It’s an age-old argument. It’s been done in every sport. Would Babe Ruth have been as good today against modern pitchers with all of their fancy pitching coaches, steroids and gadgetry? Would Mike Tyson be able to beat Muhammad Ali in his prime? Who would win a competition between Lance Armstrong and Eddie Merck? Or for that matter, what about Merckx versus Fausto Coppi? Put them all in the same competition. Who wins? Clearly Lance has the better equipment. It weighs on average 5-7 or even 10 pounds lighter than what Merckx and Coppi rode. Not to mention slopping top tubes, computer-generated carbon fiber frames and metal taken straight from the space shuttle. How do we measure all of these great champions? Is one better than the other? Does modern technique, training and nutrition have any bearing on this? I told you that to tell you this. Last weekend something small and largely insignificant happened that may shed some light on this subject. It passed by so quickly that no one took notice. No one except me. Oh, some people made reference to it in the small ultracycling world. But I’m not sure they were thinking of the bigger picture. Let me explain. The Furnace Creek 508 ultracycling race, also dubbed as the “toughest 48 hours in sports,” took place once again in Death Valley. It was won by 52-year-old Terry Lentz. Although his age may seem significant in this story, it’s not really. I’ve done pieces on my good friend David Holt, who’s 59, and also finished in the top 10. He won an ultracycling race last month, and it’s hard to pull it together just a month later. But I digress. Terry’s story is a little different. I don’t know Terry Lentz personally. What I do know is limited. But here goes. Terry Lentz came in third overall back in 2008 in the same race. What makes it significant is that Terry did it on a single-speed fixed-gear bike. If Terry is so good, why wouldn’t he ride a regular geared bike and win it all, some said. Others mentioned that he picked the specific gear. I had a different view. I thought he was a fucking stud. Why? I ride a fixed-gear bike sometimes. I’ll go over 100 miles and do 8-10,000 feet. I’m here to tell you folks, it hurts. You only have one gear and you can’t coast. Terry came back this year. Once again, in true Lentz form, he picked a wacky category to be in, called Classic Bike. In this particular division, you’re only allowed to use equipment from up until 1980. This simply means that you have shifters on the down tube, not integrated into your brake system. You have steel-frame bikes, which are much heavier than the carbon fiber bikes of today. You have to have a certain number of spokes, so $3,000 Zipp wheels are not allowed. You’re only allowed six gears on the back. Basically, you’re working with antiquated equipment. It’s heavy and it doesn’t give you the advantages that the companies today tell you that you get from high-end gear. How did Mr. Lentz fare using this type of equipment? Not only did he win the race out-right, but he beat a formidable competitor, Chris Ragsdale. Not only was Chris using the best, most recent gear available, he also set a new world record this year in ultracycling. He broke the 1,000-kilometer record. Does this mean that Michael Phelps would beat Mark Spitz? Does it mean Mary Lou Retton would beat Nadia Comaneci? I don’t know. But it does give us some insight that in any competitive event, it’s won by people, not equipment.

