Saturday Roundup

News
The Marion Daily Republican reports that Rob Landes is riding across the country on a BMC bike in honor of his mother who has MS. He feels that since his family originally comes from Pennsylvania he might be related to another more famous cycling "Landis" with a slightly different spelling but with the same dogged determination and spirit.

Blogs
Mental Doughnuts had dinner with Floyd Landis last Saturday night, and enjoyed the opportunity to just chill with the Tour de France champion.

Iowa Bike Coalition tells us that Chris Fortune introduced Floyd Landis to the National Bike Summit where he spoke briefly and then took some questions:

We had a surprise visitor for lunch. Chris Fortune from Saris Bicycle Group presented about bicycle advocacy. At the conclusion of his presentation, he talked about how good it was to work with Floyd Landis (the 2006 Tour de France). Chris said that they were lucky to have Floyd attend. Then he said we are lucky because Floyd is here right now. And out walks Floyd from behind the stage.

Floyd got up on stage and said hi and talked about how happy he is with the work that we are doing. He even opened up the floor for questions. Very nice guy and enjoyed being at the Summit. What a thrill.

Little Ryan Cade Hutton knows that the Phonak jersey Daddy had signed by Floyd Landis will fit, someday!

Rant looks at the chemistry of the Landis case and discusses whether a real positive was actually found and under WADA's own rules if the positive for the A sample should have been thrown out in the first place:

The most interesting part is that WADA protocols require confirmation testing in triplicate. On close inspection of the A sample documentation, one can see that this didn’t happen. This is yet another reason the A sample test cannot be considered a positive test.

Shelby has come up with some new adages that she feels will make our day, one of them might make "snark of the day".

CapitalistImperialistPig writes mainly of Lance Armstrong after seeing him on Colbert, and reading "Lance Armstrong's War" and comes to the conclusion that Armstrong might have doped because he rode with known cheaters like Floyd Landis. Put this one down for a "snark of the day" nomination as well.

le grimpeur gives some interesting suggestions to amateur riders about climbs they might want to attempt in France, and provides a very fond memory with one route for not only myself but also I suspect for Floyd Landis:

You might have seen Lance talking to me on that last climb. He's telling me what to do - for him, sitting on my wheel, it's obviously not as hard, so I just have to listen to him because some guys can attack and some can't. He was telling me to keep the pace steady and maintain the pace you can go at. Then he would tell me 'this guys dropped' or 'that guys dropped'. Finally at the top of the final col, as we went under the KOM, Lance said to me, 'Do you want to win the stage?' and then he said, 'If you want to win the stage, go now. Just go on the downhill and they probably won't chase you, they have no reason to chase you', but Ullrich and Kloden were having none of it and brought me back. Then at the end I tried again with a kilometer and a half to go, but they got me again so I just kept going as hard as I could to keep Kloden close. I figured Lance would sprint and I didn't know it was going to be that close. That was something to see! Lance won three stages in a row and they were all different. But he was generous enough to offer me the opportunity to win the stage;

Carlton Reid thinks that it may be just the right time to stir up interest in his Floyd Landis petition again. Velogal chimes in and says "let's double the signatures!"

Valkyrie gives us a bit more than she gave us the other day on the National Bike Summit at which Floyd Landis was a speaker. But, still no details on his speech!

Oh, and look out for slippery conditions on I-81! TBV will attest to the treachery of that road, having done a 360 ending up in the median on an icy Easter weekend in 1977, in my case near Great Bend PA, and lucky enough to drive away. There were reasons for moving to California.

Forums
At DPF, You3 starts a new thread about some unintended ion leakage in the GC/MS, suggesting improper operation. This looks like an important technical thread about a new topic.

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