(Late) Friday Notebook

My keys: An ever-popular household line: Have you seen my keys? No — seriously. I haven’t seen them since about Tuesday. I missed an appointment — a casual one, on Thursday — because I was stuck at home searching for them. So far, the usual thing — finding them in some obvious place that I never thought to look — has not happened and they remain MIA. So if you see them. …

Peet’s: I first went to Peet’s Coffee, the original store up at Walnut and Vine, in the late ’70s. The first time I really remember being there was when I was working as a construction laborer in early 1979. One day it rained and we couldn’t work — I think we were in the middle of digging a garage foundation by hand, since it was on a steep slope — and the carpenters on the crew said we ought to go to Peet’s. We hung out for awhile, mostly under the eaves out on the sidewalk, with about a dozen other people. It was chilly and wet, but it didn’t seem so bad because the coffee was so … well, it was really like a drug. I went home after two cups, and I probably didn’t sit down for the rest of the day. The foregoing reminiscence is prompted by the news, passed on by KTVU this evening, that Alfred Peet, the guy who really is responsible for both Peet’s and Starbuck’s, has died. He was a true coffee visionary, though uninterested in a commercial empire, and a first-rate drug pusher. (“Coffee Pioneer Alfred Peet dies,” San Francisco Chronicle.)

Poem:After Reading T’ao Ch’ing, I wander Untethered Through the Short Grass,” by Charles Wright (from The Writer’s Almanac).

And last: The Bay Bridge is closed tonight. Closed, completely. For four days. As part of the generations-long project to make the bridge seismically sound, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans, not Caldot) has shut it down for the holiday weekend. That’s all the time it needs to demolish a section of the bridge on the Oakland side of the Yerba Buena Tunnel and slide in a pre-built piece to replace it. The last time the bridge was closed so long: 1989, from October 17 to November 17, after the Loma Prieta Earthquake lifted up the east end of the bridge and let it drop, causing a section to collapse. That was a generation ago, and we have a ways to go before the bridge rehab and rebuild is complete.

Oh, and give me a holler if you see those keys.

Finally: A Clean Tour

By way of Pete:

Non-Doping Cyclists Finish Tour De France

The Onion

Non-Doping Cyclists Finish Tour De France

PARIS—A small but enthusiastic crowd of several dozen was on hand at the Tour de France’s finish line on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées Tuesday to applaud the efforts of the 28 cyclists who completed the grueling 20-stage, 2,208.3-mile…

Um, ’nuff said.

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Landis Verdict: ‘By End of September’

This from ESPN.com, by way of (the most excellent) Rant Your Head Off:

Memo: Panel plans to reach Landis ruling by end of September

“A decision in the Floyd Landis doping case will almost certainly come by the end of September, according to a memo written by the chairman of the three-man arbitration panel and sent to parties in the case.

“In the memo, obtained by ESPN.com Thursday, panel chairman Patrice Brunet, a Montreal lawyer, told lawyers for both sides that the arbitrators plan to hold the last of their meetings with their own scientific expert, Dr. Francesco Botre, on Sept. 12. Botre, the director of the World Anti-Doping Agency-accredited lab in Rome, Italy, attended the entire hearing in order to collect information and present his opinions privately to the panel.”

Rant and his commenters try to read the tea leaves about what this news means. For me, looking at the guilty-until-proven-innocent nature of the proceedings — against Landis and everyone else — it’s hard to imagine the anti-doping system will deliver a verdict that will raise doubts about its own efficacy. In other words, Floyd, his reputation and career are toast. However, surprises are always welcome.

Speaking of the system and its penchant for rough-and-ready justiice, Rant Your Head Off also has an iinteresting item on Michael Rasmussen’s case. Remember, Rasmussen was thrown out of the Tour and fired from his team because of allegations he lied about his whereabouts in June to avoid random doping tests. But now a Danish paper is reporting there’s evidence that Rasmussen did indeed inform cycling officials of his whereabouts on one of the disputed dates.

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The Vuelta

Um — let’s be honest here: I’ve never really followed the Vuelta a Espana, the last of this year’s grand tours. The reason is simple: The Tour de France has become so popular it’s practically right on our doorstep; the reason for that being, of course, it’s the grandest of the grand tours and, more important, Americans have put their stamp on it over the past 20-some years. (The Giro d’Italia is also something of a mystery to me. It’s not easily accessible on TV and I guess I’ve never been that motivated to go find stuff on it).

Anyway, the Vuelta starts Saturday. As one news story notes, the race is in the same fix as the Tour and Giro in that it starts with no defending champion. Last year’s winner, Alexander Vinokourov, is currently out of racing after being accused of taking illegal blood transfusions during the Tour in July. (But don’t worry! Another story says that the Vuelta will be run under strict new doping controls. If true, that ought to make the race entertaining in an unintended way as we wait for daily news about the latest chemical infractions.)

Anyway: For the sake of world peace, the future of democracy, and a defensible posterity, let’s all hope for a clean race. And if you want to heighten your rooting interest, here’s a placeVelogames — where you can put together your own fantasy Vuelta team. Sounds exciting and fun, doesn ‘t it? I put together a team, and knowing my general all around knowledge, probably every single rider I’ve chosen will abandon, crash out, or get disqualified for substance abuse by the end.

