Lance Armstrong – CanooterValve

Selling the Drama

Bikes, Swine Comments Off

Oct 232012

At this point the seemingly endless descent of Lance Armstrong’s character has started to seem a little overwrought. Hardly two minutes consecutive go by without Undead Armstrong staggering back across the world stage, fueled by lord only knows what and strung together with money and rubber bracelets. Most people in the cycling world have long since passed the “acceptance” stage and are ready for Armstrong to just please go away.

But Lance just doesn’t roll like that.

Increasingly, what’s become apparent in all the rush to strip Armstrong of his titles and place in cycling’s history is that here we have an individual who does not go gently into that good night.

No, this is far from over, and the real speculation now isn’t whether Armstrong will disappear from the world stage, but rather how famous he’ll continue to be. Just think of the many upcoming story lines we have to look forward to.

Claiming to Be Broke
Finding Jesus
Reality TV

In fact, the more we see of the post-bullshit Lance Armstrong, the more we realize this is an individual who’d be willing to bring down his entire Livestrong organization, before becoming an obscure and forgotten man.

Why? Because Lance Armstrong’s kind of a psychopath, and, as a very interesting article on Salon.com recently pointed out, psychopaths have a way of taking over.

You should check out the article itself, but one short interpretation suggests that, among other things, psychopaths are simply willing to say and do things that are way beyond the pale, in order to get what they want. They make dime store narcissists and megalomaniacs look downright self-deprecating. Armstrong is one of those guys.

Case in point: he could have made a hell of an effort to save Livestrong by putting as much daylight as possible between himself and the organization. But that never happened, and it never happened for one reason: because Livestrong is all about Lance Armstrong.

It’s why some supporters are asking for their money back and calling the entire organization into question. Livestrong shouldn’t have had to repudiate Armstrong’s actions; he should have distanced himself from the organization completely the minute he became a liability.

But he didn’t. In fact, I don’t recall hearing an apology anywhere in there from Armstrong. At the very least, he owes a dozen personal ones, but all total, he owes many millions more.

Foundations are Not People

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Oct 182012

After a bit of confusion wherein companies scrambled to do the math, trying to figure out if abandoning Lance Armstrong meant advocating cancer or something, Nike and now Trek have finally turned their back on Armstrong.

While it was certainly wise of all companies involved to verify the douchbaggery of Mr. Armstrong before taking action, there still seemed to be a delayed reaction when it came to severing ties.

If anything, it took former teammate of Armstrong, Paul Willerton, and a small group of protestors showing up at Nike’s corporate office in Beaverton, Oregon to help corporate America separate Armstrong from Livestrong. Cyclingnews.com quoted Willerton as saying:

To be fair to athletics we have to look at Lance the person and the athlete and deal with that, without letting everyone say the magic word and pull that cancer cloak over it. I feel that they are mutually exclusive, that just because you support one doesn’t mean that you have to support the other. Nike could make a strong move right now by dumping Lance Armstrong, even if they still need to continue paying LAF.”

And so they did. Nearly all of the sponsors are gone.

More complicated is the relationship Armstrong has among cancer survivors around the world, for whom his status as both a hero and a source of hope is very real. The most disturbing aspect of Armstrong’s fall for grace may be the debilitating effect it has on some of his most dedicated fans–cancer survivors every bit as impressive as Armstrong, but people who found in him a sense of not just hope, but community.

As Steve Madden, former editor of Bicycling pretty eloquently explained, there was a lot of inertia to just accepting Armstrong for years, pinching our noses harder and harder the more the situation seemed to stink, because, well, there was a good cause going on.

But really it’s time to take Lance as his word. I’d always thought he seemed like an OK enough guy–um, doping and cheating and lying and apparently threatening aside–except for the false modesty. To be sure, everything Lance was always Lance, and everything Livestrong was always Lance. And he, more than anyone, took great pains to make sure it stayed that way.

But now it can’t. If there’s a moral to this story, it has little to do with doping and honesty and sports, and everything to do with the Problem of Celebrity. It’s unfortunate that we tend to need somebody like the mythical, imaginary Lance Armstrong. There seemed to be a sense of weightlessness over the past few weeks, as the Livestrong network collectively pondered an existence without Lance at the center of the universe. I was particularly disgusted by Livestrong ads running on Facebook that were very conspicuously worded to combine strong ideas of “support” and “standing up for” with relatively vague objects of that support. The obvious effect was of rallying behind Lance.

Make no mistake, for all the good it did, Livestrong was also a tool in Armstrong’s campaign of deceit and self-promotion. The real question was could it exist without him.

For now looks like it can–thanks to a whole lot of amazing people who might never be celebrities, but who are ultimately far better individuals than Lance Armstrong.

The First Sign

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Oct 112012

Everything else was prologue. Today’s the day the seven went away.

Quick story, then I’m back to suspension design.

A few years back, my company took a strange phone call. We were an ecommerce bike shop, so every phone call was strange, but this one came from a friend of Floyd Landis. This friend knew my head of sales and customer service and felt compelled to call him up and inform him that Lance was fucked and that shit was about to get real. Evidence was going to surface by the pound. Game over.