Sophia Loren…a winner in her own right

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but here it is again. Ultracycling and ultrarunning is difficult in two ways. The more obvious way to the casual observer is the general length of the event. The average “go to the gym and exercise fanatic” may spend an hour a day, five days a week doing an aerobic activity. In an average month, they do about 20 hours of aerobic exercise. When you consider an ultracycling or ultrarunning event on the short end generally takes 24 hours, and sometimes goes as long as 60 hours, with little or no sleep over a weekend, you can understand the amount of training needed to stand at the starting line. In the second way, at the height of your training, you could be looking at on average 22-25 hours of training per week. This comes to over 100 hours of aerobics per month. I’ve done these events off and on since the mid-90s. I have the same thing in common with most other ultra athletes. We’re champions at scheduling and allotting our time to squeeze out every moment of training, every day. After training for the first four and a half months of this year for the Furnace Creek 508, which sets off on the first week of October every year, I figured out that I couldn’t put the proper time in to complete the race. I sent the director of the event, Chris Kostman, an e-mail stating that I would be dropping out this year. I then started informing some of my riding buddies that I would be free for the casual 50-100 mile ride on the weekends, and not the 200-250 mile rides they were used to me going on. I told you that to tell you this. About a week after dropping out of the race, my two riding buddies, Steve and Johnny, had a ridiculous idea. They thought that since I couldn’t do it solo, maybe we could do it as a four-man team. My knee-jerk reaction was no for several reasons. First and foremost, I hate doing relay ultraraces. I have done a couple mountain bike versions of this. I hated it because you warm up, go really hard, cool down just long enough to where you have to warm up, and go again. In a 24-hour mountain bike race, this means you go at it in time-trial form for an hour, every fourth hour, for a 24-hour period. The second reason: I had been riding with Johnny for the better part of 20 years. Here are a few things I learned for certain in that amount of time: he loves to go 40 or 50 miles. Sometimes he can be talked into a 60 or 70 mile ride. In all the years of riding together, I had only known him to go over 100 once or maybe twice. He is neither fast nor slow. He’s got one speed in between the two. Steve is a completely different story. I’ve written about him on this blog before. I refer to him as the Jewish Rambo. He never misses a day of doing upper body exercise. He’s got biceps like Popeye. At 52, this guy has little to no body fat. But when it comes to aerobic activity, Steve is just not a big fan of it. He literally rides a bike two days per month. It’s always a Saturday on weekends when he doesn’t have his son. He will actually ride the most impressive 35-40 miles you’ve ever seen. Then because of his lack of aerobic conditioning, his legs will cease up and cramp, rendering him useless. These cramps have been so bad in the past, that he would be literally two miles from finishing and we’d have to go back and get him in a car. Johnny and I would make bets as to which mile Steve would cramp up on. Steve was also a fan of not taking enough water. We would use this information and the temperature of the day to figure out how to win that bet. Then there was a third problem. Our four man team only had three men. To find our fourth man, we went to the fairer sex, and got one of my best friends and dearest clients, Christina DeRonde, to sign on. This was no easy feat, as she had a busy schedule. Beside raising two beautiful girls, she does a full season of short course, medium course and Ironman distance triathlons. To put it simply, her tri-bike gets shipped from event to event, hardly ever making it home. She just finished the Nationals in Tuscaloosa, Alabama last week. She has another event coming up shortly. I guess you could say when she came to do our event she tapered off a bit. Needless to say, I wasn’t worried about Christina being ready. Between May and October 1, I watched Johnny and Steve become “real athletes.” Johnny started dropping a couple of pounds that he started to put on with the stress of the economy the past couple of years. He also started talking about different gearing for his bike. This was a guy who never cleaned a chain or pumped up his tires before this. On the weekends, it was common to see him go from 100 to 120 miles, and follow it with a 50-mile Sunday ride. Steve also stepped up to the plate. At first I would notice two full water bottles on his bike. He saw the advantage of drinking water with electrolytes in it. He started carrying two extra water bottles on his seat post. He rode his bike so much he needed new tires and a tune up. He did two more things this summer that was very impressive. He went over 100 miles for the first time ever. He also took precious weekend time from his lovely girlfriend Evonne to spend a weekend with me in Death Valley, going over his first stage of the race. Death Valley was cool that weekend. It only got up to 118 degrees. I was proud of the boys. I was also happy that Christina decided to sign on. What I didn’t expect was what happened when the race started Saturday morning. My original prediction was that we’d finish somewhere between 7 and 10 in a division with 14 teams. Let’s face it, I didn’t really train hard for this event. Johnny and Steve had never been in a cycling event of any sort in their lives. And the star of our team, Christina, was still working off sore legs from Nationals last week, where she had an impressive time. Johnny started the race. I thought it would be great if he went first. There’s a lot of climbing, perhaps 6,000 feet of it, and the stage is about 85 miles. I always think of Johnny as being very resilient. He’s not the fastest climber in the world. But he always gets it done, and I knew he wouldn’t cramp. Not only did he avoid cramping, but he did that stage in five hours, at least 45 minutes faster than we expected. Johnny told me later he had to stop once to pee, and he considered doing it off the bike, but didn’t understand the logistics of how that worked. Steve went next and picked up where Johnny left off. In a stage where I expected four hours and 20 minutes, he ended up doing it in four. By the time I got on the bike, we were in sixth place. I chose the third stage for one reason and one reason only. Not only was it the longest stage at 99 miles, but it also includes the fabled Towne Pass climb. It’s an 11-mile climb. It’s unrelenting, with grades anywhere from 8 to 13 percent. My original intent was to put out a hard effort to the climb, followed by a moderate effort on the climb, then a strong finish on the descent into Furnace Creek, which is the halfway point. That didn’t happen. After seeing the effort my two buddies put in, I knew I had to suffer and do my best throughout the whole stage. By the time my stage was over, we were no longer in sixth place, we were in fourth. I give Christina a lot of credit for her first long stage. Not only was there plenty of climbing, she was doing something she had never done before. She was riding in the middle of the night with the only light coming from the headlights on our chase vehicle behind her. This is an amazing feat. When I first started riding with Christina several years back, she was so scared to go downhill, she would literally take her feet out of the clips. She was barreling downhill heading to Shoshone in the pitch black of night. This type of intense effort continued all day Sunday as we finished the race in fourth place, in 32 hours and 48 minutes. This surpassed my prediction of a best-case-scenario of finishing in 36 hours. I’ve known all three of these people for at least 10 years, Johnny for 20. They proved something to me this weekend. I saw a side of each one of them that I had never seen before. I c
ame away with a greater respect for each of them.

