Leave this section blank--for employer use only.

[Wizened old man sidles up next to me at the bar and starts talking before I'm able to leave.]

I'm going to tell you what's wrong with the new generation.

[Grabs my bicep with his bony hand, which despite looking and feeling like a bird claw is surprisingly strong.]

In my day, you could trust bike racers because they cheated with integrity.  They hopped a train mid-stage.  They snorted some strychnine.  They kicked up their feet and watched French sitcoms while enjoying a refreshing blood transfusion in the hotel during the rest day.

Not these new kids!  No sir or ma'am!  (I can't sex you young people no more what with your long hair and your nipple rings.)  Take this Froome character for instance.  He's as doped as the next guy, but just because he's "sick" it's "legal:"

Froome fell ill during the race and the Sky team doctor Allen Farrell put in the TUE application to allow Froome to take 40mg of the oral corticosteroid, per day. French newspaper La Journal du Dimanche reported that the UCI medical adviser Dr Michele Zorzoli had fast-tracked the TUE application at the Tour de Romandie.

By this time I was able to extricate myself from the Ancient Mariner's claw by jabbing at it repeatedly with one of those tiny plastic cocktail swords, at which point the bartender chased him out of the establishment by hitting him with a broom.  Still, the old coot had a point.  Why should you be allowed to take a banned substance just because you weren't feeling well that day?  Shouldn't you have to either lose or stop racing?  What's the real difference between taking corticosteroid because you got sick during a race and getting a blood transfusion during the third week of the Tour because your body won't recover?  Seems to me they shouldn't allow any of it, or else they need to allow all of it.

Also, I'm amazed Chris Froome can race a bike at all at this point, much less win major stage races.  The guy's got a blood parasite, he needs corticosteroids mid-race, and his asthma's so bad he needs to suck on an inhaler while he's riding:

At this rate they're going to give him a TUE for a Gruber Assist.

By the way, I was researching ("researching" is pretentious for "G--gling") Froome's blood parasite, and I learned that it can cause something often mistaken for "male menstruation:"

In some tropical peoples that work in wet places such as rice fields, most boys pick up Schistosoma, and start the bleeding, about puberty when they start working in the rice fields, and uneducated locals think that it is normal and refer to it as the male equivalent of female menstruation, and call it by their native language word for "menstruation".

It's worth noting that it's impossible follow pro cycling without having a deep knowledge of subjects such as hematocrit levels, the difference between autologous and homologous blood transfusions, chimeras, corticosteroids, Clenbuterol-tainted meat, and now male menstruation.  To me, this is exactly what's wrong with the sport.  Somehow, the rest of the world manages to sit back and watch a bunch of people kick a ball around, yet I wind up reading about children bleeding from their penises.

Moving on (you're welcome), here is a video to which I was alerted by a reader that explores the complex interplay between childlike fascination and total cluelessness:



The video is a profile of this couple.  They love each other, which is nice, and so they do stuff together, which is also nice:

(Nice.)

What kind of stuff do they do together?  Well, stuff no other couple in the history of humankind has ever done together, such as eating food:

And riding bikes:

They also have what they call a unique living situation, by which I mean it's not:

"Our work situation and living situation is pretty unique.  We live on one side of a duplex, and then the other side of a duplex is our office."

How is this even remotely unique?  If they lived on a submarine and worked in a decommissioned nuclear silo then that might be unique, but this sounds like the typical live/work scenario that is the basis of a million Craigslist apartment ads.

And the way they go about their work is as unique as the situation in which they do that work:

"Whenever I'm working I'm starting one project and then it takes me to another project, and I'm constantly like back-and-forth and back-and-forth."

Right, because that's what working is.  This is like saying, "Whenever I'm taking one mouthful, I'm chewing it and swallowing, and then I'm taking another mouthful."

You might imagine someone with such a unique approach to working has a similar approach to not working, and you'd be right:

"When I'm on my bike, it's like I get a focus on like, 'What do my legs feel like right now, how hard am I breathing right now.'  I get a focus on my...self for the first time?"

So, like, you mean you're pedaling a bike and you're having fun?  Yeah, us too, welcome to bikes.

