US cycling coverage on OLN/VS



The short answer, as you can see from the rest of this board, is that many people have simply lost interest in cycling. Since there never has been very much interest in the US compared to Europe, I suspect the cycling coverage of the major tours in the US will be close to non-existant. I used to schedule my summer vacations (from Denmark) so that I could be at home to watch all three.

Now, I could care less.

The dopers, the press, the teams, the various cycling bodies - all of them have behaved either illegally, or unethically, or immorally and/or stupidly throughout all the doping disclosures of the past year.

Why did I invest so much in so little of substance?

I have taken up rowing. A first-class rowing machine costs about 11.000 DKK , new, and a used one-man scull from the UK can be had for even less. Add in a dry suit and you are still below the cost of a racing cycle.

Maybe I will go to Henley Regatta.
 
Frihed89 said:
I have taken up rowing. A first-class rowing machine costs about 11.000 DKK , new, and a used one-man scull from the UK can be had for even less. Add in a dry suit and you are still below the cost of a racing cycle.
Have you tried kicking back with a six pack of Schlitz and a couple porns? A good surround sound system and LCD big screen still cost less than a racing bicycle. Schlitz is about $3.50/sixer USD and you can get great **** from the pawn shop for as little as $5 a title. That's less than $10 USD/viewing pleasure, which is about half the cost of entry fee to USAC race.

Give it a try. You'll be glad you did.
 
Or you could always try combing rowing and Schlitzing.
Back to the original question. The Vs website has the 'cyclism' coverage dates and it says its the 2007 dates, but I'm not sure about some of them.
The coverage looks about the same as last year.
 
helmutRoole2 said:
Have you tried kicking back with a six pack of Schlitz and a couple porns? A good surround sound system and LCD big screen still cost less than a racing bicycle. Schlitz is about $3.50/sixer USD and you can get great **** from the pawn shop for as little as $5 a title.
Give it a try. You'll be glad you did.
Any titles you would suggest?
 
wolfix said:
Any titles you would suggest?
I'm old school, so go with the titles from the 70s and 80s. "Debbie Does Dallas" is a good one. Also, I'm still getting mileage out of "Deep Throat."

Enjoy!
 
helmutRoole2 said:
I'm old school, so go with the titles from the 70s and 80s. "Debbie Does Dallas" is a good one. Also, I'm still getting mileage out of "Deep Throat."

Enjoy!
Kentucky Fried movie ?
 
whiteboytrash said:
Kentucky Fried movie ?
I can't even remember it. Saw it in high school. Something about a trial and a guy shaking a ***** at the witness saying, "are you aware of the penal codes!"

I do remember the redhead my friend Bob Slob took as a date, though. Tara. Beautiful red hair, kinda curly. A bit of a priss, but man what a looker. She was sitting in the front of Bob's Volvo 164. A rare car, kinda a piece of junk, but it ran and had four doors. Me and my friend Ted were in the back fairly drunk. Ted much more so than I as he typically was... much more so than anyone.

Ted had been quiet for some time when I noticed him struggling to roll down the window, which didn't normally roll down but if you cranked it hard enough the entire sheet of glass would drop down into the door. Anyway, Ted was cranking on it and in his drunken state couldn't get it to go down. I reached over to help but, on recognizing the situation, retreated in horror to the furthest corner of the car.

There was an emergency brewing in Ted's tummy. He had to throw up. For some reason he thought the window next to Tara was open so he tried to throw up over her seat and out the closed window. There was some ricochet effect, but I think towards the end of his heaves, Ted just figured WTF and seemed to be purposely puking all over Tara's head. In fact, the window next to Ted fell into the door and was open, but Ted kept puking on Tara despite her attempts to push his head out the open window next to him.

Oh boy. Talk about a mess. The car was covered in vomit and Ted's dad worked at an egg farm so he ate eggs 7 days/week. Beer, some kind of cheese scram, popcorn and Milk Duds... all over the car. Tara wouldn't stop screaming. Even when we stopped the car and Ted stopped puking she was still screaming. I remember her pulling some chunks out of her hair and throwing them at Ted while Ted took a **** on the side of the car.
 
helmutRoole2 said:
I can't even remember it. Saw it in high school. Something about a trial and a guy shaking a ***** at the witness saying, "are you aware of the penal codes!"

I do remember the redhead my friend Bob Slob took as a date, though. Tara. Beautiful red hair, kinda curly. A bit of a priss, but man what a looker. She was sitting in the front of Bob's Volvo 164. A rare car, kinda a piece of junk, but it ran and had four doors. Me and my friend Ted were in the back fairly drunk. Ted much more so than I as he typically was... much more so than anyone.

Ted had been quiet for some time when I noticed him struggling to roll down the window, which didn't normally roll down but if you cranked it hard enough the entire sheet of glass would drop down into the door. Anyway, Ted was cranking on it and in his drunken state couldn't get it to go down. I reached over to help but, on recognizing the situation, retreated in horror to the furthest corner of the car.

