A modest proposal

I’m no fan of dopers. I see why pros do it. There’s money at stake, and the guys that win get most of it. But that doesn’t make it right.

When I hear rumors of doping at the amateur level, though, I’m dumbfounded. Seriously? You’re a Cat. 4 and decide that upgrading to Cat. 3 is so important you’re willing to dope to get there?

I race because it makes me happy. I can’t imagine anyone being happy with a result he cheated to get. If there’s a bunch of money at stake, I can see someone cheating anyway. But when the winner gets back in cash what he paid as an entry fee, there’s just not that much incentive. And yet it happens.

One of the problems with dopers is that there’s no way to know for sure who’s doing it. Sure we have the guys who test positive, but they wouldn’t have been doping if they thought they’d get caught. And the main reason to think they wouldn’t get caught is past experience. It doesn’t take a genius to deduce that there are guys who are doping and not getting caught. At the amateur level, there aren’t even tests.

I’ve heard it suggested multiple times that doping rules should just be done away with. If someone is willing to accept the risk of side effects, more power to him. Allow unrestricted doping and see just how much athletes can achieve. Or create two leagues, a doping league and a clean league. If you ever ring the dope-o-meter in the clean league, you can never compete there again.

The prospect of running redundant leagues for the same sport is problematic, however. First of all, it would be expensive. Multiply the cost of everything times two. Second, we as fans don’t want to admit that star athletes aren’t just well-trained and genetically gifted, but also juiced to the gills.* As long as there’s testing in sport, we can pretend like these are legitimate performances. There’s also the question of which would be more popular. Are we ready to embrace a world where the doped league outshines the clean league in television ratings and therefore sponsorship dollars? It’s much easier to just bury our heads in the sand.

*Remember William “Refrigerator” Perry from the ‘85 Bears? At 6’2” and 302 pounds, he was MASSIVE. Now we have high school kids that size. I spent a lot of time in the weight room in high school. I watched a lot of tall kids between 6’0” and 6’5” desperately try to bulk up to get above 200 pounds. You think a high school kid that’s a relatively lean 300 pounds is natural? Think again. There might be one on every five teams. But not five on any one team. 

A simpler solution would be to just require all doping manufacturers to put a substance in their product that turns the user’s skin purple (this is easier than you might think—according to a well-informed acquaintance who works in the pharmaceutical industry, anabolic steroids have this side effect, and chemicals must be added to counteract it). Doping tests would be completely unnecessary because it would be obvious. In fact, we could use the chemicals already added to steroids to color code the drugs: purple for anabolic/androgenic products such as testosterone and HGH; orange for blood boosters such as EPO; and green for stimulants such as amphetamines. Then we’d not only know that someone is doping, but in what way.

Organizers and competitors could be left to decide how to handle it if someone entered an event but had the wrong-colored skin. Cyclists could pull a Theo Bos at any point during the race to take out a doping competitor.

If the athletes took matters into their own hands, officials would have to decide how to respond. Would it be justifiable if the person taken out had orange skin? Would promoters have signs saying “colored racers not allowed” at registration? Would colored leagues be established to provide the dopers a place to compete if they were shut out from competition? Such matters are not without precedent.

Sponsors would similarly have to decide whether they want a purple-skinned running back pitching their product on television. Would we as viewers eventually become numb to it, accepting green, orange, or purple skin as typical of our heroes? The multi-colored Olympic rings would take on a new, albeit likely more appropriate, meaning.

Would the phenomenon become so rampant that children begin dying their skin, not for the performance benefit, but so they can look more like their role models? It would be like Star-Bellied Sneetches, except in real life. Actually, I can really see this happening. Look what’s happened with athlete tattoos, after all. They’ve gone from a subtle statement of belief or aesthetic to ridiculously ignorant and misguided ideological billboarding in less than a generation.

Maybe orange, green, or purple skin would eventually become no different than having a tattoo, however absurd. In fact, tattoos are a great test case here, because as ludicrous as I think they are, I’m the last guy that’s ever going to give MMA fighter Melvin Costa crap about his tattoos. But that doesn’t mean they won’t keep him from competing.

