RyanHarne.com

This entry took me 3 months to complete and was written in several phases. I’m not going to bother checking for spelling or grammatical errors, so let your internal spellchecker rev up for some hard wok. If you finish reading it all, let me know.

In 2005, I experienced my 15 minutes of fame. And it was dork fame. Kind of like Jeremiah’s Apple commercial, only not as vast in reach and certainly not as dorky. I was contacted by a writer for WIRED who expressed interest in interviewing me for a piece on Apple product packaging. The phone interview went well and I tried to sound neither like an idiot nor like an arrogant sophomore. What resulted was an article that changed my life. Ok, and maybe the article was dorkier than Jeremiah’s commercial. I really must admit that.

Following the fame, I received many emails from Mac users on campus who hadn’t met me saying, in effect, “Way to go; thanks for reppin’ VT”. My website traffic increased 2-fold and stayed there, thanks to curiosity encouraging those people to google my name. However, many people read the WIRED article and didn’t google me. One such person even wrote a blog about it.

Every so often, I end up googling my name. For instance, a search right now shows that my newly-added VAL graduate student page is in the top 10 hits. Yes, my photo is as acoustically-nerdy as possible, thank you very much. Anyways, on one of these googling occasions after The Great Fame of September 2005, I found a blog entry written by someone who loves Preston. Her words were short in analyzing the matter and they intrigued me. I quickly commented on the post as a “thank you” for the recognition, thinking nothing more about it.

On yet another time of googling the wonderful search entry “ryan harne”, I again rediscovered this post on iheartpreston.co.uk. After looking over that post again, I proceeded to browse the whole website. Lots of good writing, some enticing photos, and an About page which requested the occasional postcard to be sent, if you so wish. I think that the first time I noticed this postcard semi-request, I just ignored it, probably paying more attention to the photos.

In the summer of 2006, my approach to the postcard request changed. It was a summer spent in Blacksburg, and spent, generally, all alone. I was maxing out my summer courseload, immersing myself in studio work, and taking as many shifts at Bollo’s as was possible. It was the summer of 4-hour nights of sleep–the summer I ate my body weight in Bollo’s pastries. The summer that I was willing to take chances and live outside of the box. Like the time I randomly pulled an all-nighter in studio, even though I didn’t need to, then took a Heat Transfer test and went back to work in studio before heading to my Bollo’s shift. Like the time I dressed up in my nicest clothes, put on some Converse All Stars, grabbed my umbrella, and walked downtown at 10pm in the middle of a hurricane-induced storm just because I wanted to live a little and escape the 3rd floor apartment. Like the time I decided to send Becky Clutter a postcard.

I made the postcard myself. I used some of my scrap poster paper from studio, drawing some geometric shapes on the photo-side, and writing some cordial randomness on the script-side. I mailed it using 2 stamps because the postage had recently increased and I had to use a 2 or 1 cent stamp to match the difference.

After taking it to the post office, I didn’t think much more about it. However, I was checking my website traffic information for any mid-Georgia-located hits, hoping to use that data as proof of receipt. When I saw it–specifically, showing up as “Duluth, GA”–I took a note of the ISP information and from then on would recognize when “Duluth, GA” went to my website. That summer, when I spotted Duluth for the first time, I surely grinned and was giddy with my randomness and its results.

But, I truly had no idea what I had begun.

As that fall semester of 2006 was about to begin, I received an email from Becky Clutter asking for my new address because my blog mentioned that I had to move back onto campus as the school year started. This shocked me since I wasn’t particularly thinking of a response, having always considered my postcard as a one-way high-five. I waited for a week or so for a reply by post but nothing came.

On some random day in October, I got a postcard in my on-campus mailbox. Used to junk mail and the occasional holiday card from my loving mom, this postcard was a beam of joy. And it was from Becky Clutter. Along with a dinosaur and speech bubble, the photo-side contained the word, “hello”. It had begun.

Two-way communication. We might as well have given each other a walkie talkie tuned to a similar frequency, or an immensely long string & cans telephone system. Our postcard method, however, became a trademark communication portal.

