Passing the Mantle: The End of the Aughts is Nigh

I'm not a fan of arbitrary deadlines, which is why I'm not really into the whole "New Year" thing. Change is a cumulative process and it consists of subtle gradations; it's not something that happens annually at the stroke of midnight. Nonetheless, just as the bicycle industry releases new models every year, we undertake "resolutions" as though we can change ourselves in annual increments. Ultimately, whether it's a bike or ourselves, the result is the same: we wind up with a bunch of hastily-applied "improvements" of dubious value which will most likely be phased out by the time the next model year rolls around.

Still, it's human nature to create reference points and plant metaphorical staff gages in the river of time, and so as the new year approaches we find ourselves reflecting on all that has passed. For example, Team Columbia-HTC owner Bob Stapleton is looking back on the year in cycling. Not only is he saying that Lance Armstrong's return has been good for the sport, but he's also saying that Armstrong is "passing the mantle" to sprinter Mark Cavendish:

There's certainly no doubt that Armstrong "is embracing" Cavendish, as we have at least one piece of photographic evidence:

Moreover, it's fairly high up on the Non-Sexual Man-Hug Intimacy Scale (NSMHIS), as you can see from this enlarged detail:

The NSMHIS starts with the fully-clothed handshake-and-back-pat combo and goes all the way up to the nearly-naked and oiled group hug, complete with crotchal contact:

However, while Armstrong clearly embraces Cavendish, Stapleton seems to be taking some liberty here, because while plenty of respect is in evidence I don't recall Armstrong actually officially "passing the mantle" to him. Sure, Armstrong may have passed a bit of saliva and perhaps some mucus to his shoulder, but as far as I can see no "mantle" actually changed hands. Of course, just because I didn't see it or can't remember it doesn't mean it didn't actually happen--I don't remember falling asleep in a bathtub full of eggnog while wearing a Santa suit on Christmas Eve either, but that's where I woke up on Christmas Morning. So I poured myself a cup of eggnog (I managed to salvage most of it from the tub) and headed off into the wilds of the "Internet" in the hope that I could find the actual Armstrong-to-Cavendish mantle-passing ceremony to which Stapleton had alluded and in which Amstrong declared Cavendish "Me 2.0."

My first stop was VeloNews, where I found a one-on-one interiew with Armstrong's director, Johan Bruyneel:

If any mantles had been passed, Bruyneel had nothing to say about it, though VeloNews not only misidentified Bruyneel as Axel Merckx but also misspelled "Axel" as "Axle."

Since the cycling media was clearly unreliable (a mistake like that is like adultery in an elevator--wrong on a number of levels), I figured I'd go directly to the source. It turns out Lance Armstrong maintains an online account with a popular social networking site, and he uses this account to share information with others. If Armstrong had officially passed the biggest-name-in-the-sport mantle to Cavendish he would certainly have mentioned it here. However, he didn't, though I did learn that he's apparently training in Hawaii:

If you've ever wondered what sets Lance Armstrong apart from other professional cyclists, it is his seemingly bottomless capacity for suffering. This, more than anything else, is the basis for his success. While anyone else would certainly find riding a bicycle around Hawaii in December to be tedium of the highest magnitude, to Armstrong it doesn't even seem like work. In fact, he almost seems to enjoy it.

At this point I was beginning to suspect that perhaps Stapleton had made up the whole "mantle" thing, but I figured I'd check back in with Cyclingnews to see if there was any more about it. There wasn't, though it does turn out that Floyd Landis may sign with Rock Racing:

By now I had forgotten all about "Mantlegate" and was instead overwhelmed by feelings of concern for Landis. Signing with Rock Racing is an even bigger warning sign than selling all your bikes on Craigslist, which Landis also did recently. While the listings have since expired, I did have the foresight to capture images of them through judicious use of "technology." Here is the ad for Landis's road bike from the 2005 Tour de France:



And here is his time trial bike from the infamous 2006 Tour from which he was eventually disqualified for supposedly applying a testosterone patch to his perineum in a scandal that was subsequently referred to as "Grundlegate:"



As disturbing as it is to see Landis attempting to jettison bicycles with such distinguished pedigrees through channels ordinarily reserved for things like stolen SE Drafts, kittens, and solicitations for sexual encounters in elevators, it was also in a certain way a bit of a relief and a rare taste of glamor (albeit, well, tainted). After all, the Tour de France is a much more compelling and exotic backdrop than the moldy bathtubs to which the Craigslist shopper is accustomed:

Specialized Carbon S-Works Frame 58cm - $650 (Basically New)
Date: 2009-12-27, 8:31AM EST
Reply to: [deleted]

58cm Specialized Carbon S-Works Roubaix frame only, comes with S-Works carbon headset and seat post collar, no fork, basically new (used twice - looks brand new with no blemishes or scratches anywhere). Originally retailed for $2800 , now a super low $650!!! Pro-level frame. Send a contact number if your interested.

I'm not sure why the seller chose to photograph the frame in the bathroom, though I would imagine it's either because the rest of the house was even more frightening, or because he was about to slip into the tub with the frame and a few gallons of eggnog.

Speaking of luxuriating in bathtubs with your bicycle, I was reading and enjoying the issue of Rouleur that came in my holiday gift basket when I encountered the following description of an old Gios racing bicycle:

As I write this, I have one in front of me, and it is a thing of peerless equilateral beauty. The tubing is seminal Columbus SL, the welds absolutely spotless and absolutely human. The blue itself is perfection, a tactile, dreamy azure--unmistakably Italian, unquestionably America. The lowercase Gios Torino decals on the down and seat tubes, each flanked by an understated Italian tricolour, are simply immaculate, simply right. [...] The bar tape is white, and the rake and chrome of the fork is the very essence of discretion, of judicious, considered design. [...] This, in the vernacular, is to die for, a gorgeous object that happens to be a bicycle. This is a 1973 Gios professional.

It's not surprising to me that the author should describe the tubing as "seminal," and I wonder if he will be similarly eloquent in the emergency room when he's forced to explain to a doctor how his genitals became stuck in the seattube of a 1973 Gios professional. It will probably be some sort tall tale about a stolen seatpost, a misplaced pair of pants, and a long ride home, and I'm sure he will be relying on the fork's considerable discretion as he spins it. I'm also sure that, once extracted, his member will be even more purple than his prose.

Also in the same issue of Rouleur was this ad for a Brooks Barbican shoulder bag declaring it a "Space Miracle," which as far as I can tell is like a regular miracle but in outer space:

I also thought "Space Miracle" was David Bowie's follow-up to "Space Oddity," so I was surprised to see it referenced in a decidedly terrestrial bag advertisement (or "advert" if you're British or pretentious). It turns out I was wrong about the album (that follow-up was actually "The Man Who Sold the Testosterone Grundle Patch"), but I'm still pretty sure that's Moby modeling it. I just hope he doesn't try to pass his "mantle" into that frame, because it could take a space miracle to get it out again.