Thanks to everyone for the kind words on my last post. I’m sure I’ll get through this, and somehow be better for it. At least I have some friends coming to town this week to take take my mind off fractures.

I heard a rumor that on Sunday channel 7 news used a stock clip of me from last fall, where I was ducking under caution tape to keep running past a land slide on the bike trail. My sister saw it, and told me, but didn’t have her Tivo running. I remember the camera crew, they were filming around Thanksgiving.

Also, I heard the last issue of Northwest Runner Magazine had an article with a picture of me titled something to the effect of “Can really expensive gear make you as fast as Ben Collins?” This issue, unfortunately, was no longer available when I heard about it.

Needless rules deeply disturb me on an intellectual level. I believe that rules and laws should serve a clear purpose. Our laws should protect the greater good of society, and not be in place to micromanage the ethics and behavior of individuals. For instance, I don’t believe that driving without a seat belt endangers anyone besides the driver, so why do we spend millions on “click it or ticket” campaigns?

Here’s another example I just came across, which is the real focus of this post. According to their website, “The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is the international independent organization created in 1999 to promote, coordinate, and monitor the fight against doping in sport in all its forms.” To clarify, “doping” is defined by Webster’s English Dictionary as, “the use of a substance (as an anabolic steroid or erythropoietin) or technique (as blood doping) to illegally improve athletic performance”. WADA’s mission is a good thing. We want everyone in sport to have an equal opportunity to compete, and setting rules for what methods and substances are allowed is vital to the goal of fair competition. Please take note of the word “improve” in the above definition, and let’s move on.

I was just placed in the random testing pool for out-of-competition testing, and in order to register I needed to complete a tutorial focusing on the methods and procedures of the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA, which is the US organization created to enforce the rules of WADA). The tutorial consisted of about 45 slides, each with an accompanying video featuring real athletes talking about the topic at hand.

In those 45 slides there is only ONE substance that is given a slide and video of its own. That substance is Marijuana. This information (which you can see here) basically says Marijuana is bad for you and can stay in your system for a long time. What I find offensive is the final point: “There are a number of negative health and performance consequences associated with using marijuana.” NEGATIVE? Then why is it banned, and why are we (the International and US Olympic committees who fund WADA and USADA) spending money testing for it? How does this fall under the mission of the World Anti-Doping Agency? I don’t use any drugs, so I never have to worry about a positive test, but I absolutely do worry that Olympic sports are wasting money testing for a substance which is described (by the testing agency itself) as having negative performance consequences. That rule is not promoting the greater good, but simply pushing morals. I’m not condoning the use of marijuana, it is illegal in the US after all, but it is the job of the police to regulate its use, not WADA or USADA. By placing substances on the banned list which are not doping agents (performance enhancing) our sports must deal with the possibility of unnecessary positive tests from athletes who are not actually doping, and that harms the reputation of Olympic sports through negative publicity.

Furthermore, why don’t the real threats to fair play have more focus in the tutorial? Why don’t EPO, Steroids or blood doping have slides? Honestly, this makes me question the ethics, reliability and intelligence of the people we are depending on to maintain the integrity of our sports.

White Necks are the most dangerous people in the world. Everyone who has tried cycling knows the dangers of red necks on the road with their jacked up pickup trucks and tires that tower over you head. They try their best to scare the poop out of you when they come by on the highway, and will honk and yell things (i.e. “get off the road”, “nice ass”, or “WOOOOWEEEE”) out their open window. Luckily, those giant tires warn us from 5 kilometers away that they’re coming, and the drivers are actually paying such close attention to us that, while obnoxious, they’re far safer in their actions than the citified, wannabe civilized, overstressed, under-slept, all-organic idiots you find in any urban area of America. I’m referring to what I call “White Necks”. It includes the lawyers, doctors, soccer mom’s, and all types of business people who seem to think that their hurry gives them rights over the highway, and permission to risk the lives of everyone around them so they can get to their next appointment. The White Necks pose a significant threat to my life, and are the reason I feel very uneasy riding through places like Bellevue, Washington and  Miami, Florida.

These rolling threats to my life truly seem to believe that the road belongs to them. To the white neck “Share the Road” signs are in place to warn cyclists to stay away from Range Rovers.  They worry that their kid will be the last one waiting at the baseball field if they don’t break a few laws to go faster, or that the 10 seconds it might take to slow down and pass safely will cascade into a day so bad that, by calculated risk, my life is a fair gamble.

As a cyclist, the threat of the white neck is far greater than their rural counterparts. Sure, if they notice you they may honk as they go by, or give a dirty look, but most of the time these overbooked suburbanites don’t even know you’re there. Plus, you can’t hear a BMW until it’s close enough to kill you, and the text-messaging trophy wife may never even know she hit you. She’ll arrive home and think the scratch on her passenger door is from that suspicious Honda Civic with a bike rack on top that parked next to her at Whole Foods.

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In an effort to guide my posts into a more rhythmic pattern of literary excellence, I’ve decided to commit myself to writing a weekly post within each of certain themes. I’m shooting for three weekly columns (so I still have room for my random thoughts in case something particularly random and thoughtful occurs). My first category: Pet Peeves. I have plenty of them, and it opens the door to a satirical look at my surrounding and things I find particularly annoying.