Sophia Loren…also of the fairer sex.

“I may be going to hell in a bucket, babe. But at least I’m enjoying the ride.” – Grateful Dead

I have a brother who’s overweight. He’s my height and pretty much has my same frame. He was a great athlete in high school. Just like me, he was recruited to play college football. But that’s where our stories get dramatically different. I went on to play football. When I was done, I was determined not to become another one of those has-beens who gains a bunch of weight. So far I’ve succeeded. Just shy of my 48th birthday, I tip the scales at 169 pounds on my heaviest days. My brother is the antithesis of this. He never played college football. Instead, he picked up a fork. From what I can tell, he hasn’t put it down yet. To be brutally honest, if it wasn’t for that fork, he wouldn’t get any exercise at all. My brother now tips the scales in the 350 to 365 pound range. It fluctuates depending on if he’s at the feeding trough or starting a wacky diet that’s guaranteed to work. He made a statement toward me once saying I’m prejudiced toward fat people. I told him he was wrong. My prejudice is toward fat people who never try to do anything about it, like him. By the way, I don’t look at wacky, lose-weight-quick diets as really trying. That’s like saying I’m a business man, and your business is Amway. The scenario I actually used with my brother was such. Consider this: You’re driving through a neighborhood and all the houses on the street are in fine order. The grass is cut, the garden tended to, the paint is fresh on each house, except for one. This one house is in total disarray. The lawn is brown, the shutters falling off and there’s weeds everywhere. It’s a total mess. I asked, “How do you feel about the people who live in that house?” He said,”I’d think they were lazy and didn’t give a shit.” I agreed. “Now you know how I feel when I look at you,” I said. I told you that to tell you this. There seems to be a new epidemic sweeping the nation. YouTube has no shortage of what’s becoming known as the fattest kids. In some cases I wonder if people aren’t using that Kardashian method just to become famous. I have a video in this blog with a 7-year-old child weighing over 400 pounds.