There was an emergency brewing in Ted's tummy. He had to throw up. For some reason he thought the window next to Tara was open so he tried to throw up over her seat and out the closed window. There was some ricochet effect, but I think towards the end of his heaves, Ted just figured WTF and seemed to be purposely puking all over Tara's head. In fact, the window next to Ted fell into the door and was open, but Ted kept puking on Tara despite her attempts to push his head out the open window next to him.

Oh boy. Talk about a mess. The car was covered in vomit and Ted's dad worked at an egg farm so he ate eggs 7 days/week. Beer, some kind of cheese scram, popcorn and Milk Duds... all over the car. Tara wouldn't stop screaming. Even when we stopped the car and Ted stopped puking she was still screaming. I remember her pulling some chunks out of her hair and throwing them at Ted while Ted took a **** on the side of the car.

...it's writing like this that keeps me tuning in...
 
helmutRoole2 said:
What's going on in this picture?
It looks like either the Gerolsteiner jockey at the derby, or a Gerolsteiner rider sitting on the porcelain throne after eating a bit too much bran.
 
slovakguy said:
...it's writing like this that keeps me tuning in...
I've always wanted to look Ted up, to see how he's doing after all these years. Last I heard he was living in a small town between Gainesville, Fla., and Jacksonville called Waldo. It's the place where Bo Didley lives. On the other side of Gainesville is Newberry. That's where Muddy Waters' wife is from.

Anyway, I've always felt a little guilty about Ted. I never said anything to him about his drinking and drug use during high school. None of us, his friends, ever said a thing. He was like a slow motion train wreck that never quite got off the tracks, never fully crashed. He flew just below the radar of parents, teachers and school administrators -- people who could help him.

Ted was a little strange, just a bit odd. He wasn't a best friend to anyone because he was distant one-on-one, just out of touch. But when we all got together he could really shine. And if he wasn't at a party or a ball game, someone would inevitably ask, "Where's Ted?" And if there was no explanation we'd get in the car and get him. It was almost like, the party didn't start until Ted got there.

But it wasn't like Ted came from a broken home or the ghetto trailer parks that a lot of us kids came from. His family was solid working class. His father was a retired Navy NCO who worked at an egg farm. Ted was raised by his mom, but Ted wasn't a momma's boy so he seemed to have no real connection to his parents. His dad was cold, icy even. My dad, also a Navy man, knew Ted's dad and got me a job working for him. It was brief. The guy hardly spoke. He creeped me out.

Ted was clean cut, a bright kid and a surprisingly good leader when he was with the group. Even when he was lit he was still composed (except for that time he threw up on Tara). He was also one of best cross-country runners in the state his junior and senior years. Against fast competition on a fast course he routinely turned in sub-15 min performances over three miles of cross-country and dominated the best runners from the bigger schools in town. He ran 14:37 on a fairly flat golf course once. And he turned in a 14:51 on a kinda' tough 5k course, which was probably his best performance.

At a cross-country or track meet, Ted was in his environment. We gravitated to him. Even the black sprinters did. He was focused. His comments were bright, poignant and inspiring. He could really rally us. We got invites to do some big meets against big schools and we never backed down. We talked ****. We were arrogant, cocky… right up to a point where we knew Ted would reign us in. The guy had class the rest of us didn't. My dad made a point of saying to Ted's dad once, "You should come out and watch you boy race. You'd be proud of him." But he never was.

I'll never forget the state cross-country meet Ted's senior year. He was the heavy favorite and we were the heavy favorite for the team title. We were warming up 10 mins before the race. Ted was at the front of the group, jogging. He slowed. He took a knee. We stopped and we gathered around him. This was his moment.

He looked up at us, then back down and then he proceeded to vomit all over the ground. He looked up again and said, "Guys, I don't think I'm going to do so well today."

It was nerves. His whole family was there to watch and it was just too much for Ted. He had been up all night worrying about it. Probably the night before too. In the end, in the one environment that favored his greatest gifts and gave him the opportunity to really shine, Ted cracked. I never understood his fragility at that moment. I didn't think I could ever forgive that weakness in him.

Amazingly, we won the state title. A couple guys turned in lifetime performances and Ted toughed out a 15th place. He got it done. If we had to depend on our sixth man, we would have lost. It was something like Ted's 15 points vs Bob Slob's 52 points. So, all was forgiven in my mind, but for Ted, I think, that may have been a turning point in his life -- something he could not forgive.

After the state meet, Ted seemed pretty much unchanged. I mean, we all assumed he'd run in college -- there were scholarship offers -- and he'd drink and run his way through it like he did in high school. But Ted didn't go to college. He ran on the roads for a couple years, worked at an athletic shoe store before being fired for stealing cash from the register, an allegation denied, but he did it. I don't know why I know, but I'm sure he did. When you grow up with someone, you know.

In retrospect, after 20 years… Well, last I heard of Ted he was living in a single-wide in Waldo in a trailer park I know to be bad. He was arrested for beating his wife and leading the police on an OJ-style chase before passing out and running his car into a tree at 10 mph. When we were kids, that would have seemed funny, but when Bob Slob told me the news there was only silence over the phone line. I think we both felt our friend's shame, and our own for never saying anything to Ted about... well, about the way he was.

That was about 12 years ago. That's all I know of my friend Ted.

Well, I hope that brightens everyone's day.