On The Facts and The Rules

Yes I went for another bike ride yesterday, it was another beautiful 80km. I love the warm weather, too bad its supposed to snow a ton this evening, but let's face it is February 22, it is not like a major snowfall is unusual this time of year.

The drivers, oh god, one parked on the wrong side of the road, drove diagonally across the yellow line and stopped in front of me (I was in a bike lane and it was a no stopping zone) and then started to do a U-turn as I tried to evade a collision by passing to the left of the very illegally stopped/U-turning vehicle. There was no collision, thank goodness, but there were more four letter words than I'll bet the engineers at Specialized have for the UCI.

Turns out poor Albert Contador only came in second in the Volta ao Algarve because the bike a Specialized Shiv that he, his team Astana, and the guys on Saxo-Bank all use for Individual Time Trials and Team Time Trials is not legal. The UCI came to this decision on Friday, the first ITT was yesterday (Sunday). According to Specialized officials "they have been working closely with the UCI since last year to assure that the Shiv would be compliant to UCI rules."

If I were a Specialized Engineer I'd be ready to come after some UCI officals with... well how about a blond... on a cell phone... driving an oversized black SUV... while applying makeup!... and eating!... and Sexting on her second cell phone!

One aside, some careful readers might notice a similarity to the bike Contador came in second on, that is to say his legal TT bike, and my TT bike. The similarity is not a coincidence, which is cool. The part where Contador is probably a bajillion times faster than me is how the bikes differ. :)