The sad part, I saw that same kid a couple of years back on a TV show. They were calling her the fattest toddler when she was over 200 pounds. Do I blame the kid? Hell no! It’s the parents’ fault. Because of my acute memory for dumb things, I remember the mom on the show. She had a southern accent, not that this has anything to do with the rest of the story, just thought I’d mention it. The mother seemed to have limited mental faculties. She told the host of the show that she had no control over her daughter. Are you effing kidding me? Oh by the way, mommy was fat herself. In my opinion, the authorities should have rushed in right there and taken this child away. But that didn’t happen. We allow this imbecile of a mother to waltz out of that studio with that child in tow, and go on to pack another 200 pounds on her. Now she’s the star of a YouTube video. Haven’t we gone after people for a lot less? Remember the mom who was caught disciplining her kid in the backseat of an SUV? We were shocked as a country. This woman was tried and hung in the media. Where is the judge and jury on this one? When does child services jump in? Where’s Tipper Gore? I thought she tries to save all the children. I’ve now worked myself into a frenzy. I will now go and find a picture of awoman who’s never had a weight problem, Sophia Loren, to calm my nerves. Thank you and good night.

Sophia Loren…that's better.

“We are stardust. We are golden. And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.” – Joni Mitchell

When I was a kid, there were plenty of fruits and vegetables around. All of my Italian great uncles grew gardens. I’m not exaggerating when I say we probably had in the neighborhood more than five acres of vegetable gardens. You name the fruit and vegetable, we probably had it. From sweet potatoes, onions, broccoli and cauliflower, it was all there. There were fig trees, lemon trees and even orange trees. It was so abundant, my family and my extended family couldn’t eat it all. I remember if I had a hot date or wanted a new baseball glove, I simply picked vegetables and sold my product at the roadside until I got what I wanted. I remember feeling like a real man when I got to work the plow. I always carried a pocket knife so I could scrape the dirt off of a carrot or turnip and eat it while I was working. It might sound like a cliche, but it doesn’t get any fresher than that. The one thing that I remember was that our vegetables looked exactly like the ones in the stores, if not better. As a matter of fact, the only time we bought things from the store was in the off season. Let’s face it, Italians still need tomatoes. Then all of a sudden something happened. Slowly but surely the fruit and vegetables in the store were better than ours. Oranges started coming in a seedless variety. I remember thinking as a kid, if there were no seeds, how would you get the next crop? Oranges also started to come without navels. Tomatoes seemed to get bigger, redder and plumper. There was a new name for these vegetables and fruits: hybrids. That’s right folks, genetically manipulated. You know what else was special about them? They cost more, and the consumer paid. This went on for years. Then something strange happened. We started getting our old fruits and vegetables back, the ones with the seeds. Or else Joni Mitchell said, my apples had spots again. The fruit was back to regular size. It all went back to its original taste. It was that plump, juicy taste that had been missing from the hybrid. There was a problem. My old fruit and vegetables didn’t just come back on the market. They came back with a vengeance. They were called organic. The old stuff that was now new again with its new name also came with a premium. It cost more than the expensive hybrid fruit. And we bought into it. First there was Mrs. Gooch’s, Whole Foods and Henry’s Market, just to name a few. They all had a kumbaya flair to them. The people who worked there were hip and wore Birkenstocks. But trust me, they were plenty corporate. They trade on the open market just like oil companies and dot-coms. I told you that to tell you this. We seem to love nostalgia in this country. Everything that’s old again is new again, then old again, then new again. Take the bicycle world for example. In the early 1900s everything was a single speed fixed gear. Then you had to have many gears. Then you had to have even more gears. Now there’s a throwback to the single speed fixed gear. You don’t have to do much research to figure out that they all came in steel form, then aluminum, then titanium, then carbon fiber and now the world is headed right back to steel. Let’s face it, you have to keep changing it if you want to keep selling bikes.