Any friend of Floyd around this time must have been living a pretty strange life. This was around the time Landis was starting to get pretty fucking weird, so after the phone call and some sharing of its theme, we all just shook our heads.

Poor crazy Floyd, was the general consensus. I don’t think a single person in the room believed Armstrong was innocent; we just believed Floyd’s already messy existence was about to get a lot messier if he tangled with Lance.

And then today, this. It took a village, including Dave Zabriskie, quoted in the New York Times as “serenading Johan Bruyneel, the longtime team manager, with a song about EPO, to the tune of Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Purple Haze.'”

EPO all in my veins; Lately things just don’t seem the same; Actin’ funny, but I don’t know why; ’Scuse me while I pass this guy.

Is “goofy” one of the eight stages of grief? If so, I think it comes right before “acceptance.”

As yet unresolved, from what I can tell, is some serious house cleaning at the UCI.

First Loser

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Sep 072012

Found a new hero yet, or don’t much care? Regardless, you have to admit Tyler Hamilton’s recent interviews are shocking. I mean, that hair!

For the most part, I’ve spent the whole sad Armstrong episode standing in the corner just shaking my head. It was on my mind on the ride in to work today, though, and I have what might be a slightly different take on it all.

I don’t think it’s about Lance.

For me it isn’t. For me, it’s about us, fans of pro cycling, being asked to question what we’d all witnessed. If you follow professional cycling, think of a moment that literally got you up out of your chair in the last ten years. That Landis solo breakaway on Stage 17 of the 2006 Tour. Any one of Vino’s mad attacks. Hamilton needing dental work after gritting his teeth so hard racing with a broken collarbone. What Contador has done to the Vuelta that’s going on right now.

Can you trust it? Whatever your personal favorite most amazing day in the history of professional cycling, you’ve now been forced to doubt it. You’d be an idiot not to.

For people who ride bicycles at least enough to suffer, this puts us in an odd place. Those who don’t suffer on a bicycle get to avoid all this. To them, Lance is a figurehead, so they love him. Or he cheated and they hate him. Whatever. But to realize how impossibly difficult it is to ride a bicycle like that–like any of these guys have ridden a bicycle–and be asked to discount that, dismiss it all, causes the brain to do strange things.

Dopers suck. Cheaters suck. But are we supposed to think those rides were easy for these guys?

What sits so wrong with so many of us is that we’re being told those experiences meant nothing–not “less than we thought”: nothing. The reality is that they meant a great deal, corrupted or not. To try to dismiss the entire endeavor might be an honorable approach, but it just doesn’t square with the reality many of us witnessed, wherein one doper among a sea of dopers turned himself inside out to be better than the rest. If the rest of the pack had been clean, I think we’d all feel much better about vilifying the dishonest “winner.” But as it is, we’re being asked to choose alternative winners from a pool of cheaters. Even young children realize that’s stupid.

To be sure, if even half the shady shit that’s being implied about Lance Strongarm’s intimidation tactics and nefarious behavior are true, then the fucker should be in jail, though no one seems willing to pursue that part of it. We’re all supposed to just believe the show’s over after a quiet bowing out by a guy who still gets to keep countless millions upon millions of potentially ill-gotten gain. You can collect all those yellow jerseys if you want, but if he still has the gains, not to mention plenty of fond memories, then what’s been taken from him? Even the sponsors have stuck with him, and why not? The moments were the moments. People apparently pay Kim Kardashian absurd amounts of money just for looking pretty on the outside and being ugly on the inside. That’s a hell of a lot less than Lance has done.

The whole thing is ridiculous.

Fully discrediting someone implies he accomplished nothing, and that’s so patently, obviously wrong that most of us, Lance Armstrong included, just seem to ignore it. Drugged up cheats or not, these riders clearly accomplished something.

You want to really punish Lance? Don’t pretend he never won anything. Give him second place.

Dopey

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Jun 212012

Over the past year, I’ve dealt with some life-alteringly bad bullshit, but the view from my new back porch does a lot to make up for it.

Now I just need to some time on a bike. Between living in hotels and eating garbage for months now, my normal “awful” fitness level has deteriorated into “super awful” range. Having just unpacked my moving truck to find the moving crew we’re hired to help hadn’t put so much as a napkin between my daughter’s Santa Cruz Juliana and my Co-Motion was just that extra little kick in the nards I absolutely did not need today.

Unable to ride bikes right now, I find myself thinking about them a lot, and it’s impossible to miss the current Lance Armstrong saga. Because I still have a lot of boxes to unpack and need to sketch a brief bike company business plan (it’s a long story), I’ll keep this short: something like six years ago my friend, Jeremy, made an interesting point when it comes to Armstrong and doping allegations. “Why are all these ex-U.S.Postal guys getting nabbed for doping only after they leave Armstrong’s former team?”

Think about it. I wouldn’t trust Floyd Landis as far as Barry Bonds could throw him, but are we really supposed to believe all of these ex-Postal riders started doping only after leaving the team? While I tend to be in the camp of people who believe Armstrong’s transcended sport and become a kind of positive force for good in the world, I’m also practical enough to realize many revolutionaries and great leaders are often assholes with decidedly checkered pasts. Mentally, I think most of us are prepared for the worst. All that really matters at this point is that any Armstrong blowback doesn’t hurt the bicycle industry as much as we’re all afraid it might.

