I have not blogged since August 17th. I hate it, but that is just how things are. There is just no time. I feel I am living in a constant state of being incomplete. My house is in disarray. My yard looks like a jungle. My pile of papers that need to be graded is about a foot tall. My ankle is rolled and sprained. I pulled my groin running a mere 50 yards. My car is dirty and covered with some sort of sap. My garden is dying and full of weeds. I could go on, but I don't think I need to. And the sad part about all of it is that I love having everything done. It brings me great comfort to leave a clean house, wearing clean clothes, riding in a clean car, going to a place where all things are prepared and ready to be either handed out or presented, and then coming home to a place where my list of things that need to be done isn't as long as the Continental Divide. I won't pretend that I have ever had all of this, but there have been times in the not so distant past that I had it pretty close. And also know, that I won't for a second pretend that it was all me. I am attached to a much better 3/4 who carries so much for me and does it all with a smile and more grace than I have ever seen.
When I look around me, I realize that for the time being, I can't change much about my current situation and don't much want to after holding a newborn the other day and quickly wondering where that time went with Ford and realizing it vanished faster than smoke on a windy day. I would rather have this little boy of mine sleep on my chest after a long, hard day at work than do or have most anything. But...I do want to keep up this blog. So, once again, I will pledge before the ever-loyal readers of HTH that I will attempt to set my little fingers to the keys and try to churn out a few posts here and there. I hope they are worth reading. I hope they are interesting. I hope they find you well. And there is no easier place to begin than with a little post about something in the mainstream news that I am trying to make sense of. Here is my little take on the hurricane of a storm surrounding Lance Armstrong. Hope you enjoy and that you will be on the lookout again next week or so for another fresh post. We will do our best.
And so we begin anew.....again....
I wasn't going to give ole' Livestrong a place on HTH, but it has gotten to a point that I feel I need to comment on it. Mr. Armstrong doesn't need to be defended and isn't exactly the kind of person we like to hang around, but what is currently happening to him is just not right. I say this because he left his wife who stayed with him when he was dying of cancer. He has had a whole string of questionable girlfriends. He is arrogant. He is prideful. He gives God no credit for his life free from cancer. He is a professional jerk or that is at least how he portrays himself in interviews, but that is neither here nor there for me in the midst all of this.
If you have been asleep while walking the planet as of late, I will summarize the situation. Lance Armstrong is a cyclist. He won the hardest cycling event in the world a record 7 times: The Tour de France. Le' Tour is a 2500 mile cycling race. The first time he won was in 1999. 1999 was the first time he got taken to court over doping allegations because no American could actually win a European cycling event and be clean, right? He won again in 2000 and again got taken to court. Flash forward to 2012, Mr. Armstrong is still fighting in court over the same charges. Every year, a new case is brought against him. He goes to court. The case gets thrown out for lack of evidence or for some other silly reason. Two months ago, Lance Armstrong got his name cleared from the FDA case against him and two weeks later the USADA (United State Anti-Doping Agency) brought another case against him. He said he wasn't going to fight any longer. He had wasted his time, efforts, and money defending his name and having his name drug (no pun intended) through the mud, having lies told about him, etc. for 13 years. The media and the USADA said this means he is guilty and they declared him guilty, they banned him from any athletic competition, and declared all his results to be void, and said that he was to have his 7 TdF titles taken away from him. The only problems with this and the only reason I am defending him is that A) the USADA's case of him is based on anecdotal evidence from the like's of Floyd Landis who had his TdF title removed from him because he failed a drug test and Tyler Hamilton who had his Olympic gold medal taken away for the same reason, B) it never went to a court of law, C) the USADA doesn't have the power to strip him of his titles. Only the UCI (the International Cycling Union) does, D) Armstrong took part in over 500 drug tests and never failed one, E) And lastly, the USADA has yet to even show anyone the "evidence" they have against Armstrong, but they and the media have declared him guilty. So guilty, that the Chicago Marathon denied him entry into their race based solely on a verdict passed down from a group and not a judge.
I am defending him because the only place where he has been found guilty is in the court of public opinion. And that is scary to me. Truth has become perception. He passed the drug tests. He overcame court case after court case. He has never been found guilty by any court of law. The USADA has yet to present anything real except simply saying they have "numerous alleged violations" and as many as "10" people who are going to testify against him. And even if he is guilty, neither the USADA or the UCI can award those seven titles to anyone because each year he won, the rider who came in second place has been found guilty of doping by failing a drug test. The same drug tests that Armstrong passed, but the media and the USADA have ignored. And lastly,
and today September 22nd as reported by ESPN.com
"UCI assumes that USADA have the file, the full file, as they've already made a decision based on it and therefore it's difficult to understand why it hasn't arrived yet," McQuaid said from the Road Cycling World Championships in the southern Netherlands.
I am defending him because the only place where he has been found guilty is in the court of public opinion. And that is scary to me. Truth has become perception. He passed the drug tests. He overcame court case after court case. He has never been found guilty by any court of law. The USADA has yet to present anything real except simply saying they have "numerous alleged violations" and as many as "10" people who are going to testify against him. And even if he is guilty, neither the USADA or the UCI can award those seven titles to anyone because each year he won, the rider who came in second place has been found guilty of doping by failing a drug test. The same drug tests that Armstrong passed, but the media and the USADA have ignored. And lastly,
and today September 22nd as reported by ESPN.com
"UCI assumes that USADA have the file, the full file, as they've already made a decision based on it and therefore it's difficult to understand why it hasn't arrived yet," McQuaid said from the Road Cycling World Championships in the southern Netherlands.
And there you have it ladies and gentlemen....a piece of something I don't really understand. A huge decision against one of the greatest cyclists of all time (a sentiment I will hold to be true until someone actually proves this to be incorrect) based on evidence that no one has seen and upon the word of two cheaters. I know there are two or three sides to every story, but I'd like to see and hear the other side (s) before I discredit greatness. I find two things very fearful in this story and that is that we humans have become so cynical of great things that we smell the rat before it ever shows its head and the second is that we are sacrificing hero after hero in an effort to be "honest" before we ever see a shade of the truth.
Happy reading and hope you can help me understand the world around me. Thanks for reading.
David
