Guilt and the bicycle race

Until Tuesday an American named Floyd Landis was leading the Tour de France. I was trying my hardest to ignore this because it is a bicycle race.

The past seven summers I've been forced to follow Lance Armstrong and his exploits. It's not like I was waking up early in the morning and finding the Outdoor Life Network on my dial, but each day I'd dutifully check up on Armstrong's time and become worried when he wasn't enough minutes ahead of his key rivals. He always ended up winning, which was nice. But I couldn't help but feeling bullied into caring and then there was the guilt of being a wimp in the face of the Lance Armstrong hype machine.

In retrospect, I feel even worse because the more I see of Lance the more I think he is a huge jerk (as many elite athletes in individual-oriented sports are.)

Although he did have that great beating-cancer story.

The Armstrong cancer story was actually what made Floyd Landis even harder to dismiss. Armstrong might have beat full-blown cancer, but Landis has something called Osteonercrosis in his hip. This means his hip bone is dying. It extremely painful, and because of drug-testing he can't take the pain killers typically prescribed for this condition while he is racing. When he is not on his bicycle he can barely walk.

While Armstrong was an inspiration to every one who had or has had cancer, the only difference between Armstrong and the other cyclists was his missing testicle -- which should have been an advantage because the fewer testicles the better whenever a bicycle seat is involved.

Landis, on the other hand, was engaging in an athletic activity with only one good hip. Osteonercrosis was what forced the great athletic know-it-all Bo Jackson to stop performing.

So why weren't people paying more attention to Landis? Why wasn't I paying more attention to Landis?

Again, the silly bicycle race had brought me guilt.

I started paying attention to Landis Tuesday. He promptly rewarded my interest by suffering one of the biggest collapses in recent tour history, falling from leader and favorite to a distant 11th. I was off the hook. No more bicycle race for me.

His collapse also proves it is much easier ride a bicycle with one ball than with one hip.

Returning a certain logic to the world.

Update 5:14. Boy did I speak too soon. Landis is on the verge of one of the bigger comebacks in tour history. Just when I thought I was out . . .