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‘The Outcast’

The Outcast” – New York Times

When Kate and I were on our across-America drive a couple weeks back, we stopped to visit her Pennsylvania relatives near Harrisburg and Philadelphia. Knowing that I’m interested in cycling, folks asked me at both stops what I thought of the whole Floyd Landis affair; the interest wasn’t just polite, but neither was it driven by a passion for bike racing. Instead. people wanted to know what I thought because they have friends or coworkers who are Landis relatives (it’s a big clan). My opinion is as it was a year ago: I find it unfathomable that the guy would have cheated the way he is suspected of doing. Anyway, while I’m opining, The New York Times sports magazine, Play, has published a pretty good piece on Floyd a year after his fall. A cycling friend of mine sums up the story in a word: “depressing.”

Meantime, we have the continuing saga of one of Landis’s chief persecutors — no other word really suffices at this point — Greg Lemond. He continues shooting his mouth off to whoever will listen — most recently, to an audience in Colorado — about how wrong Landis is to continue to deny guilt and to cast dark hints at who else in the pro ranks is doping. The one question I’d like to hear Lemond answer at length is how, if all the top riders are implicated in cheating, how he himself can be above suspicion.

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Reinventing the (front) wheel | CNET News.com

Reinventing the (front) wheel | CNET News.com:

A piece on an “all-wheel drive” system for motorcycles — and bicycles. I remember seeing this several years ago, marketed for a special Jeep mountain bike sold in conjunction with the company’s cars. The bike seemed like a nightmare — heavy and clunky. But what do I know? The CNET article from a couple days ago gives a pretty good account of how the thing works. If I were into motorcycles, and had a pile of dough lying around, I’d be tempted to try it.

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New Blog?

Once, way back in the first half of the ’90s, when the World Wide Web was really a new thing, I was asked to participate in a conference for science journalists. My expertise derived from being a newspaper editor and from my early dabbling in online stuff, and believe me, it was only dabbling. I was on a panel with a couple other editor types, and the subject was the impact and promise of the Web for journalists and journalism, or something like that. A question came up about whether the Web would give individuals the ability to follow their own paths — to become self-publishers. I was not and am not a seer, but I said it was undoubtedly true that the Web would create such opportunities. I wasn’t sure that would make anybody a living, much less make them wealthy. After all, I said, the world has never been short of opportunities to get poor doing something you love. It’s just that sort of entrepreneurial acumen and spirit that has built my current publishing empire.

Now: I’m sure those of you who read regularly have noticed that I sometimes ride a bike and sometimes blog about bike-related matters. I’ve thought about doing a new blog or site devoted to all this cycling stuff I do and pay attention to, and to try to make it something that goes well beyond what I’ve done already. Maybe do some product reviews and book reviews. Try to track the most important news of the day. Include fitness and nutrition news. Offer a full gamut of riding advice, from what to do in traffic to what are the best cross-country tour routes. Try to involve some other people, at least as occasional contributors, and make the whole thing both down to earth and written with voice and humor. Oh — and it would be commercial, to some extent: I’d take ads and look for other ethical money-making opportunities.

One issue, writing down these general ideas, is that I know at least one other site doing this kind of thing: RoadBikeRider.com. It’s done by a really veteran crew from Bicycling magazine once upon a time. There are probably others out there that people might now and could point me to. The point about that is that, in the language of startups, one needs to have some points of differentiation with such potential competitors. “Being better” is not a differentiator, because that’s what everyone sets out to be. “Being free” might be, if you can really pull that off (RoadBikeRider, for instance, uses its weekly newsletter as its come-on to pay for membership; all the good stuff is available only to paying customers).

Not to get too far ahead of myself, though: Today what I can easily do is set up a blog (a very crude beginning effort is here); yeah, the name — re: Cycling — needs work. On the Bike? I haven’t come up with anything snappy, and Bikezilla is taken. I can set up a Google ad account. I can begin thinking through the basics of plans for business and content. What I’d find really helpful, though, is any feedback and ideas people have on useful or attractive features.

Rasmussen: He’s (Nearly Back)

BBC SPORT: Rasmussen hopeful of fresh start.

A month after he had the Tour de France yellow jersey torn off his back — they should have had a ceremony, like the one with Chuck Connors at the beginning of “Branded” — Michael Rasmussen might sign on with another team and race again this year. One can only imagine the hand-wringing from the anti-doping people about this blackguard being allowed to ride a bike again. In other news, another cycling entity disgraced during the Tour, Alexander Vinokourov’s Astana team, is also getting ready to race again.

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Testosterone: A Mood Enhancer for Landis?

A squib from the Scientific American on the still-unresolved Floyd Landis case. As the world of cycling knows, Landis’s blood test results the day of his astounding Tour-winning stage last year showed high levels of testosterone. The reader question that Scientific American puts to its expert, Michael Bahrke, is one that most people have thought about: Could a dose of testosterone produce such “an immediate and profound” effect as the one from which Landis may have benefited?

Bahrke largely discounts the immediate physical benefits of testosterone, but then he raises another possibility: “…It is feasible that the improved performance could have come as a result of a shift in mood level.”

Read Bahrke’s entire answer here: http://www.sciam.com/askexpert_question.cfm?articleID=84EC9327-E7F2-99DF-3275ED1BD923D659&ref=rss

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PBP: The Finish

Friend and fellow East Bay rider Rob Hawks has posted a nice bunch of pictures from PBP. Especially good: His pictures from the finish. The best in the entire series is the last one, which shows another local rider, Veronica Tunucci, signing in at 89 hours and 58 minutes — two minutes before the cutoff. The look on her face says everything. Rob’s photo gallery is here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/rob.hawks/ParisBrestParis