Reason #426 I’m looking forward to to Het Volk: it’s neither a ProTour event, nor owned by Grand-Tour organizers ASO, RCS or Unipublic (henceforth referred to on Cyclocosm as The Cartel), and thus provides a much needed reprieve deLaclosian squabble raging between those two camps. After months of posturing, threats and fruitless negotiation, the fact remains that no one has any clue exactly what’s going on.

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My return comes just in time to see one of the greats hang up his bike forever. Often criticized for off-season indolence and questionable tactics, Jan Ullrich’s legacy seems already cast as soft-bellied foil to his hard-nosed nemesis, Lance Armstrong. Though we at Cyclocosm regret the departure of one of our favorite pincushions, we hope that his disgraceful railroading serves to open the eyes of the anti-doping world to its excesses, particularly in Ullrich’s home country.

Yes, it’s true: I’ve been skimping on the posting lately. But it’s not my fault! You try porting 400+ posts from evil New Blogger to less evil but far more finicky WordPress. Compound those difficulties with the fact that Cyclocosm isn’t even hosted on my own webspace and that I know frick-all about SQL, then add to that the effort of coding a new CSS template and parsing the aforementioned 400+ posts into categories. And I’m stuck on my tail in a cube 40 hours a week. How does the rest of the universe find time for 4+ hour base rides?