taco Bell commercial with the lion who couldn’t roll his R’s when saying Carne Asada, but that was about it.

The Bears: Well, the game started off great. Hester is amazing when he actually gets to touch the ball, but after that there wasn’t much to cheer about. The Bears couldn’t do anything on offense, and the Colts dinked and dunked down the field without much difficulty. Will Rex actually be the QB next year? I really haven’t seen any improvement from him, since the end of last year.

The Big Day

I really hope today's game is a good, hard fought battle, but most imprtantly that Da Bears win. It looks like the weather is going to be poor for the game, which I think favors the Bears. If they can use the poor weather conditions to their advantage, get the running game going, and keep Manning off the field they have a great chance.

The best part about today, is that win or lose we won't have to hear anymore Bears Songs. You can't turn on the radio or TV without hearing some awful song done by some hacks. My favorite so far has been "Rex Man" which a parody of the Beatles "Tax MAn".

Two Versions

My friend Mike was talking about all the great music videos you can find on Youtube, and mentioned Thee Verves "Lucky Man" He said the place they shot the video was such an cool loft. It didn't really make sense to me as I had remembered the video as the guys from the group hanging around in an apartment, but I didn't remember it being that amazing. After a little research it turns out that there was a UK version and a US version. Here they are (two totally different styles of shooting a video). I wonder why they did two videos? I personally like the US version.

UK Version

US Version