Running shoes, same thing. First there were very thin flat soles, then more cushion, then a little more, then shoes were rated on how stable they were. Now we’re back to minimum stability and minimum cushioning. I guess the point I’m trying to make here is that sometimes we’re all too eager to throw out the baby with the bathwater. If bike equipment has changed so much over the years and diets have gotten so much better, then why are so many old cycling records holding up? Eddie Merckx didn’t have a fancy technical diet, trainers and gurus like cyclists have today. A lightweight bike in his era weight five to seven pounds more than a bike today. Before you go out and buy an expensive bike, look in your garage. Or try going to eBay, you might be surprised at what you find.

Sophia Loren…what was hot then

Paris Hilton…what’s hot now

Which one is better?

“I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride it where I like.” – Queen

I was in Beverly Hills the other day and I saw something that’s bothered me from it’s inception, probably back to 2001. I’m not sure why it bothers me. Hell, I’m an American. I believe everyone is free to do what the hell they want. And I’ll never change that belief. But for some odd reason, I’m bothered by the Segway. For the uninitiated, let me tell you what the Segway is. It’s a two-wheeled balancing device meant to be a portable conveyance. In other words, it’s literally for people too effing lazy to walk. Wait a minute, I just figured out why it bothers me. Let’s face it, there are people in wheelchairs who would give their eye teeth to be able to take one step. Yet here we are with perfectly capable people who can’t be bothered with the simple task of walking. Oh, I’ve seen these devices around. They’re quite popular with mall cops and people who work in warehouses…and generally people who have occupations that require their name to be on their shirt. I told you that to tell you this. There is a motorized vehicle that I do like. It’s been around for a long time and it comes in different forms. What am I talking about? Motorized bicycles. You may ask yourself why a guy who’s telling me to save gas and fat push a motorized bicycle. Isn’t that the bicycle version of the segway? No, it’s not. Here’s the difference. First, the motorized bikes I’m talking about have electric motors. There are gas engines that can be put on to convert it, but I’m not talking about those. I’m talking about the electric bike. When I first started seeing these a few years ago, I had the same problem with it as I have with the Segway. After all, isn’t the whole point to get exercise? Then something interesting happened one day as I was coming over the Santa Susana Pass, leaving Simi Valley. A guy caught up with me and passed me on the up-hill. He was wearing slacks and a shirt and he had panniers on his bike. As he passed me, I noticed he wasn’t sweating. Then I noticed something else. There were two big square batteries on the bike. I caught up with him about three miles later on the Woodland Hills side of the valley. I asked him why he chose to buy a bike with an electric motor. As the two of us pedaled along, he gave an answer I wasn’t expecting. He said he bought it to get in shape. He also told me he had lost 35 pounds since starting the regimen on his bike. He saw the quizzical look on my face. I told him about my Web site and the mission that I’m on. I also asked him how a motorized bike helped him lose weight. He said it was simple. The Santa Susana Pass was the only thing stopping him from commuting to work every day on his bike. The hill was too difficult. With the bike he was able to ride the seven miles to the pass, use the assistance of the electric motor to get up the pass, then ride the three miles into work. He then repeated the same thing on the way home. I asked him how long it took to lose the extra 35 pounds. He said less than a year. Then he said something else. He said, “You know, it wasn’t even about the weight loss. I’m physically fit for the first time in my life.” I asked how he could tell. He said a physical showed his blood pressure was down. “The doctor literally said my blood looks younger.” Then he lowered his glasses and winked when he said,”My wife likes the benefits too.” We parted ways a few blocks later. I had gained a new-found respect for the electric bike.

