www.roanoke.com

I'm sitting here at my desk wrapping up work on tomorrow's Roanoke Times Outdoors page while dealing with a difficult distraction -- live coverage of the Tour de France on the Versus network.

I've watched quite a bit of the tour this year, and I admit it's because of Lance Armstrong's return. I never expected that Armstrong could win, but I figured his being in the race would make things more interesting, and that's been the case.

A lot has been made of the supposed rivalry between Armstrong and his teammate, Alberto Contador of Spain.

As much as these guys ride together, Armstrong knew full well that Contador would be stronger in the big mountains, where this race is won. But I think early in the race Armstrong played things up in regards to the rivalry, if for no other reason than to help fuel interest in the race.

Once Contador established that he wouldn't lose (barring a crash, illness or other catastrophe) Armstrong was left fighting for a spot on the podium, and that's still pretty interesting considering his age (ancient, by pro cycling standards).

As for Contador, I was pretty ambivalent about him until yesterday, when he pulled one of the most baffling moves I've seen in years of closely following this race.

About 2 kilometers from the top of the day's final climb, Contador was in a group with rivals Andy and Frank Schleck, and teammate Andreas Kloden. 

Had the four reached the summit together, there was a good chance that Kloden could have hung with the others to the finish, and solidified his chances of finishing in the top three overall come Paris. With Armstrong still also in the mix for a podium spot, there was a chance Astana could sweep all three top spots -- a remarkable team achievement.

So what does Contador do? He attacks, meaning he put the hammer down. The strategy was questionable, because even if he had dropped the Schlecks, he wasn't going to get much time on them. And he didn't need time on them anyway.

The problem was, the Schlecks were able to hang on, but Kloden couldn't. He ended up losing two minutes, and was passed in the standings by the Schleck brothers.

So the only thing Contador accomplished was to hurt his own teammate. So this guy is either really selfish, or really dumb. Or, maybe, both.

As I write this it appears that Contador may win today's individual time trial. So he's clearly the best in the race. But I can't imagine he's winning many friends in the peleton with moves like Wednesday's. That might not hurt him in this race, but it will come back on him at some point.

I'm intrigued by a dilemma Radford city leaders are facing. At issue is who should get priorty use on a tract of 250 acres in Montgomery County that the city owns.

The short of it is the city has long permitted hunting on the property by special permit. Recently some bikers helped build about 6 miles of trails. Bikers surprised to find out that hunting is allowed during all open seasons, not just the two-week general firearms deer season, as they assumed, recently asked the city council to change its policy and allow hunting only those two weeks. The council is waiting to decide what to do, and will hear public comments at a meeting in October.

As I wrote in my Sunday column, I'm confident a reasonable compromise can come out of this. No one will have to give up much.

Apparently, others aren't so confident. Our lead editorial today discussed the same topic, and the writer/writers are much more pessimistic.

Maybe I'm a hopeless optimist. I know there's no perfect solution. But I have full confidence the hunters, hikers, bikers and Radford City leaders will prove me right and come up with a good solution.

Why do bicyclists wait until I'm around before they try to kill themselves?

OK, the guy I found crumpled on the Roanoke River Greenway last year wasn't trying. He just had the bad luck of hitting a huge pothole. But the bloody mountain biker pictured a month ago on this blog was lucky all he got was bloody when he hit a tree without a helmet.

And the kid I just saw crash in Roanoke got lucky, too.

I was coming back from an assignment in Vinton when this pack of teenaged kids on BMX bikes converged on the intersection of 8th and Wise. That spot is on one of my road bike loops and it's a confusing intersection with a bunch of yield signs. I get nervous riding through there and I pay attention. These kids weren't paying attention.

They were just riding willy nilly in the road, crossing back and forth and not looking. I sometimes see that kind of behavior from pedestrians who seem to be daring drivers to hit them.

The drivers all defered to the kids. But one of the kids didn't see that a pickup truck was stopped and turning into a convenience store. The kid smacked the back of the pickup and crumpled on the side of the road, about 30 feet in front of me. I stopped, put on my flashers and got out.

The kid was crying and rolling around in pain saying, "Oh, my knee. My knee." I said, while dialing 911, "Don't worry, I'm calling help."

And, miraculously, he quickly got better. He staggered back onto his bike and took off after his "friends," who hadn't exactly stuck around to make sure he was OK. I tried to convince him to sit tight -- really all you can do -- but he would have none of it.