Her postcard remained on my desk in the right corner, laying flat. Sometimes it was covered with important documents and sometimes it was exposed to my frequent glances.

Sometime after I received her postcard, I googled her name and eventually landed on a website that forever altered my enchantment of this postcard persona. 35 Unger was the street address that Becky lived at during her time at university. But it is also a website that she, her brother, and a best friend constructed to share their love of food and food experiences. The website also had a vidcast, quick documentaries regarding restaurants, baking, and anything about food. You’ll never guess who the host was.

One night, after returning from a Bollo’s shift, I was hopping around 35unger and looked through the vidcast section. I randomly selected a recent video and watched as Becky spoke of a trip to New York from the comfort of her desk chair in her office. At some point she shows some neat fruit-shaped erasers she found. She places them on the desk and the camera zooms in on the sitting objects, next to her Mac’s keyboard. As the camera pans back to resume footage of Becky speaking personally to the viewers, a great portion of her desk is visible. In while watching this zoom-out that I left up from my own audience member desk chair and paused the video.

It can’t be.

It’s blurry. Maybe it’s a bill or something work-related.

But it has 2 stamps. Two stamps.

There, against her monitor, lays my postcard. In a position that would constantly be visible as she works, continually reminding.

Is she thinking of me? What am I thinking?! We’ve never met. I should stop thinking about this, otherwise, I’ll go nuts considering the possibilities.

And I did. For several months, I thought little of it. With one caveat. Her postcard to me now had a new home, against the monitor of my own desktop Mac. Constantly visible. Always reminding.

As the winter arrived and the spring semester of 2007 began, I was back in studio more frequently and shades of that original risk-taking period, which spawned the first postcard, reappeared. I wanted to send something else. Am I actually going to go through with this? What am I trying to pull? What do I expect?

I took a piece of scrap pine wood from my parts bin and crafted it into a square with a rounded, parallelogram-like cross-section. On it, I sprayed some red spray paint. And scribbled a few words. After the application of a stamp, I assumed it would be post-able. Surely the USPS gets wooden postcards all the time? No object of terrorism here.

I remember the CLUNK it made when I dropped it inside the USPS mail bin. I don’t remember if anyone turned to look at me as I briskly walked out of the post office thinking not about the potential queer looks but about what Becky would think when she receives a wooden block. Dang it. I should have rounded the edges better. And spray paint? What was that about?! Such an idiot…

As the spring semester rolled on, I kept thinking about that wooden postcard. I never really knew that she received it because Duluth, GA already had a frequency of attendance at ryanharne.com. How could I know that she received it if the sudden appearance of Duluth was no longer a unique sign.

I think it was in this period when I first wanted Becky Clutter a little bit closer.

Towards the end of the cold spring months, I was enthralled with a Print Graphics course that I was enrolled in, so as to finish up the Industrial Design minor. I would spend long nights in the studio making expensive creations utilizing my greatest of care and patience. At some point, I decided to stop wasting the excess paint from that evening’s activities and, instead, began making mini-prints with the materials. Some of them ended up as postcards to friends. It was tough resisting the desire to send something towards Georgia.

One evening, I decided to push my luck. My mini-print would be for Becky Clutter. And I would mail it to her. She hadn’t yet responded to my ridiculous wooden postcard, so this might seem out of place, too forward.

I decided to do it. The effort spent in crafting the postcard was clearly more focused than for the major print of that evening. The postcard must be perfect. And it must contain and intersection. The postcard shows 2 white lines intersecting with a blast of color.

I was contemplative when I put that postcard into the mail. No longer was my mailing centered around being random. This was targeted. Clearly aimed at maintaining communication with her.

Unfortunately, not long after that postcard was mailed, the shootings at Virginia Tech took place on a Monday morning, April 16, 2007. The full events of that day are documented elsewhere within this website but I was eventually able to return to my place and instinctively checked my email. I had been fielding calls during most of the morning from my family and email seemed like the next thing I should utilize to inform people who might not be able to call me that I was alright.