It really is fascinating to watch someone discover the concept of "recreation" as they're describing it to you.

But there's more to riding bikes than having fun and not working while moving your legs.  There's also weather:

"Having the sun hit your skin, like, being outdoors.  The sensory experience involved in that?  That's something that like our human ancestors experienced for 200,000 years and, like, a lot of times we're disconnected from that?"

It's true, we are somewhat disconnected from the sun when we're inside, I'll give him that.  However, I'd also imagine that our human ancestors were similarly disconnected from the sunlight 200,000 years ago on those occasions when they retreated into their caves to hide from sabertooth tigers.

Sun isn't the only thing that amazes him, either.  He's also amazed by the wind:

"When else do you think about the wind?"

An excellent question.  When do you think about the wind?  Well, let's see: getting dressed in the morning, walking, running, carrying an umbrella, wearing a floppy hat, wearing a skirt, wearing a necktie, sailing, swimming, flying a kite, reading a newspaper on a park bench, setting up a beach blanket...  Yeah, pretty much all the time, really.  In fact, wind is probably third only to precipitation and temperature as far as the atmospheric conditions that dictate your day.  You wake up and you look out the window.  What are you wondering?  Three things: 1) Is it raining?  2) Is it cold?  3) Is it windy?  Then, you get dressed accordingly, and you go to work--you know, the place where you go back-and-forth among numerous projects.

Next, they discover the concept of exhaustion:

"And then there's always a threshold.  So, at what given point...are my legs at, and so, like, am I close to that threshold?"

It was at this point I realized that I was watching a documentary about two synthetic humans who have just emerged from a pod that aliens recently planted on the Earth, and whose mission is to live among us as they gather data about our planet.

But then the narrative takes a strange turn, as the Male Humanoid tells the story of his first century:

"When we get to mile 90?  I mean, when we realized that we're actually 30 miles away from home?  That was the darkest place I've ever been."

Wow.  That was the darkest place you've ever been, really?  The time you got really hungry on a bike ride and you needed a snack?

This confirmed my suspicion about the pod.

So what happened on that ill-fated century:

"I kept yawning?"

Yeah, us too.

Then he took a nap in a cornfield:

After which he woke up completely rested and restored:

From this, I conclude that before the aliens launched them from the mother ship in the pod and they simply programmed him to think that the voyage to Earth was a century ride.  So it makes sense that the "century" would be the formative experience in his very short life.  It also makes sense that they crashed in a cornfield, at which point they emerged from the pod and began gathering data for the imminent alien invasion:

It's all so clear to me now.  They're the anti-Adam and anti-Eve and they're sowing the seeds of humanity's destruction--not that we're exactly living in an Eden as it is:

To the wasted bike girl peeing on my street - m4w (crown heights)

You:

A crooked helmet

A crashed bicycle in the middle of the sidewalk with the wheel still spinning.

Apple headphones.

Bleach blonde greasy hair (possible chunks of a regurgitated cheap dinner clinging to it)

Ass hanging out peeing against a VW..possibly #2? ill find out in the morning on my way to work! :D

Drooling and could barely stand up straight struggling with your belt, zipper, etc.

Me:

Annunciating my words like telling Gary Busi a bed time story after a batch of pot brownies. (Couldn't tell if the headphones were a disguise to pester off human interaction).

I offered to call you and pay for a cab. You rudely refused (and burped up a little something).

I came back a minute later trying to do the right thing and asked if you were sure and strongly urged you to walk your bike and NOT ride your bike home.(which...im sure...you fucking rode home like an idiot).

You:

Told me 'to just chill out' and rudely waved your hand in my face.

REALLY?! really.....??? "Just Chill Out..."? I thought coming home sober on a warm sunday evening with my my family 6 feet away from my apartment is as chilled out as a person can possibly be. 

I hope you veered off into East New York and are now drugged up in a cargo crate, on a ship, bobbing across the Atlantic over to Uzbekistan for a lifetime of miserable prostitution, infectious needles and poor nutrition. 

Happy AIDs! 

DONT FUCKING PEE NEAR MY HOUSE AGAIN. YOU'RE DISGUSTING. PLEASE GO BACK TO IOWA.

At least she was wearing a helment.