Nature versus nurture

Before I get into today's post, I'm extending an invitation to anyone who cares to join me for a Turkey Day ride on Thursday morning. Trails are a mess in Draper right now with more snow falling last night, but the road up American Fork Canyon was dry yesterday. 7:30 from the 4-way at Suncrest or 8:00 at the mouth of AF if you're interested. Or you can go play touch football and risk a PCL tear, a broken tooth, or a permanently crooked finger.

More than half a century ago, my mother and her family decided to go see Baldface Mountain. Baldface Mountain is supposedly one of the more spectacular peaks in the Eastern US, since, as the name implies, it's bare rock rather than forested.

Like so many other points of interest, the government charges a fee for the privilege of seeing Baldface Mountain. When the party arrived at the fee booth, the sky was foggy, and they were skeptical about whether or not they'd actually be able to see the mountain they'd come for. The Ranger in the booth assured them that they'd soon be above the fog and the mountain would be in full view. Taking his word, they paid their money and proceeded.

When they arrived at the view point, the fog was no less dense than it was at the fee booth, and they couldn't see a thing. Everyone was disappointed but willing to let it go. Everyone except my grandmother, that is.

As they reached the fee booth on the return trip, my grandmother told my grandfather to stop the car. She got out, walked over to the booth, and told the ranger she wanted her money back since he said they'd be able to see the mountain and in fact they couldn't.

He indicated that there were no refunds and he was unable to return her money. She encouraged him to give her a refund anyway, but he held firm.

She then walked up the road a bit and waited for the next car to arrive. As it did, she told the occupants that the mountain was socked in with fog, that the ranger would tell them it was visible but it really wasn't, and that they should turn around and go back.

They thanked her for the information and turned around. My mother, who was five years old at the time, was horrified. She knelt on the floorboards trying to make herself invisible. She was aghast at the embarrassment and shame her mother was bringing on the family. My grandfather and his sisters just sat there and waited. They'd seen this before and knew there was no sense in trying to talk her down.

Another car came, and my grandmother did the same thing. Then another, and perhaps another. My mom isn't sure, since she was hiding rather than counting cars. Finally, the ranger came out and offered a refund if she'd just go away, an offer she gladly accepted.

When my mother told me this story, more than fifty years after the fact, it was apparent there was still some residual embarrassment that she wasn't quite over.

Whatever the gene governing such behavior is, it evidently skipped a generation. Because I just laughed and told her I would have done the exact same thing.

Worth a thousand words

Rather than writing a full-fledged post today, I have two photos I want to post instead. I’ve got a topic brewing, but I haven’t had time to write it all out yet, and I haven’t quite figured out how to handle a somewhat sensitive, potentially controversial even offensive aspect of it. So it will have to wait. Enjoy the pictures in the mean time.

There are no women on the upper floor of Steve’s office, but there are men’s and women’s restrooms. This was not staged.

Second is courtesy of my brother-in-law. I’m not a big fan of Christmas lights. Seems like an enormous waste of energy for something that has absolutely nothing to do with the nominal basis for the holiday. But I really like this yard.

Spooning your tracks

A backcountry ethic espoused in some circles is the notion of “spooning your tracks.” What this means, in a nutshell, is that you ski down essentially in adjacent (think parallel, even though they’re not really parallel since you’re not going straight unless you’re Ben) lines so as to minimize the amount of snow disturbed on the descent and to maximize the amount of “virgin” snow available to subsequent skiers.

To those advocating this position, I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty-headed animal food trough wiper. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.

Seriously, you want me to spoon my tracks? I got up at 4:30 in the morning and hiked for these turns in the dark. As often as not my group broke the trail. And you, who apparently don’t have a real job, want to sleep in until nine, use the skin track I put in, and have me leave the snow as pristine as possible for your benefit?

That. Ain’t. Happening. I’m going to ski down where I feel like skiing down. If the tracks get spooned, lucky you. If they don’t, that’s my prerogative.

For one, I don’t see the need. Most of my skiing is done in what locals lovingly refer to as the sheep pen, the tri-canyons of Little Cottonwood, Big Cottonwood, and Millcreek. For what it’s worth, most of my time is in Little Cottonwood, the most crowded of them all. The one where the most popular backcountry runs have actually become bumped out on occasion. I’ve never even skied Millcreek.