One of the first people to email me that day was Becky, very simply asking if I was ok because she had just walked past a tv in the break room at work. I replied back to her email once I had some words to say—the events of that morning having left me speechless for weeks after it took place.

Another email from her that night encouraged me to call or IM if I needed someone to talk to. Since I don’t have the records of my iChat conversations on this computer, I can’t say for sure, but I believe that I did briefly IM her at some point not long after the shootings. Making nothing more than small conversation to get my mind off of my environmental stigmas that still lingered.

The iChat communication gateway wasn’t utilized very much beyond the occasional message or so, although we did begin lightly emailing as the semester closed.

That summer, Becky was planning on a month abroad, in India, Sweden, and more. Having her cell phone number from that April 16 email, I decided to send a direct line as she was boarding her plane, wishing her the best on her travels.

A few days later, I received a package from her. A package? But she’s abroad. It was a care package, put together with careful attention to detail and designed for me to open one piece per day, for a week.

The care package was the best gift I had ever received to date. Even though the gifts were small, so much thought was put into each that I practically had to peel the sentimentality off of the gifts before I could even breach the wrapping paper.

In the month of her absence, I began to desire to know her, to find out who Becky Clutter actually was. Two postcards arrived at my door that summer, one from India and one from Sweden. A postcard told me that she was thinking of me. I lit up upon finding them in my mailbox, putting a vigor and skip in my step.

When she returned to the states, the occasional emails began again. Our IM conversations became more frequent, however, and we started to form a friendship or, rather, a bond. A connection.

As the semester began and moved along, I was busy with work and also biking all the time, by that point. Becky and I were talking via the internet more and more. By mid-October, we knew a lot about each other. But we hadn’t yet broken the direct line of communication barrier.

The night of October 10, I received a text message asking if I was busy or asleep. I replied no, in short. Moments later, my phone rang. I don’t remember the conversation all that explicitly but what Becky and I both remember with great clarity was the ease with which we spoke to each other.

I do remember hearing her say goodnight. It hasn’t yet stopped echoing in my head.

From that point, we began the occasional phone-calling. One a week. Twice a week. Every other night. We started to suck nTelos and T-Mobile dry on their unlimited nighttime and weekend minute features. Our calls were nightly and began to grow in length.

At Halloweentime, I decided to send another postcard. In fact, two. They were to be handmade and sent consecutively. While taking the photos for these postcards, a package arrived for me, interrupting my work, keeping me from taking the photo for the second card. It was from Becky.

I was elated with this unexpected gift. Within moments of having received the package, I took the second photo for the postcard. A second self-portrait. This time, with me lightly smiling with exactly the same inner excitement that I was experiencing at the moment. It may be one of the few self-portraits that I actually didn’t try to force a face for. Those webcam shots going back in years had permanently affected how I took self-portraits leading up to that moment.

Anyways. I sent the postcards, labeled before and after. They were intended to be the most unambiguous communication with Becky to date, telling her that I think about her and that I know it’s mutual.

From that point on, our communication was steady and without gaps. In mid-November, during one of our now-regular nighttime conversations on the phone, I asked when we would finally meet. This got the ball rolling. We tossed around ideas for a few more weeks before deciding that we should meet after the new year.

I had to hold onto my seat, I was so excited, after I booked my flight to Atlanta, where she and I would finally meet and I would meet her family, including Preston.

Christmas passed and I was counting down to my departure. The day arrived, January 4, 2008, and I found myself in Atlanta. Not realizing the convenience of the trains taking people from concourse to baggage, I walked the whole 4000 meters from E to A and walked up the steps ready to lay my eyes on Becky Clutter.

When I made it up the great stairway, I peered with a hawk’s eyes for the familiar face I had seen in several videocasts and a few photos. But, no luck. I wasn’t depressed, knowing that she was the type who arrived on time or slightly after time. Still, I walked around the baggage area anxiously wanting to hold her in an embrace.

