The following news flash was posted in the comments over at Twisted Spoke upon further investigation into this article about Levi Leipheimer's performance in the prologue time trial at Paris-Nice. I post it here in it's entirety for your reading enjoyment.
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You have stumbled onto Bruyneel’s master plan alluded to in the Nike commercial. The plan is not to clone Lance repeatedly but rather to morph the rest of the team into hybrid-Armstrongs with the Most desired powers of both (kinda like a liger).
If you’ve ever seen ‘Multiplicity’ with Michael Keaton you know that the clone never comes out exactly like the original and that a copy of even the hardest working clone will be completely unusable.
By metamorphosing other riders into hybrid-Armstrongs he can pick and choose the best traits of the peloton and make them more Lance-like. We have seen the TT abilities of Levi-Armstrong but what about the climbing ability of Chechu-Armstrong or the ultra-super domestiques Horner-Armstrong and Popo-Armstrong.
Yes, The Shack is going to be a truly formidable team come this July.
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More has been revealed due to the un-timely and unfortunate loss of Gert Steegmans due to a broken collarbone. An unknown source has quoted Johan Bruyneel as saying “not again, this could ruin everything.”. This is obviously a reference to a similar injury Lance suffered last season. After an extensive fact checking session with my magic 8-ball I have confirmed the following details:
Bruyneel’s plan was to accomplish the Merckxean task of capturing all 3 jerseys. The Gert-Armstrong hybrid was to take the Green, Chechu the mountains and in the event that Lance himself could not take the yellow, He would still have cards to play with Levi-Armstrong or Andreas K-Armstrong.
What ultimately brought this to light was when it was revealed that the Gert-Armstrong project was the prototype and had been in the works for some time. This was the precipitous for the problems he had at Katusha. The fear was that DNA testing would uncover the Hybrid-Armstrong DNA and blow the lid off the entire project.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
I Am an Awesome Driver
Due to the rate change DART enacted back in September I have not been able to financially justify riding my bike to work since October. Sadly, it is cheaper to drive. As such, I haven't had my usual hour of daily reflection to write. For anyone who actually follows this page, I apologize. As it happens, I am currently sitting outside the Tarrant County Tax Assessor's office patiently waiting for them to open and recently had a driving experience that needs to be embellished. The long story short version of this is, I am an awesome driver and anyone who drove 183 eastbound through Irving Texas last Friday morning should appreciate that fact.
Our story begins on just another Friday. I am driving to work at around 7am up 183 through Irving toward Dallas. Coming past the Irving Mall area, around Beltline for anyone vaguely familiar with the area, I get stuck in the far left lane behind a copper-grey compact SUV. I want to say a Hyundai Santa Fe but it could be any one of a few different "I don't know if I'm a waggon or SUV" things that Toyota pioneered with the Rav4. I am now resigned to cruising at not quite the speed limit but still faster than the next lane over.
Here is an artist rendering of where I am in traffic at this point.
As you can see, I have just come upon an opening in traffic at which I may be able to get around the not-quite-a-SUV. Realizing this I change lanes and move to pass as shown below.
As you can see in this extremely detailed image, there is a pale blue Chevy 1500 moving up quickly on my right. I recognize this as a pickup that was previously in the middle lane a few miles back. Apparently he found an opening to his right as well and is also seizing an opportunity to move up in traffic.
About this time I notice that the car that was behind me in the left lane is flashing his lights like a mad man. I find this odd, but think little of it. I then hear a long honk at the same time I see the pseudo-SUV encroach upon my driving space in the middle lane. This forces me to take evasive action.
This forces me into the right lane which is already occupied by the previously mentioned pale blue Chevy. As you can see from the lovely image above, a collision has occurred.
In my haste to avoid damaging the front end of my car, I completely forgot about the pickup I had seen only seconds before. Upon taking evasive action I was greeted by the surprise of a loud metal on metal crunching noise accompanied by a jarring to my right and the squeal of tires. The squeal I heard was both of the trucks tires on my right rear quarter-panel and of my tires on the road.
I was sideways.
I am now in a very similar situation to what the police call a PIT maneuver. They use it to spin vehicles during a pursuit in order to bring them to an abrupt end. This is bad, as you can see, there are cars in all 3 lanes behind me. If I spin, it ruins a lot of peoples days, not to mention mine.
Instinctively I turn into the skid and separate from the truck. The rear end kicks out to the right and I am now fish-tailed the opposite direction.
I go through a series of corrections and fishtails from left to right and eventually managed to get straightened out and into one lane.
At this point I know I got into the truck but am still unsure if I hit anyone else in my valiant and skillful save. I see the pickup pulling off around O'Connor in my mirror, and I look to see what the NQASUV is going to do. Apparently he's going to keep going. As the initial shock of what just happened wears off, I realize I need to pull off and see if I can get in contact with the driver of the truck. I manage to get off the highway about 1/2 a mile before the Carl road exit and wait for the pickup to show up.
after about 3-4 minutes of waiting, watching cars go by and surveying the damage I call the police to see if anyone else has called in. I explain my situation to a nonplussed dispatcher and tell her that if they want to send an officer I can meet them at the McDonald's at Carl road.