And yet I rarely if ever feel crowded. I might cross over someone’s tracks now and again, but that really doesn’t ruin the experience for me. If it does for you, get up earlier, or go somewhere else. We have thousands of acres with approaches that would be considered negligible in Colorado or Idaho that hardly ever get skied because they take five minutes longer to get to.

Besides, most of the time in the Wasatch if it snowed today, there’s a good chance it’ll snow tomorrow. My tracks will be hidden. I may put new tracks down the following day since I’ve been known to get up early for consecutive powder days. But yesterday’s tracks will be a faded memory. You’re more than welcome to get up early and put in your own. With 500 inches annually, we don’t have a shortage of fresh snow.

The place where spooning tracks actually makes sense is in the resorts. Resort skiing concentrates thousands of skiers in one tiny spot where they have the ability to get back up the hill incredibly quickly and with zero effort. Unless you consider eating a PBJ or a handful of M&Ms effort. Yet nobody ever considers spooning their tracks at the resort. It’s every man for himself, get the freshies as fast as you can. And it’s usually gone by noon.

The Wizard, on the other hand, rarely skis anything but powder, no matter how long it’s been since the last snowfall. It’s out there. It’s almost always out there if you know how to find it. But please don’t ask me to save some for you if you’re home in bed while I’m skinning.

True grit

My sophomore year in high school, one of the tackles on the football team would frequently lead the running back 40 or more yards down the field and into the end zone. Running backs are supposed to follow the lead blocker, but only to a point. Eventually, they’re supposed to run past the lead blocker, given that they’re supposed to be faster. In this case, however, #77 was outrunning his backs all the way to the goal line.

Apparently this propensity to defy convention was genetic. Three years later, #77’s dad was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. He was expected to live between 6 and 24 months. Five years after the diagnosis, I was sitting around his campfire listening as he spun his yarn while on a fishing trip to Island Park, ID. The following spring when JunkieGirl was born, he claimed partial credit, insisting she was conceived on that trip (Rachel claims the math doesn’t quite work out, but I wasn’t going to argue).

N.J. lived with myeloma for sixteen years. He was too tough to die from just one disease. It took the help of esophageal cancer, pulmonary fibrosis, and pneumonia to finally take him down. He was adamant that it be mentioned at his funeral that he was a John Wayne fan. I don’t think the Duke ever played a character that tough. You’ll be missed, N.J.

Rivalry of the decade

Much was made of last night’s Patriots – Colts matchup (a game I hope you didn’t miss—it was that good), with NBC lauding it as “the rivalry of the decade” and lots of debate as to which of the respective quarterbacks is better.

That’s an easy question to answer. Tom Brady is the quarterback of a good team. Peyton Manning IS the team. And clearly the better quarterback.

I’m not saying Tom Brady isn’t capable. He is. But put Tom Brady on another team, and he’d be mediocre. He was drafted 199th for a reason. He’s outperformed his draft position, to be sure. But Peyton Manning is an order of magnitude better than any other #1 overall pick in the game today.

One need look no further than Matt Cassel to see what I’m talking about. Cassel finished and won the first game of the season last year and went on to start the remainder of the season. He led the Patriots to an 11-5 record, with a laundry list of offensive achievements.

Does that mean Cassel is a great quarterback? Some would think so. But he never even started a game in college, and since leaving the Patriots is 2-7 with the Kansas City Chiefs. I’m sure the Chiefs are ready to choke him with that six year, $60 million contract at this point.

Clearly, it wasn’t Cassel that was so good, but the Patriots system. Likewise, Brady isn’t a great quarterback, he’s the quarterback of a great team. He has an outstanding supporting cast—Randy Moss would be a superstar with me throwing him the ball. He’s got a great offensive line, and Kevin Faulk and Lawrence Maroney make the passing game possible. Take Brady out of New England, and he’s a journeyman quarterback that would never make the Pro Bowl.