I circled the perimeter and reluctantly came back to where I started originally, from the stairs. But this time, I came from the reverse side, where family & friends would have been waiting for their loved ones to arrive. And this time, I saw someone from behind. A head of blond hair that looked awfully familiar. Pink highlights in her hair that I had noticed before from the vidcasts. I savored that recognition and paused before walking up behind her, she know was watching the arrival staircase thinking I was yet to emerge.

I was within inches of her, suddenly feeling nervous about what to say to get her attention. “Becky!” sounded strange and forced. A weak “hey” would give away my nervousness. Nothing was going to be perfect and I couldn’t stand not holding her for any longer.

“Sometimes, I’m sneaky” was what I said as I leaned right up behind her. Her head rapidly turned and her eyes lit up, and she immediately squeezed my arm in an interesting arm-hug. We moved away from the crowd and gave each other a proper embrace. The embrace we both needed.

The following days were spent introducing me to Atlanta, showing me what attractions and good food was available, and having me hang out with some awesome basset hounds. But, we really did none of those things.

We spent 4 days staring into each other’s eyes and holding hands. Non-stop. Every glance in her direction was immobilizing. Every time we touched I knew that I was then feeling the warmth of the one woman who was meant for me.

The visit was over, tearfully, and time went by tortuously slow. Our communication after that point was no longer filled with subtle messages or stuffed innuendoes. We both experienced an unprecedented confidence that what was now moving along was the inevitable result of two people in love, an intersection that could neither be stopped nor stifled.

Eventually, Becky brought up moving to Blacksburg, since I would be in school for some more years as I worked on my master’s degree and contemplated a Ph.D.

Long story short, Becky moved on July the 1st and I assembled an unbelievable amount of IKEA furniture in the days following.

On August 16, 2008, I knelt down before Becky at the corner of Preston & Airport Avenues and asked Becky to be my wife, Preston nearby on a leash wondering why we had stopped our evening walk.

We will be married on October 10, 2009, two years after having begun speaking to each other on the phone (also happens to be the day Becky took her 1st postcard to the post office from the postmark, 10-10-2006, we discovered later).

I can’t believe you made it through reading the whole story. Thank you.

ryanharne.com is not done yet, by the way.

Have you ever had news important enough to require deliberation and concentrated effort before you felt it was ready to reach the world? I’ve had such news lately. I’ve had it for 2 weeks and am only now going to take a shot at telling it.

Four weeks ago, I took a trip to the dentist. This trip involved 90 minutes of driving because I haven’t changed dentists from the hometown to my current residency. After that, certain people expected me to return to Blacksburg. I made some feeble, fabricated excuses and drove somewhere else.

Once I arrived in Charlotte—did you know, there were fewer than 10 turns necessary to go from Lynchburg, VA, to Charlotte, NC, Southpark Mall?—I went straight for a certain shop. After a few weeks of communication, I was finally meeting him. No, this was not some romantic rendezvous, but rather a meeting for business. Important business.

No, I did not require the use of an assassin, a drug dealer, or an emergency accounting consultation. I needed to buy an engagement ring. Fortunately, I had already picked out the ring, making the effort of “shopping around” something I could save for less important purchases, like bike gear or computer add-ons.

The man I met is named Vincent. He had searched through an expansive database for the type of ring I was hoping for and grabbed several to match my list of wants as closely as possible. Once we looked through the selection he gleaned for me, I narrowed it down to the 2 I was already anticipating choosing from. Looking at them side-by-side provided little differentiation, but, when modeled by another [female] salesperson—thanks for doing that, by the way—there was a minor distinguishing feature of one over the other. I took some time to contemplate the situation.

When I announced my decision, he said, “Are you sure?” Despite giving me a look neither of disbelief nor of salesman-like confidence, his question pierced in a way that made me review and consider the time I had spent with the person this engagement ring would be going to. My pause encouraged him to take another inquiring stance, “Have you eaten yet?” My Subway late-lunch was digesting, yes, but I admitted to wanting a coffee. After informing me of the Starbucks nearby, he said he’d be around when I got back.