I could just see a kid like that going home and telling his mom some guy hit him and
took off. So I stuck around with the driver of the truck to talk to the cops because I wanted to make sure the police knew that it wasn't that driver's fault.

Pretty interesting.

The other day the family and I went for a little hike in First Landing State Park in Virginia Beach, and enjoyed watching nesting osprey.

On the drive out I saw a mountain biker on the side of the road holding his head, which was covered in blood. I stopped to check on him.

He had smacked a tree and cut his scalp pretty good. The heavy bleeding, which is normal for even a minor head wound, made it look worse than it was. My wife couldn't even look at him. My girls did and the guy said, "This is why you should always wear a bike helmet."

I shaved my head this morning in protest of the Tour de Farce.

Actually, that's only partly true. I did shave my head. But not in protest.

I cut my own hair. It's an advantage of having not much. I use a cheap pair of Wahl clippers and use the No. 1 attachment. Zip. Takes about five minutes. I remove the No. 1 to go extra tight on my neck.

So, this morning I grab the clippers and take two quick swipes at the right side of my head. And I was almost blinded by the reflected glare from my stark white skull. I'd forgotten to put the No. 1 on.

If I actually had any hair on the top of my head I could have gone for the high-and-tight Marine look. You know, shaved sides and back with a little more on top. But that's not physically possible. So I just ripped it all off.

Truth is, I'm probably only a few days from where I would have been with the No. 1 cut. It really doesn't look much different, except for that stark white skull thing.

And that is hard to miss. I walked downstairs and one my girls looked at me, while shielding her eyes, and asked, "Daddy, did you shave your head?" She didn't really shield her eyes, but she did ask that. And then she said, "You look like Donnie," my head-shaving neighbor.

As for the Tour de France, the past couple of days have been a bummer. Not that the ejection of Vino and removal of Rasmussen were surprising. In fact, Vino's popping positive for blood doping was about as shocking as that day's other big news -- that Lindsey Lohan was allegedly driving drunk and had cocaine in her pocket.

A couple of pro riders have had some really interesting things to say in their Internet diaries the past couple of days. Check out this column by Bobby Julich and this one by Christian Vande Velde.

As I wrote about in my column today, which you can read HERE, my Sunday morning bike ride was interrupted early when I happened upon another cyclist who had just crashed on the Roanoke River Greenway.

I wasn't the first person to stop to offer assistance to Sam Butler, a 52-year-old physician from Roanoke. Melissa Ivy and her boyfriend, Ismael, were already there. They stayed the whole time, and even took Sam and his wife, Helen's, bikes so Helen could ride in the ambulance with Sam. They returned the bikes the Butlers later that evening.

I've started carrying my cell phone when I ride, in case of emergencies. This is the first time I've needed it. I called 911.

A number of other folks stopped and asked if we needed help or to borrow a phone. One guy didn't ask. He just stopped his van, got out and approached Sam.

"My name is Steve and I'm a paramedic in Roanoke County," he said, then added that he was going to help Sam out while he waited for the on-duty squad.

When the ambulance got there, Steve briefed them and then was on his way before I could get his last name. (Full disclosure: I didn't get Melissa's last name either, but Helen had it.)

Today I found out his full name was Steve Simon, a division chief with Roanoke County Fire and Rescue. He and his 5-year-old son had just finished a bike ride. In an e-mail, Steve thanked me for the column -- which focused on the importance of bike helmets. He wrote that the Butlers had tracked him down to thank him for his help. He was glad to hear from them.

"It made my day," he wrote.

Seeing how a bunch of strangers can come together to help somebody in trouble made my day Sunday.

Fixed gear bikes enjoy something of a cult following, one that seems to be expanding as a growing number of cyclists are finding they enjoy the challenge of pedaling a bike with no brakes and no freewheel. Stopping requires gradually slowing your pedaling cadence, or skillfully skidding to a stop.

My childhood friend Pete Burchell, a hardcore bike geek who works in a bike shop in Florida, has one of the bikes. The other night he left it on his porch. The next morning the bike was gone.

But it wasn't gone for long. That day the bike showed up in the shop, dropped off by someone who didn't stick around. The bike's front wheel was broken in five places. Pete said it was the worst wheel demolition he's ever seen.