Channel You

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Jan 302012

So much bicycle and tech news to get through today, starting with business tycoon and inventor of yellow bracelets, Lance Armstrong, who’s joining the board at tech startup Mobli, a “place” (you’re not supposed to call them web sites any more) where people can post videos and images of their lives so that other people can oogle them. I’ve noticed that blending celebrity with tech startup is the new hipster business model, maybe because all conventional forms of publishing and making money off of content are rapidly disintegrating, and it’s getting tougher and tougher to buy that sixth Ferrari each and every year. Hence we find ourselves entering the age of the human “celebusinesses,” people like Zooey Deschanel who act, sort of make music, and sell us shit based on the fact that we’re almost buying it from Zooey Daschanel. It’s a weird kind of pop-culture feedback loop, no doubt. Mobli offers “channels” that attempt to be peoples’ lives, so you can basically stalk someone without having to actually put on pants and go outside. Given that one of the only things America is producing these days is narcissistic self-obsession, I predict Mobli is going to blow up huge–or at least get a ridiculous amount of VC money before going public and losing two thirds of its value in three days. In going direct-to-consumer with his life, Armstrong joins a roster of Mobli celebrities already investing, on the board, or just ~~inflicting themselves upon us~~ making their lives available for view, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Paris Hilton, and David Arquette. I would have provided more information about Armstrong’s specific “channel,” but once I got to Mobli, I found it impossible to look away from David Arquette’s life.

In other news this morning, Reverend Paul Sinclair is reconsidering the sale of his tandem hearse. According to Sinclair,

I said I wanted to sell it because I was struggling to ride it. But I have had so much interest in it since I said that, and people saying ‘Oh, I’d like to use that’, I think what I should be doing is hunting out someone fit enough to ride the thing for me.”

Rumors that the massive influx of interested buyers was largely the result of a Canootervalve post advertising the tandem hearse could not be confirmed at the time this post was written.

Frame Material: Steel
Head Tube Type: Standard 1-1/8″
Fork Steerer Tube Diameter: 1-1/8″
Seatpost Diameter: 27.2mm
Rear Dropout Spacing: 135mm
Rear Dropout Type: Standard Geared
Maximum Tire Size: 26×2.3-inches
Wheel Size: 26-inches
Front Dropout Spacing: 100mm
Water Bottle Bosses: 1 set, top of downtube
Color: Green
Size: 18-inch (both captain and stoker)

Here’s your chance to pretend to own a truly exclusive bike. This is the only tandem bicycle hearse in the UK. The Reverend Paul Sinclair of Motorcycle Funerals had this unique bike fabricated for addition to his unique line up of funereal vehicles. Unfortunately, Reverend Sinclair does not feel he’s sufficiently fit to operate the hearse, so he’s making it available in the hope that it will one day find a good home. Own a genuine piece of British history that just also happens to be able to transport dead bodies. Should also be able to transport at least two kegs, 4-8 surfboards, children, furniture, and another bike.

Learn more about the bike on the Daily Mail’s site.

$3,522.37

I haven’t forgotten that I’m supposed to drop the little bit of code required to make that “product for sale” box in anybody’s WordPress page (and probably just about any other type of blog post, too). I would’ve gotten to that today, but I was too fascinated with the new clothing line by venerable saddle manufacturer and arbiters of all things “authenticly artisanal,” Brooks.

Word from Bicycle Retailer is that Brooks has controlling ownership of Pedaled, a Japanese company offering clothing for people who’s smugness precludes them owning anything of opulence that doesn’t involve bicycles or coffee. And once you’ve installed your own indoor Peruvian forest and bean roasting facility, about all that’s left is to spring for a $520 jacket. Suck on that, Rapha!

Like all truly expensive hipster-wear, Brooks new Pedaled clothing is displayed hanging from meat hooks, evoking simultaneously a sense of casual durability and a disdain for lofty marketing, with just a hint of unrepressed veganism. When you can finally manage to pry yourself away from the life channel of Lance Armstrong or David Arquette and start looking for pants, you can, of course, purchase stuff directly from Pedaled.com. I don’t know what the mark-up is on a $120 t-shirt, though, so I can’t fault Brooks from cutting out bike shops and going consumer-direct with this new line. Something tells me the new line isn’t targeted at “people who ride bicycles” anyway, so much as “urban cyclists” looking for “outfit solutions.”

Final note: so I changed my logo over the weekend. I’d always disliked the original graphic, and some updated descriptive text was in order, given that bike technology is only one of the topics my rants occasionally veer into. In the process, I noticed that my “theme” had gone wonky. WordPress lets you plug in various themes–the look and feel of your site–but WordPress itself seems to get updated about once every thirty-seven seconds, and that can screw up some more unique themes. The lesson for WordPress users who don’t want to wrestle with this sort of thing? Use a really boring, standard theme, and let your images, logos and overall content be what makes it unique. It really should be the content that people find interesting anyway, not the decorations. Or so I’ve read.