I ordered the usual—venti iced coffee. Taking it away from the chaos of that Friday afternoon franchise, I sat down on a food court chair. Almost 2 years of posts, digital encounters, and, now, days together flashed before my eyes. I thought back to the very first postcard she sent me. The dinosaur with the speech bubble shyly saying, “hello”. I remembered, with vibrant clarity, our first conversation on the phone and the uncanny second-nature of the talk, even though we had never before heard the other’s voice. Sitting in that food court chair, I remembered returning from my first visit to Atlanta and proudly changing our facebook status to “In A Relationship” from being friends before. And the way I smiled when around her (but not in front of the camera—I’ll adjust to that eventually). And how I knew that there was simply no one else I could imagine myself spending the rest of my life with.

With a half-emptied iced coffee, I took the steps back in the direction of the shop. Vincent met me and I told him what I wanted to get. I followed up with, “I’m sure.” And I was. 100%. Another half hour later, I was leaving the Southpark Tiffany’s with a beautiful Tiffany-blue bag, containing a ring, some documentation, and some extra Tiffany’s ribbon should I need it.

I was incredibly thankful for Vincent’s help, his inquisition, and his patience. He was setting me up with a ring that would change my life. And, I was on my way back to Blacksburg with a ring in the passenger seat that made me smile with each look over at it.

I bought some Russian hot cocoa mix a while ago and discovered it mixes well when brewed with Starbucks’ Pike Place roast. Pike Place is already a reasonably good brew, but with a thin layer of this cocoa mix on the bottom of the filter, the resulting drink is quite fulfilling. The taste is hard to describe but, when compared to most other coffees, this tastes deeper. It’s similar to your first time trying out 9-grain sliced bread when, all your life, you’ve been unknowingly suffering along with Sunbeam’s white bread—the first try may be overwhelming but then the realization hits that you should have tried this years ago. So, if your local, friendly Russian is making another trip back to his motherland for some Stoli’s and kalashnikovs, hand him a few Benjamins for his trouble in swiping you some packages of hot cocoa mix. The chocolate mix is cheap, but he’s going to need the rest of the cash to bribe that type of cargo out of the country.

It occurred to me today that I demand my shoes be tied at the same time so as to avoid any significant difference in tightness or slackness of string. And this occurred to me when I removed a stone from my left shoe but also untied my right shoe so as to be able to re-tie them at the same time. I’m left confused by this realization but also confident in my self-explanation for such behavior.

Finally, it’s remarkably easy to give things away for free on craigslist. Within 3 minutes of posting a listing, I had 1 reply. Within 5 minutes, I had 3 replies. Problem solved.

I have thus far refused to give in to Twitter even though my levels of concentration and time-alloted capacity for writing have diminished for complete Wordpress entries. Whereas, in the past, my evenings used to be an opportunity for expression, now I spend them playing around with Preston (aka, “super dog”), solving household puzzles with the assistance of an engineering education, or reading the news on NYTimes.com. Twitter would actually become quite useful for me, not to mention potentially addictive. But, I’d simply rather not surrender to that form of instant-gratification-blogging.

Having said that, I went ahead and reserved my funeral at twitter.com/ryanharne. Attendance is optional, dress is business casual, & please bring gifts for the departed.

Lately, my desire to post something has been centered around a great article I’ve read, or something I thought of briefly, or an idea I would like to later expound upon given a fuller opportunity—each of which are the bread & butter of Twitter. Particularly in the case of an article I’ve read during the day, I’ve grown tired of rephrasing something I read in order to apply a personal skew. The greatest enjoyment I receive from writing stems from what is internally inspired. I simply have less time to devote to writing—some will cheer at this announcement—so, I may have to redirect my efforts in order to sustain an equal amount of creative output amongst the outlets available to me.

So, let it be said. Twitter, ryanharne, twitter!

When I bought my first LaCie hard drive, I was highly recommended towards the brand due to reliability and GB/$. That was 3 years ago. When I bought my second LaCie hard drive, I was highly encourgaed to skirt the brand due to ridiculously high failure and poor drives. That was about a year ago. Today, I have 4 LaCie hard drives, 3 desktop and 1 portable, 1 of which was added to my fleet just yesterday.

