What am I to do? Blogger is down for planned maintenance from 4:30pm to 5:30pm. That’s awesome dudes, but it’s friggin 12:23pm over on the West Sy-eede as I type this. Why are you down? How I am to report to people the continued dominance of Nico Eeckhout (and check out who took third again – to think some people would replace “Aa” with “Ã….” Fools.) Who will clear the good name of Fabrizio Guidi? of And who will convey the long-awaited results of Memorial Cimurri Gran Premio Bioera with my hands so horribly tied? People will have to go without or (far worse) look things up on their own.
Well, you might miss out on the race news without me here, but you’ll have no trouble finding your way to Interbike. I realize that final link really makes the first two superfluous, but I did that for a reason. Many of you may wonder why I rail on VeloNews so hard. Well, click that first link and scroll down to the bit about FSA bearings. Though FSA does sponsor CSC and has done so for many years, the team’s wheel sponsor is Zipp. Where were these ceramic bearings on Bjarne Riis’ team bikes? The headset? The BB? You’ll have a hard time convincing me that bearings anywhere but the hubs are gonna save me “a second every 3-5 kilometers.” That’s just half-assed reporting. And that second link? Sure, Orbea makes some pretty and (IMHO) damned fine machines, but with lord-knows-how many manufacturers at Interbike, you did an entire report on one of them? That doesn’t make me think “wow, great coverage,” it makes me think “wow, Orbea gave you a crapload of money.” Now you know why Cyclocosm has no ads. I suppose it could be worse, though. ProCycling hasn’t updated its page in a week.
Finally, today, a note on humps. Jered Gruber, who writes the Euro Trash column over at Pez, left a comment on this post about how Saul Raisin’s hump is not a Camelbak (as I reported here) but in fact an honest-to-goodness hump. After some research, it seems that the hump has a long history in cycling, perhaps most famously on the back of Tony Rominger. It’s on at least one other famous back as well, although it’s apparently a bad thing (scroll down), unprofessionally diagnosed as spondylolysis. Lance has apparently made an attempt to reduce it, but it’s also apparently aero’, as this photo of young Mr. Raisin seems to confirm (note the perfect alignment of hump top and helmet tail). Whether his hump is of the same descent as Armstrong’s is unclear, but you can’t blame me for getting it confused with a hydration pack.
