Count out Floyd

So for all those bicycle racing fans pining away for the anchoring of their sport's credibility here in the US o' A, Floyd Landis is your Shoeless Joe Jackson. Except that he's guilty. Or wait - we're all programmed to cart out that whole "innocent until proven guilty" chestnut at times like this. That's so pre-9/11. Bottom line for Floyd Landis (who's name I've found is most delightful when pronounced employing the style used by that "are you ready to rumble" fight annoucer cheeseball) - if the Tour's test comes back as a positive for synthetic testosterone, he loses this year's Title and can't race for two whole years. A frickin' death sentence in the sport. Yikes. If you care, find a Mennonite church and lay, ah, what do I know...a corn husk good voodoo doll. Because that's about the best anyone can do for the poor bastard at the moment.

While most of the country swelters, Seattle's been putting on its best face these last few days. Sorry 'bout that. Cool at night, cloudy in the morning, clearish later in the day. Highs in the 70s. But don't come out here. I'm obligated by membership in the dark forces of exclusivist liberalism to say that it rains all the time out here. Probably not your sort of place. Even though I'm enjoying a perfectly lovely early afternoon out front of the original Caffe Ladro on Queen Anne where I hung (or done hanged) my hat for years while I lived in the neighborhood in the 90s. We like our new place up north - call the neighborhood Blue Ridge if you know of such things. North of Ballard. We've got a great park just up the street (Carkeek Park - or " Carkeek Parkeek" as I prefer) that we never knew about. It's unbelievably raw while nonetheless fully traversed by some great trails. It feels more like the Olympic Peninsula than any park in Seattle that I ever knew. Running along the trails rocks. We can't take along our beloved BOB jogging stroller for Maya since I ran it over with the Volvo. Damn thing was taunting me. In my defense - I actually "backed" over it. Not realizing it was back there. But let that be a lesson to all the kids out there that I know tune in for my safety tips and general humankind user's (or humankind's user) manual pithiness. Please, never, ever back up. Think like that hypothetical shark somebody mentioned recently in either a movie or on the internets or was it the Discovery Channel so we're supposed to take it as one of nature's truisms. If you stop moving forward and you're a shark, you die. Oh, and stay in school.

Hope your own paths today include entirely avoidable obstacles. Rock on.