Bicycle. Duh!

I took a little hiatus after the 50th post.  I figured I deserved a little rest.  Even a servant gets to sleep once in awhile.  But I’m back and ready to take on another important topic for your betterment.

I was reading about this big bicycle race, the so-called Tour de France, the other day.  I know it’s not really bike racing weather here in the northern hemisphere but no time is the wrong time when you find out something that is to everyone’s benefit.  The Tour de France is a complete sham!  A total spectator sport swindle.  For those of you who don’t know what the Tour de France is, and I know many of you don’t get out of bed much, much less keep up with any sports other than boxing, professional wrestling, and dog racing, the Tour de France is a supposed bicycle “race” where guys ride bikes all over France and then finally come to a finish where somebody, no doubt some steroid crazed pretty-boy with a Hollywood contract already in his back pocket, “wins” the race.  So what’s the big deal about that you say?  I’ll tell you the many reasons why, and by the time I’m done you’ll want to take a shower if you just read about the Tour de France in the newspaper.

Let’s start this tirade with my usual disdain for “spectator” sports in general.  Why anybody watches any other adult play a children’s game is beyond me.  If you are not going to do it or aren’t trying to learn how to do it, why watch it?  Everything from ice dancing to professional football is a waste of your life and valuable entertainment time.  Let’s start with the basic statistics, you already know whatever team, or jockey, or bowler you are watching is going to lose approximately half the time.  Who invites a 50% failure rate into their lives?  Now I’ve told you all to expect the worst, but this is different, this is hoping for the worst and that is a much different thing my friend.  Just because you know you are a loser doesn’t mean you have to roll out the red carpet for it.  That’s just crazy!

The other reason I hate spectator sports is they are boring.  Even when the time isn’t taken up with endless commercials for Duck Dynasty Chia Pets, nothing pretty much happens.  Everybody just runs around mostly.  Even in high scoring basketball, the ultimate fixer sport, only about one one-millionth of the time is actually spent scoring, the only half-way useful thing that happens during a “game.”  Even if the scoring aspect was somehow increased in each sport, how much can you watch a ball going through a net or someone spinning in the air?  Compare this to watching the Three Stooges or Castle of Blood and I think I’ve made my point.  By comparison you sports fanatics are just wasting your useless lives.  Besides, while watching films and TV shows you might actually learn something, like how medieval siege engines work, but you know nothing can come of watching that lacrosse contest.  If the alternative in this hell we call life was watching a fly crawl up the wall, then maybe sports would be a step up from your present misery, but this just isn’t the case with cable, WiFi, satellite, and 4G available almost everywhere.

Typical “accident”

Next comes the rigging.  Everyone knows that everything from wrestling to to tiddley-winks  is run by the mob nowadays.  The outcomes are more or less a foregone conclusion.  If somebody steps out of line with a muffed dive or a caught pass, then they run the risk of keeping Jimmy Hoffa company.  Once the big money came in, what little was left of interest in synchronized swimming was gone.  For awhile drownings became synonymous with fair play until the athletes wised up and started following mafia orders.  If this alone doesn’t put you off sports, well you are just a hopeless waste of human flesh.

Next we have to deal with the aesthetics of bicycle racing.  The helmets are stupid, dorky looking things that sit on top of your head like a hen on a nest.  At least in sports like auto racing, football, and hockey the headgear looks butch.  Also those tight racing pants don’t look good on most people and are a turn off in a sport that you would think would want to be more inclusive.  There is supposed to be zero contact in bike racing and even when there is contact the crashes are usually uneventful, unlike auto racing.  ‘Nuff said.

Now here is where the real BS nonsense about the Tour de France comes in.  Say it takes two weeks, ten days, a month, I dunno it doesn’t matter I’m too lazy to look it up and the exact number doesn’t matter; it takes more than a couple of days for the Tour de France to finish, it’s a really long race.  But here’s the real crapola, they get to go to a hotel and get a hot meal and sleep a few hours every day before they all get up to start again at the same time from the same place!  You think they are killing themselves with this day and night torture of riding all over France but really they are just having a nice ride, looking at a couple of chateaus each day, stopping for some wine tastings, and all finishing at the same place to have a few cocktails and some escargot each and every night.  Who do they think they’re fooling?

Mafia “spectator”

Well, they also do this thing called “sharing the yellow jersey” which means that a different guy gets to do the heavy lifting each day while the others try to knock the other jockeys off their bikes or just enjoy the day.  It doesn’t matter because they all get to start over again tomorrow unless they have a heart attack, fall off a cliff, or get run over by a car.

Typical steroid crazed pretty boy

So now you see how it goes.  The only day that “matters” is the last day of the race.  So everyone stores it up and gets their blood doped, and takes their steroid shot, eats a big spaghetti dinner, and skips the vino for that night and gets a good night’s rest.

So how do you win?  Just give the yellow jersey to the best, most rested guy on the last day and have the other guys on the “team” throw banana skins out on the track all day.  Except for the teams that are being paid off to take a dive.  These teams drop out along the way due to so-called “accidents” like a squirrel in the spokes or a “leg cramp.”  The fixers are all along the final leg of the race to make sure each racer does what he’s been paid to do.  It has even been reported that a few “warning shots” have been taken at certain racers that had “second thoughts” about throwing the race.

Mob Fixer

 So there you go, what was already as dull as dirty dish water to begin with becomes even less interesting when you realize it’s all a sham.  The only real excitement that comes is if you can get an insider tip and make a little money off the race.  Even then it’s not too smart to win too much because then you are going to get a visit from “Vinnie” and your dog is going to wander off or worse.  If you keep your winnings modest all you’ll get is a “warning”  Take it from me.

In recent times the Commissioner has tried to make the whole thing seem legit with trumped up charges of blood doping and steroid use.  This is a joke.  Everyone does these things.  You could test any of the athletes and find the same thing.  The only reason this happened is a new family in the mob took over power and now wants to show the others that they mean business.