It’s been a long time but I have been watching

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My sincere apologies for all of you who have had to wake up in the morning and drink your coffee, read your dc and take a huge crap without a single word from yours truly. But you can’t wipe with a webpage anyway so if you would like paper sent to you please let me know.

So after all of the mountain bike festival goodness which went down back in July, I had to spend some quality time with the family. It’s hard to sit too stil though so we built a composter in the back and fancied the garden we were going to start preparing to plant next spring (so we measured where the thing would go anyway). I reached out like a good dad to grand the shovel against the shed and sprained my back.(?) Yeah WTF? How? I dunno.

So laying on the ground it’s “go get mommy honey.” “yes, it’s ok I’m alright, just playing a little game here on my hands and knees.”

That was almost a month ago. In that time the Tour got rocked, I went to Whistler for eight days and tried to ride once as more or less just a gesture to my buddies, and have tried to type laying on my back on the floor.

So why am I writing this? When I as in the third grade, I had a teacher named, Barb Morgan. She was also my fourth grade teacher. She was the teacher who had profound impact on my life. She inspired me in so many ways. And she was passionate about science and space and all of the stuff I thought was cool. I couldn’t even bring myself to tell her one day in the spring that she had a massive chunk of spinach stuck in her teeth. She was that rad.

So at 6:46 p.m. today (EST) she is going to send it into outerspace sitting atop thousands of pounds of rocket fuel. Space Shuttle Endeavor mission STS 118. This is the teacher in space program, the one which saw Challenger erupt on rocket separation back in 1986 killing all on board. Christa McCauliffe was on board. My 3rd grade teacher was the alternate.

That was 21 years ago, and Mrs. Morgan has been pursuing the dream of spaceflight ever since.

I wanted to be an astronaut until about the 11th grade and got side tracked with other stuff. I was a spaceman poser. She was immersing herself in becomming a mission specialist. I am moved by this event which is a couple of hours away and cannot wait to sit down with my daughters and watch it all transpire.

Back to dreams. The dream I had as a kid was to fly jet planes and fly into space. I never dreamt of the Tour or a World title. But people fostered my dreams and tried to keep me headed down that path.

Would I do the same for the neighbor kid who wants to be a pro athlete? Fuck no. You are signing the kid up for the land of disillusionment and denial, where ruse is reality and the actors are all fakes.

At least if you fly your shit into space, you either know what you are doing or you don’t. You have “The Right Stuff” or you don’t. You don’t get showered with money, riches, attention, fame, glory and the like all because you are willing to make your body a biohazard or turn one of your riders into a zombie with a strangers O neg coursing through their veins. You are where you are because at the very least you are competent and capable of what you have accomplished.

With Kasch-what the fuck ever your name is-kin in the news today, you realize that sending Jimmy from next door to a National Team camp and then on to the big leagues is more or less like holding a syringe and briefcase filled with c notes in front of his face and saying, “Here Jimmy, come on boy. come on!”

But don’t focus on the riders now (they will go down in flames and be easy to keep track of), but you watch the men that make the riders the stars they are. They will walk clean, take credit for past successes and bore their vermin asses into another hoast to suck blood for another day.

Teach the kids to ride and live to ride, but not make a living from riding. Teach them to be something else, maybe doctors and lawyers and such…Yeah I know, we have to actuate a change. I am just going to point out that Barry Fuckin Bonds just faked his way to the all time Home Run Record

In any case, I want to give the props to Jonny for his first year crash-a-versary and let him know that the cops did not single him out. My stolen, one off, GT i-drive from the World’s in 1999 sat at the local cop shop for two years as a theft recovery before being sold at auction. The irony was we had filed the police report at that station and ended up finding it for sale on line five years later. the cops could give a shit about the guy on the bike. Even bike cops.

o’grady, yer a genius. gnome? WTF? I haven’t even met yer ass but you are moving to the inferno? Gobal warming mean anything to you? Shit.

And to my buddies Contador and Rass-Moooooooo-sen, burn bitches, because you will and this ain’t no OJ trial and Jonny Cockring ain’t going to come to your defense, you are being railroaded. but you earned it. Just make sure you douse the people who made you what you are with a litte lighter fluid as you go down, er rather up (in flames that is). Kascheskin or how the fuck ever you prounounce/spell your fucked name…don’t you fucking get it? It’s over big fella. Switch to weed or crack or booze. Your stuff just ain’t in any more.

And watch the shuttle rocket into space tonight. Those are real people doing amazing stuff.

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