Contrast that with Peyton Manning. Peyton Manning makes decent players into superstars. I’m sure a BYU fan somewhere will put a contract on me for saying this, but Austin Collie would not be a regular on any other team, if he even made the roster. Collie has (not atypically deluded) BYU faithful calling for rookie of the year honors, which he doesn’t deserve, because Manning isn’t a rookie. The Colts have one of the worst running games in the league. Everyone knows Manning is going to throw the ball on almost every down. Yet somehow, they’re still unbeaten.

Just how good Peyton Manning is was made clear at the end of last night’s game. With 4th and 2 in their own territory and two minutes left, Belichick decided to go for it. He had absolutely no confidence that his defense could keep Manning from scoring a touchdown, regardless of where on the field he got the ball.

All Brady had to do was convert on 4th and 2. He failed. Manning seemed to take his time as he went 29 yards for the winning touchdown. That would never have been a gimme for anyone else, Tom Brady included. But when the Patriots failed to convert, everyone on both sides of the field knew the game was over.

So you tell me—who’s better?

The expurgated version

Happy Friday the 13th everyone. You’re all scared, right? I’m staying off the bike today just to be safe.* Because bad things happen exactly as superstition dictates. Why else would these superstitions exist if they weren’t true?

*Or more precisely because I haven’t had a rest day since a week ago Monday, and I’m overdue at this point and likely unable to pedal up a hill even if I wanted to. Besides, I have to pick up about 800 pounds of chocolate this morning—that and walking to 7-eleven for my diet coke fix should be exercise enough.

I’ve mentioned before the truth mingled with lies approach that, according to Christian theology, Satan uses to tempt God-fearing people to go astray. Well not much gets by these evangelical types, because after millennia of getting snared by this approach, they’ve apparently noticed just how effective mixing a chunk of BS into otherwise accurate information can be, and are fighting fire with fire.

1980’s teenage heartthrob and star of the blockbuster Fireproof, Kirk Cameron, along with his pal Ray Comfort* are distributing on college campuses, at no charge, copies of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.

*Has there ever been a preacher with a better name than Ray Comfort? Seriously. Either it was divine intervention on his birth certificate or he applied the stripper stage name selection process to church.

Here’s the catch, though. It’s the expurgated version. And just like removing the gannet (and the robin and the nuthatch) from Olsen’s Standard Book of British Birds because they wet their nests, Comfort has likewise removed the sections of Origin of Species that he doesn’t like. And he’s removed the author’s preface and replaced it with one he wrote instead.

I understand how someone could feel compelled to share their religion with others—I spent two years doing the same, after all. What I don’t get is how any rational, marginally educated, reasonably intelligent person can read the Bible and genuinely believe that the earth was created in six 24-hour days, at the end of which God snapped his fingers, and Adam, Eve, and everything thereon instantly came to life.

A heart surgeon who also happens to be an apostle in his church doesn’t believe it all happened in a week, so why do these fundamentalists think they can make that case to anyone, let alone at institutions of higher learning? Moreover, how can they think anyone will take them seriously if the book they’re passing out has been altered to suit their purposes?

What if I started passing out Bibles that had a new preface, written by me, claiming that God is merely a metaphor for the big bang; that the word “day” in the context of the Genesis creation story signifies a period of time of roughly 650 million earth years; and that the ten commandments were a set of instructions that would help you get along with others, have a happy, fulfilling life, but that not following them would not lead to eternal damnation because your consciousness will cease at the end of this life?

Would Cameron and Comfort be amused? Or more importantly, would they be convinced? Some of what I claimed in the preceding is true and some of it can’t be proven one way or another, but I suspect that not one word of what I said would be taken seriously because I had the audacity to alter the Bible. So what gives them the authority to alter someone else’s work and then try to use the altered version to disprove the same?

My favorite fundamentalist argument against natural selection is that it’s a theory and therefore not proven. Well guess what, so too is gravity a theory. If you stop believing in gravity simply for it’s theoretical nature will you float off into space? Let’s try it. Ready? 1-2-3-go! Still there? Thought so. OK, that wasn’t really a fair experiment because there’s a difference between pretending or wanting to believe something and actually believing. But you get my point.

Just as not believing something doesn’t make it not true, neither does believing in something make it true. Wonder how those 9/11 attackers are enjoying their 72 virgins? Or was it 72 white raisins? I don’t remember.