Sunday, August 26, 2012

Life Off The Bike

I haven't posted in a while and to be honest, I haven't done much riding since my last blog post, primarily because I've been away from home traveling with work. At the time I'm writing this, I haven't been anywhere near a proper bike in 7 weeks.

That does not mean my passion for the sport has lessened. If anything, it has been rekindled. I've managed to keep up with the Tour de France, Olympic races, and now the Vuelta, even if the coverage can be spotty overseas. Believe it or not, outside of western Europe, the US actually has a lot of resources that officially or unofficially provide pretty good coverage or Pro Tour racing. I also read David Miller's new book, Racing Through The Dark. It was a honest look at his life, career, failures, and comeback. Books like this are good in that they provide an honest perspective on the doping culture of pro cycling. Unfortunately, this honesty also leads to the perspective that pro cycling is a sport filled with cheats while in reality, it's not much different then track & field, football, or even European futbol. These other sports simply do a much better job of denying that doping is prevalent within their sports and the public is willing to go along with this charade.

The traveling has also meant a lot of dead time in hotel rooms with not much other than the internet for company. This has allowed me to do extensive shopping for bike deals and queue up multiple bike projects including a new road bike that is actually closed to finished, and several wheel projects amoung other things. When I return home I'll try to post up on these projects and hopefully get in a few cyclocross races before school starts back up.