tonight i called my brother. he sounded out of it. i asked if he had just woken up from a nap and he replied, “tss! no, motherfucker, i’m watching shark week!”

i get it. for some, it’s the best week of the year. surprised that he’s still so into it since he started surfing.

there’s an easy way to tell dave and i apart — he’s the fat one.

or something is rotten in the state of denmark. word up.

the chicken (above, in mid-flight) has flown the coop. ©afp

how many dudes wearing the yellow jersey get fired five days before they ride down the champs elysees being cheered on by enormous crowds? you’d think it impossible but you’d be wrong. today danish mountain goat michael rasmussen got sacked.

from velonews:
“He broke team rules,” explained Rabobank spokesman Jacob Bergsma, who said team officials believed Rasmussen had lied to them regarding his whereabouts in June of this year, when UCI and Danish Cycling Federation officials had been unable to locate the rider for out-of-competition [drug] testing.

Bergsma said the team officials learned that when Rasmussen had said he was in Mexico - where his wife lives - he had actually been in Italy, working with an as-of-yet-unnamed doctor.

Late last week, Danish federation officials announced that Rasmussen had been ejected from that country’s national squad and would not be representing Denmark at the world championships or at next year’s Olympic Games.

To add insult to injury, Rasmussen was also forced to fend off charges that he had attempted to trick a friend into transporting a cutting-edge hemoglobin replacement from the U.S. to Italy in 2002.

from jay:
asshole.

from velonews:
“Double stage Alexandre Vinokourov (Astana) learned Tuesday that he had tested positive for homologous blood doping following his victory in Saturday’s individual time trial.

Vinokourov and his Astana team have reportedly withdrawn from the Tour.”

asshole.

a dude had a cardboard sign that read:
will take verbal abuse for change or cigs.

he was near the spot where another guy has a sign that reads:
i will do 20 pushups for $1. 100 for $4.

i know who has stronger arms and back but i wonder who makes more money.

just kidding.

that said, if i did smoke, i’d own this cigarette dispensing donkey. the cigarettes come out of its butt.

it’s making the rounds at work today. amazon humor.

we surfed and camped out in westport this past weekend. surfing is more addictive than anything i’ve done in a long time. more addictive than yoga. only slightly less addictive than very-long-distance running. i bought a wetsuit. soon i’ll have a surfboard, though the lack of space in this apartment is delaying that purchase. hopefully we’ll have a surf rental out there at some point because camping in the rain is less fun than camping in the not rain.

we surfed twice on saturday, once in the morning for a few hours and then again near sunset. i got drilled as much as i got up, but the ratio of ‘up : drilled’ is definitely improving. the rain and the mushy waves stopped us from surfing on sunday morning so we packed it in and came back to seattle.

mia surfed in the morning and then took cool photos in the afternoon.

i thought the whole borat being from kazakhstan was funny because one of the illest cyclists, alexander vinokurov, is also from there. many people favor vinokurov to win this year’s tour de france.

i don’t read a ton of cycling coverage anymore (mostly because the doping allegations depress me), so i’m not sure how many borat/vinokurov jokes were made prior to the tour. probably a lot of them. this, however, must be the best of all of them. and yes, borat is holding up vinokurov’s jersey.

© AFP Photo

currently disgraced 2006 tour de france winner floyd landis came to speak yesterday at amazon. he was as funny and disarming as he normally is in interviews. there was a raffle for copies of his new book, and i won one. he signed it.

i say that he’s currently disgraced because of a positive test for testosterone. his arbitration has been progressing slowly, as most doping cases do, so he’s not racing this year. when he tested positive last year, i was pretty bummed. i like cycling and really like floyd, but with all the riders who have been implicated in doping, it’s hard to get completely engaged in it anymore.

anyway, before yesterday i thought that floyd did it but now i think he didn’t. i’m both jaded and trusting and am incredibly easy to convince of things (which is something i don’t particularly like about myself, but changing it means becoming someone who is skeptical of everything and there is nothing more boring than dealing with people who don’t trust anyone. between being boring and being easily swayed, i’ll take flip-flopping).

when floyd signed my book yesterday, i wished him luck with his case. with any luck, he’ll be pissing all over france again next year.

photo by graham watson

we went surfing on the 4th of july. it ruled. surfing is more fun than i realized. “it’s kind of ridiculous how much fun this is,” i was thinking to myself the split second before my board somehow went careening into my thigh, giving me the worst charlie horse of my life, a lump that changed the topography of my leg for about four days, and a bruise that refuses to not be purple.

for a time i thought that i broke my femur. and then when i realized i hadn’t, i reckoned that if this is the pain that happens when i don’t break my femur, i don’t want to feel what actually breaking it feels like.

of course, the photo:

take that, collins.

my parents are out visiting us for three weeks. we’re long past the 2/3 mark and they’ll be leaving on tuesday. it’s going quite well, thank you for asking. they are apartment-sitting for one of my coworkers and today some piece of hardware fell off a door or something in the apartment. my dad, ever the handyman, told me that he wanted to fix it. i said i’d loan him some screws and a screwdriver (apple, not far from the tree).

as we were wrapping up dinner tonight, we were talking about supplies needed to fix the door and my mother looked at me and inquired, “do you have long screws in your apartment?”

silence.

she’s usually good for about one of these comments per trip and this one was a gem.