Sophia Loren…never needed a Segway

“Am I happy or in misery? Whatever it is, that girl put a spell on me.” – Jimi Hendrix

I hate to go to parties. No wait, I was being too easy. I despise parties. Why? I can’t stand small talk. It makes no sense. Someone will ask you about yourself, yet they don’t give a crap about you. While you talk, they try to think of something about themselves. Maybe something they think I’ll care about. Guess what? I don’t. Turns out, I have to go to parties and social events. The fact that I’m on this planet as a human being, I feel it’s important to socialize with other human beings or else I’ll cease to exist or become the Unabomber. I’m not sure, but I think those are the only two choices. The one thing I have noticed about socializing is how everyone loves to fluff up who they are. For example, no one will tell you they collect garbage at a party. They would pump it up and say they are a sanitation engineer. Los Angeles is famous for this. Everyone seems to be a writer, director or producer. There is a story that goes around that a guy kept telling women he was a director because he wanted to get laid. Two things happened. One, he got laid. And, two, he actually became a director. I think people are amazed when they ask me what I do for a living. The reply is, “I ride a bike.” I usually get a perplexed look. They usually reply with, “Oh, are you a pro, like Lance Armstrong?” I say, “I’m a pro, but the difference between Lance and I is he’s fast and I’m not.” I simply teach people how to become better riders and I get paid for it. I told you that to tell you this. When people find out I’m a fitness trainer, the quizzing begins. What do you think about circuit training, kickboxing, high-impact aerobics, krav maga, Boot Camp, etc. I always give the same answer, “It’s all good as long as you do it.” But there’s one that I get that I have a different answer for…yoga. In my opinion, yoga is not physical activity. Oh, it’s physical. You have to put yourself in pretzel-like positions. I’m a big fan of flexibility. At 48, I’m still able to do splits. But make no mistake, this is not physical activity. The key word in physical activity is activity. In order to stretch a muscle, you have to be the antithesis of active. You have to be relaxed. Is yoga an activity? No. In my opinion, it’s the equivalent of getting a massage. It will do absolutely nothing to increase stamina or aerobic base. It will cause little or not muscle hypertrophy. It will simply make you limber and supple, which in its own right, is a plus. But for those of you who will write to me and say, “But I sweat every time I do yoga, therefore it’s physical.” Think again, I sweat when I forget to turn on the air conditioning before I go to bed.

For your enjoyment, watch this snooze fest.

Sophia Loren…also non-dairy

“Just wrap your legs ’round these velvet rims and strap your hands ‘cross my engines.” – Bruce Springsteen, “Born to Run”

At the beginning of May I sold my Triumph motorcycle. At the end of May I picked up a brand new Ducati Streetfighter. I love my new bike, but I noticed almost immediately that the bike had a tuning problem. It did a lot of spitting and choking between 2,500 and 5,000 RPMs. I figured it wouldn’t be much of a problem to get it fixed after my first oil change. The guys over at Pro Italia, where I bought the bike, kind of laughed the problem off and told me to thank the tree-huggers over in Europe who have passed laws to choke down these beautiful machines. I took offense to this. I guess you could say I’m somewhat of a tree-hugger myself. I also asked the folks at Pro Italia if they could fix the problem. They said, “Sure, as long as you shell out $2,500 for a different set of pipes and an after-market ECU (engine control unit).” My first statement back to them was, “My bike is under warranty, I’m not going to pay you a dime.” They replied, “This is an after-market part. You have to pay for it.” I just laughed and said, “You can either fix the bike or take it back.” They rolled their eyes, but fixed it, without changing any parts. The fact of the matter is, there is a way to fix the bike under warranty. But they don’t want to do that. They would rather up-sell you. It’s somewhat of a win-win for them, and a lose-lose for me. I didn’t stop there. I went on to investigate these after-market parts, and I learned a lot. Number one, the parts are made by the bike company, Ducati. Number two, the parts are specifically made for track use only. What does this mean to the real world? Basically, once they put these parts on, your motorcycle is no longer street legal. When I asked the manager at the dealership about this, he laughed and said, “But everybody does it.” I told you that to tell you this. I spend most weekends every year on my bicycle. If you want to triangulate where I am on the planet, I’m generally somewhere between Woodland Hills, Malibu and Santa Barbara. Because it’s such a weather-friendly place 12 months out of the year, it’s one of the most scenic places on the planet. It would stand to reason that on any given weekend, hundreds of motorcycles pass me as I ride through the mountains. You know what most of them have? Loud after-market pipes. From my small investigation, this means, if you have a carburetor, it would re-jet it. If they have a fuel-injection system, the ECUs would have to change. In simple terms, this means every time you hear a loud bike, not only are they causing noise pollution, but also air pollution. And all of this, just so they can feel better about their small cocks. I guess the bigger question is, why does law enforcement turn a blind eye to it? Hell, they like to hand out tickets. It’s basic revenue in most places these days. Is it not easy enough for them to figure out who has loud pipes and hand out citations? Oh, and by the way, just because everyone does it doesn’t mean it’s right.