To be fair, despite Jeremiah’s many hints to avoid LaCie last year, I have never had an issue. Since I back everything up twice over, I’m not even that concerned about a complete failure of a single drive. I remember my visit to him in Boston in 2005 when I came across his stack of 5 or 6 LaCie drives all daisy-chained to a single Power Mac G5—the cost of being in new media production, yet an elegantly-stacked cost.

So, what a shock to my data security ego when Becky’s LaCie hard drive failed in action. Granted, certain unfortunate events transpired to encourage the disaster, but it was a LaCie that died; a tear passed silently down my cheek at the news. The real catastrophe was that she was currently working remotely using this LaCie as her main disk, a drive which also contained some files that were backed up nowhere else. When a myriad of software data recovery solutions all failed to see the mounted volume, we were disappointed and appalled at the estimated cost given to us for data recovery from the industry pro in the field. It would cost a $3,500 fortune to recover the whole hard drive which, by the way, was the old RAID striped-0 LaCie Big Disk Extreme 500GB, for those savvy with the technical details. Since that LaCie actually used 2 drives to make a larger, single volume (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) the repair costs really rocketed at our specific misfortune.

A fellow Apple engineer recommended a fix but then recommended against it. This fix involved something that would make most tech nerds nauseous, and probably require some rehabilitating hours of WoW later. He suggested I hit the drive. Literally. Smack it. Like a rabbit ears television. Like that old lemon you bought from the car salesman with two gold front teeth.

Well, he actually seemed to recommend a smack more akin to spanking your eldest or most cherished child, but, a hit nevertheless. And, in the most controlled of environments, I did this.

It worked.

In order to turn this into a how-to, I will describe precisely how I did this so that you, too, can fix a broken LaCie hard drive and clench your stomach with each impact.

I chose a well-carpeted floor as the landing zone. To be specific, I wasn’t hitting the drive but rather letting it take a carefully-orchestrated fall. Some first drops were attempted and my method for dropping it was then selected. The LaCie drive would fall on its recessed power button with me holding the sides as it fell, making sure the impact was head-on and no side-to-side motion occurred. The rebounds were not stifled, so after the LaCie hit the carpet and rebounded, very slightly, I let that motion dissipate over time naturally.

The falls took place at about 5 inches from the floor and, again, allowed the LaCie power button side/surface to make carpet contact. Some non-powered falls proved to be pointless in drive recovery—it seems the hard drive needles are locked when the drive is not plugged in to a computer or wall power. In our case, one of the needles was jammed and a standard plug-it-in would result in 3 loud clicks of the needle before the LaCie would give up the ghost. Disk Utility would see the drive as nothing more than a mounted device, without any associated volume. The non-powered falls changed nothing, so, with reluctance, I began thinking how to compose the perfect powered fall.

Instead of simply applying power by hitting the power button, I decided the best thing to do would be to plug the FireWire cable into the back of the drive which would initiate the powering and data-reading sequence. The other end of the FireWire cable was always plugged into my MacBook so it was always powered and ready to start up an attached drive.

So, with the LaCie in hand, I plugged in the FireWire cable and listened as the platters began spinning up. I will point out that the platters were spinning perfectly, from both of the RAID 0 disks, and this may not work well, or at all, if your disks do not spin as perfectly as these were. If the needle wasn’t working, in our case, you wouldn’t be able to tell any difference in operating sound because the spinning disks sounded perfectly natural.

So, as the platters began to spin up the first jammed needle click resounded. At that, I dropped the hard drive onto the power button face. After a few drops, and full unplug-plug sequences (again, the clicking sound only happened 3 times, so only 3 attempts could be made during a single sequence), the drive finally mounted correctly in Disk Utility. However, the mounting took a very long time, upwards of 10 minutes. I was patient, though, because I knew something was different after the successful fall because the needle appeared to be reading correctly and making the appropriate hard drive needle noises (you know, the clicks of hard drive operation).