Here is a picture I took of the damage while waiting.
About this point I realized my registration had expired and fully anticipate the ticket I will be shortly receiving. I was greeted by 3 officers in 2 cars about 10 minutes later. I told them my story, they read it back, I corrected them. This happened about 3 times, I assume that this is a police trick to make sure that they have an accurate story.
One officer, who didn't seem to want to be involved in such a minor issue decided he was going to go look for the truck. The other two, who seemed much more friendly complemented and thanked me for not loosing control and saving them a lot of paperwork. That is why I am an awesome driver.
The other driver? Who knows, the police never received a call. The only other call they got was from a witness, presumably the car that was behind me that was flashing and honking. They think it was probably someone who was driving without insurance (or without a green card). Either way, if he doesn't report it I won't so it doesn't go on my record, doesn't go on my insurance saves the cops a few hours of paperwork and I just have to live with this.
As for the registration, all I heard about that was "by the way, we noticed your registration is out. Please get that taken care of". As it happens, this is why I am sitting outside the Tarrant County Tax Assessor's office.
Our story begins on just another Friday. I am driving to work at around 7am up 183 through Irving toward Dallas. Coming past the Irving Mall area, around Beltline for anyone vaguely familiar with the area, I get stuck in the far left lane behind a copper-grey compact SUV. I want to say a Hyundai Santa Fe but it could be any one of a few different "I don't know if I'm a waggon or SUV" things that Toyota pioneered with the Rav4. I am now resigned to cruising at not quite the speed limit but still faster than the next lane over.
Here is an artist rendering of where I am in traffic at this point.
As you can see, I have just come upon an opening in traffic at which I may be able to get around the not-quite-a-SUV. Realizing this I change lanes and move to pass as shown below.
As you can see in this extremely detailed image, there is a pale blue Chevy 1500 moving up quickly on my right. I recognize this as a pickup that was previously in the middle lane a few miles back. Apparently he found an opening to his right as well and is also seizing an opportunity to move up in traffic.
About this time I notice that the car that was behind me in the left lane is flashing his lights like a mad man. I find this odd, but think little of it. I then hear a long honk at the same time I see the pseudo-SUV encroach upon my driving space in the middle lane. This forces me to take evasive action.
This forces me into the right lane which is already occupied by the previously mentioned pale blue Chevy. As you can see from the lovely image above, a collision has occurred.
In my haste to avoid damaging the front end of my car, I completely forgot about the pickup I had seen only seconds before. Upon taking evasive action I was greeted by the surprise of a loud metal on metal crunching noise accompanied by a jarring to my right and the squeal of tires. The squeal I heard was both of the trucks tires on my right rear quarter-panel and of my tires on the road.
I was sideways.
I am now in a very similar situation to what the police call a PIT maneuver. They use it to spin vehicles during a pursuit in order to bring them to an abrupt end. This is bad, as you can see, there are cars in all 3 lanes behind me. If I spin, it ruins a lot of peoples days, not to mention mine.
Instinctively I turn into the skid and separate from the truck. The rear end kicks out to the right and I am now fish-tailed the opposite direction.
I go through a series of corrections and fishtails from left to right and eventually managed to get straightened out and into one lane.
At this point I know I got into the truck but am still unsure if I hit anyone else in my valiant and skillful save. I see the pickup pulling off around O'Connor in my mirror, and I look to see what the NQASUV is going to do. Apparently he's going to keep going. As the initial shock of what just happened wears off, I realize I need to pull off and see if I can get in contact with the driver of the truck. I manage to get off the highway about 1/2 a mile before the Carl road exit and wait for the pickup to show up.
after about 3-4 minutes of waiting, watching cars go by and surveying the damage I call the police to see if anyone else has called in. I explain my situation to a nonplussed dispatcher and tell her that if they want to send an officer I can meet them at the McDonald's at Carl road.
Here is a picture I took of the damage while waiting.
About this point I realized my registration had expired and fully anticipate the ticket I will be shortly receiving. I was greeted by 3 officers in 2 cars about 10 minutes later. I told them my story, they read it back, I corrected them. This happened about 3 times, I assume that this is a police trick to make sure that they have an accurate story.
One officer, who didn't seem to want to be involved in such a minor issue decided he was going to go look for the truck. The other two, who seemed much more friendly complemented and thanked me for not loosing control and saving them a lot of paperwork. That is why I am an awesome driver.
The other driver? Who knows, the police never received a call. The only other call they got was from a witness, presumably the car that was behind me that was flashing and honking. They think it was probably someone who was driving without insurance (or without a green card). Either way, if he doesn't report it I won't so it doesn't go on my record, doesn't go on my insurance saves the cops a few hours of paperwork and I just have to live with this.
As for the registration, all I heard about that was "by the way, we noticed your registration is out. Please get that taken care of". As it happens, this is why I am sitting outside the Tarrant County Tax Assessor's office.
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