Sophia Loren…would do the right thing

“I would trade all of my tomorrows for one single yesterday.” – Kris Kristofferson

I regret to inform my readers of a tragic loss. Today ultracycling has lost one of its own in a cycling accident. Jure Robic could very well be considered one of the greatest cyclists to ever straddle a bike. He’s won what can be considered not only the toughest cycling race in the world, but arguably the toughest event, period, the famed Race Across America. He won it a record five times. I don’t know much about the details, as the accident happened in Robic’s homeland of Slovenia. He’s survived by a wife and at least one child. In a sport that’s generally riddled with doping allegations, Robic was a clean player. He was loved and envied by all. The very last time I saw Jure was as he rode through Borrego Springs, California back in 2008. He didn’t look like a man in the first hundred miles of a 3,000-mile non-stop race. He was riding with the intensity and voracity of a time trialist. That image will live with me forever. Jure, you will live with me forever.

“I gave up cigarettes for my New Year’s resolution, but it didn’t give up smoking” – Blues Brothers

When I was a kid there was a chicken stand in the country known as Kentucky Fried Chicken. I used to love going there, mainly because I grew up in a Mayberry type of town. We didn’t have fast-food restaurants. Back in those days, Interstate 10 almost went from coast to coast. There were a few breaks. One of those breaks in I-10 was between my town and Baton Rouge. Therefore, Baton Rouge wasn’t the 25-minute drive it is today, it was more like 50 minutes. It was were my parents would do most of the back-to-school shopping. As a kid, I didn’t care much about school shopping. But I sure did love going to Baton Rouge. Why? They had places like McDonalds, Burger King and, yes, Kentucky Fried Chicken. I remember these places as being a real treat. We would only have this once or twice a year. Somewhere along the line, Kentucky Fried Chicken ceased to exist, they started calling it KFC. They tried to sell it down the street by saying kids like to nick everything and shorten it to initials, kind of like BFF. But I got news for you folks, KFC has been around for longer than BFF, and much longer than texting. You might ask yourself why a company with such lucrative branding connected to it change its name. I’ll tell you why. It had the word “fried” in it. Once we decided to become health-conscious as a nation, we couldn’t eat fried food anymore. But you know what we could eat? KFC. Before you start scratching your head, let me help you out. Yeah, we’re that dumb. I told you that to tell you this. KFC is at it again. Here’s why. We’re a nation of dreamers. Hell, we’re Americans, we think anything is possible. You can’t tell us no. We don’t accept no. We want what we want, how we want it and when we want it. And we want it in large quantities. Why? Cause we’re Americans, that’s why. I said it before and I’ll say it again. We love to eat things with total impunity. Tell us what we can eat in unlimited quantities. That’s what we go for. And that’s what Atkins has been selling for years. Have all the bacon you want. Have all the fat you want. Eat protein til you can’t take a dump. We love it. We love Atkins because he tells us what we want to hear. He told us that until his own arteries clogged up and killed him. But you know what? It doesn’t stop us Americans. Now Kentucky Fried Chicken (oh, I’m sorry, KFC) is stealing a page from the Atkins playbook with their new menu item, the KFC Double Down.