The first successful mounting revealed a greyed-out volume on the drive, but at least it was correctly named. When I unmounted the disk and plugged it back in, after another long period of gut-wrenching time and hard drive operating noises, the volume correctly mounted. Finder saw the volume and I could access files per usual. Over the course of the evening, I recovered all of the data and have since proclaimed this drive to now be my property since I resurrected it using nothing but the sweat of my brow and my unending benevolence. I may use it to toss unnecessary DVD rips onto, so that my Apple TV has some more content later on. I plan on allowing my inner acoustics geek to invent a special shock mount for the drive, perhaps some floating mechanism, so that the drive maintains some level of usability. I suspect that the shock therapy may ultimately prove fatal.

Nevertheless, I saved the expensive data recovery costs and was rewarded with a home-cooked dessert following dinner. Plus, I got to see some of the baby Preston photos which were only stored on that hard drive. I will admit that baby basset hounds are potentially the cutest puppies possible. They are, in fact.

Try this hard drive fix at your own discretion. It worked for me but it may not work for you. If you mess up, everything could be irreversibly lost; so evaluate how important the data is to you on your dead hard drive and consider if the repair cost is worth it. If you don’t have $3,500 to spend, don’t plan to have $3,500 to spend, or don’t care terribly much about the data to begin with—my fix is just for you. Enjoy.

It’s not business as usual so far this July. Summer freshmen orientation at VT has me doing some Apple stuff day-in and day-out. It’s a pleasant change from the usual lab work but, after a week and a half of this stuff, I miss the usual lab work, I miss those tests, and I miss those acoustic epoxies.

But, I’m able to carefully watch le tour since there are several free video feeds. Now that much of Becky’s move has been accomplished, I’m also able to get back on the bike as opportunity presents itself. And, thankfully so, because I’ve been getting antsy from watching tour coverage and from feeling my legs turn to gelatin.

And, the SHOCKING news this year is that one of the main contenders has tested positive for EPO and his entire team pulled out this morning. This happened last year when some of the testing procedures were more lax and when the cycling community really hadn’t taken any critical step to begin preventing its use. 2008 presents a new slate for cycling—the attitude towards doping is significantly less ambivalent. Major team sponsors pulled their funds last fall and this spring in response to the doping issues while the teams themselves realized that not only could they be pulled from the popular events for testing positive but the corporate future of cycling could be irreversibly shattered. It’s nice to race bikes but cycling relies on advertising and sponsorship to get by. Imagine Budweiser pulling its support from American football or Coca-Cola backing out of NBA investments. That would strike fear into the hearts of even the most grossly oversized linebackers.

Ricardo Ricco was the stupid, spotlight-obsessed doper this year. What’s worse is that he has a natural predisposition towards high red blood cell count simply due to genes, which is what EPO tries to enhance. If you have one get-out-of-jail-free card, why bargain with your Monopoly mates for a second one? Why not, instead, work towards some hotel installments? Too much investment in antidotes inevitably means you’ll drown in a new poison. Anyways. If you’re going to get caught doping, why not get caught with some ridiculously large volume of EPO in your system? Like blowing a 0.44 breathalizer for a DUI, some of these cyclists should go out in flames with a 50/50 blood/drugs concentration.

While I’m happy with my current cycling performance, it would be nice to have off-days where I still crush the locals in the Wednesday race ride. So far this summer, I’ve been doping up on cinnamon sugar secretly embedded into my morning bagel and 2% milk in my morning coffee. I hear the combination unlocks a wild red blood cell flourish, an easter egg feature Mother Nature didn’t want you to know about. It seems to work, too. When I commute in the morning, I race past other cyclists and sneer at their mountain bike tires and visor-mounting helmets. And those panniers?! What a joke. I need neither saddlebag nor messenger pack—with a basic application of duct tape, I can semi-permanently adhere my laptop, cellphone, chargers, and textbooks to my body and keep the aerodynamic loss to a minimum.

Fin.