It was pretty easy to figure out what happened. The thief nabbed the bike and ran to the road, then started pedaling down the hill that runs out of the neighborhood. By the time he realized the bike had no brakes it was too late.

Pete said he actually had some sympathy for the thief, who surely got banged up pretty bad in the crash. I've got no sympathy for the guy. He got what he had coming.

Yesterday word got out that Tour de France drug testers had made an "adverse analytical finding" on a sample after Stage 17 -- the race Floyd Landis won in dramatic fashion to claw back into contention.

Then Landis pulled out of a couple of lucrative one-day races, fueling speculation that Landis was the rider in question.

Please, no...

Well, yes.

Landis' team just confirmed that he was the rider whose test was funky. The sample, which reportedly indicated high levels of testosterone, will have to be tested again.

I can predict the scenarios.

If it comes back negative or inconclusive, Landis will still have that cloud hanging over him.

If it comes back positive, we'll hear that something natural happened to increase the level.

There's no winning.

I love this sport but I am getting sick of this.

My friend Freddy McGuire just pointed out that I needed to eat crow regarding my entry about Floyd Landis saying "goodbye to any hopes he had of inheriting the throne vacated by Lance Armstrong" after his meltdown in the Alps on July 19.

It wasn't like I didn't have company. No one -- except Landis, apparently -- gave him a chance to recover.

I missed the live coverage of the stage because I was out of town at a meeting. I planned to watch primetime coverage so even though I figured Landis was cooked, I still tried to avoid finding out what happened.

That plan got blown when I heard, on NPR of all places, this story teaser: "Floyd Landis has an amazing day in the Alps."

I still didn't think it would be THAT amazing. It really was one of the gutsiest, greatest individual performances in Tour history, and there have been plenty great rides in that event.

Clearly, Landis -- I'm not sure we can call him Floyd, ala Lance, just yet -- helped bring attention to a race that wasn't drawing that much excitement over here in the wake of Armstrong's retirement.

But what about next year?

Landis will have his hip replaced in the next couple of months. As tough as that dude is, it's hard to imagine that he will be able to defend his win next year. When he does come back it will probably be for his Swiss Phonak team, even though Armstrong has hinted that he'd love to bring him back to the Discovery Channel team.

The Discovery Channel team needs to do something because, even though it had a rider briefly in yellow and another win a stage, it was a disappointing Tour for them.

George Hincapie, who took over for Armstrong as the team's leader, wore yellow briefly. But he faded as the race wore on and showed he just isn't cut out to be a GC (general classification) contender. Which means I hope we get to see him putting more attention back toward the European spring classics, where he excels.

Discovery is reportedly recruiting American Levi Leipheimer, who has podium potential but must improve as a time trialist.

Rumors have also surfaced that Discovery might be pursuing Jan Ullrich, the German who never could quite beat Armstrong. Ullrich, who was out of this year's Tour because he is under investigation for doping, was recently fired by his T-Mobile team.

The team also has some other riders with potential.

Despite all of Ullrich's baggage, I like him. The guy is a fighter, and he's a character. Providing he survives this latest doping scandal and can stay out of trouble, he's the kind of guy who will command attention, even from -- or maybe especially from -- an American public that is still just learning about the nuances of bike racing.

Seven hours ago Floyd Landis appeared poised to become just the third American to win the Tour de France.

Then the bottom fell out.

Landis blew up on the day’s final climb, lost tons of time and said goodbye to any hopes he had of inheriting the throne vacated by Lance Armstrong.

I try not to miss any mountain stages so I was watching the live coverage as Landis imploded.

It was gut-wrenching.

As his rivals pedaled away, Landis was helpless, grimacing and staring at the road ahead of his front wheel. It was reminiscent of that scene in 1982 when triathlete Julie Moss staggered and crawled the final stretch of the Hawaiian Ironman.

When he finally finished Landis didn’t say much as he was hurried into a team car. But later, in an interview that can be seen here, he met the press.

And he was amazing.

The guy walked in with a smile on his face.

Landis, who has shown refreshing modesty in all of his interviews during the Tour, said ignoring the situation wouldn’t change things. He didn’t make excuses. He said he had a bad day on the wrong day.

He said he’ll keep fighting, even though he knows he’s got little hope of winning.

Landis faces hip replacement surgery at the end of the season. It could end his career.

I bet it doesn’t.