Hell, KFC is no dummy. They use a term commonly associated with gambling, yet another addiction of Americans. And we can’t figure out why Europe hates us. For you uninitiated with the Double Down, let me tell you what’s in it. By the way, I’m not making this up. On the bottom you have a deep-fried piece of chicken, followed by cheese, the Colonel’s special sauce, bacon, then another deep-fried piece of chicken. I want to repeat, what you just read is not a typo. This is the actual dish.

The company is banking on this product so much that they’re paying college girls to wear “Double Down” logos on their ass, like Juicy Couture and Pink Couture.

Sophia Loren…ass not for sale

“Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night.” – Bruce Springsteen

Seems like they’ve re-invented the wheel…again. I said 20 years ago around the first time I saw rolling luggage that if we weren’t the laziest people on the planet before, we’ve definitely achieved it now. How lazy do you have to be that you can’t lift up your own luggage and carry it? I remember telling my friend at the airport that day that this was the beginning of the end for fitness. We had found another way to not do something physical. But then it got worse. Not only did big bags have rollers on it because let’s face it, even I can understand a 50 or 60 pound bag having wheels is a good idea. But carry-on luggage with wheels? Are you effing kidding me? We’re literally turning ourselves into veal. Then when I thought it got as bad as it could possibly get, it got worse. Last year, Tallulah, Serena’s daughter, who I get to influence once every other week when she’s living with us, had a book bag. Guess what it came with? That’s right, wheels. Isn’t it bad enough that we’ve cut physical education out of schools? It was once five days a week, then one day a week, then one day a month. In most cases in the public school system, it may be one day a semester or one day a year. Now we’re further harming kids by not even letting them lift their books. A lot of things are different from when I was a kid. We didn’t even have back packs. They used to literally sell a big thick rubber band with a metal hook to wrap around your books to carry them home. Now we have every device in the world to carry more books than ever before. Yet our nation becomes dumber every time I look. I told you that to tell you this. What does this have to do with cycling? Everything, especially if you are talking about performance. There was a time back when modern-day bicycles didn’t even have brakes. As a matter of fact, in the early running of the Tour de France, they couldn’t include the Alps because the riders had no way to break their downhill speed. There was something else different about bikes back then. They all had fixed gears. Put simply, you couldn’t stop peddling. The bike wouldn’t coast. I read an article once from the early 1900s, which came out shortly after the free wheel was introduced. This meant the bike could coast. The wheels would keep turning as the pedals were still. The whole idea behind this article was that riders would become lazy. They would begin to lose the muscles cycling offered for the legs, along with suppleness. You know what? It was right. There was an old practice of the Italian cycling team coaches, and in some cases still today, where cyclists ride only fixed gear bikes in the off season. This was to gain back what we call their spin. As a matter of fact, a great example of a fixed gear bike is the Johnny G Spinner made by Schwinn, which is the bike used in most spinning classes. Was this method of building a stationary bike an accident? No. When Johnny Goldberg invented the spinner, he was into ultracycling. He was looking for a way to stay in shape once the sun went down, without staying outside. I’ve personally been a fan of fixed gear riding in the off season since the early 1980s, when I started riding. It was a method used by some of the better cyclists around New Orleans. I figured I had to adapt pretty quickly to be competitive. It worked. I think as Americans we are always to eager to point a finger when something goes wrong. Why is America the fattest, laziest nation on the planet? It’s easy to point the finger at McDonalds, they’re on every street corner. Maybe we can point to technology. When I was a kid, to watch a different TV program, you had to get off the couch and change the channel. That’s no longer necessary. Every building didn’t have an escalator or elevator. There was a method we used called stairs. If I wanted to get somewhere as a kid, I either hoofed it or rode a bike. We didn’t have Segways.

Sophia Loren…didn't need a rolling book bag