Just more pics

Just pics

Athletes and the edges they find to be competetive

Ever since science and chemistry has shown we can manipulate what we put into our bodies, we have known of performance enhancing drugs. Eddy Merckx even dabbled and he is the greatest cyclist in the world whom everybody loves. Baseball players take steroids and yeah they look bad for it but life goes on. I am just wondering what the big deal is for the sport of cycling. Everyone gets all bent out of shape if there is a doper. The doper basically loses his soul and everything else for doping, and becomes a disgrace to the mere name of cycling.
Why?
EPO doesn't seem to be killing off athletes too quickly. It doesn't even give you man boobs and shrinkage problems like 'roids does. The only increased risk is in the thickness of blood, increasing the probability of things like clotting, thus heart attack, etc. Yet, we don't see athletes dropping like flies from this, or anything else like contaminated blood.

I'm just saying that we have adopted and accepted performance enhancements like gatorade and protein shakes, even creatine and 'sportslegs' to help us go faster, among other things like what bsn puts out. If you apply an sort of balancing with blood doping, ofttimes the ends justify the means, that is all I am saying. I can see why professional athletes, with the resources available, would use these things, not considering legal accountability into the equation. Purely with the drug involved, the rewards far outweigh the risk in my opinion.

As for my opinion on certain contemporary athletes, I feel badly for everyone. There are those that don't dope yet will probably never see the podium. There are others who do dope to keep their job or their competitive edge, to stay in the race. They know all the other competitive racers are doing it, its just a matter of who is going to get caught and who isn't. So why are we looking at anyone with scorn? Why do we wish the worst for those who get caught? Their career is seemingly over anyway.
In all honesty, I have been curious as to the effects EPO or simple blood transfusions have on my body. Take my blood out when there is a ton of oxygen in it, store it, recover, then put it back in right in time for competition and see how fast and how far I can go. I don't think I'm at risk for blood clotting already, so I would feel pretty safe if a doctor told me there is no concern.

I'm just tired of all the talk of doping in sports. Maybe its just the media or maybe its more but the scandal and the hype and all the allegations and stories and 'he said she said' mumbo jumbo is what is bad for a sport, not the doping in and of itself. Doping doesn't make a person bad, its all the media coverage and opinion that make them look bad. What do you expect from a normal human being when put on the spot? You really expect everyone of these humans to tell the truth and rat out their team, doctors, coaches, sponsors, etc? Give me a break.

Happy New Year! Congratulations on being an idiot!

So two hours before the new year came, my children, my wife and my mother-in-law were playing hide-and-seek in the basement of my first home (not that I have any others, just pointing it out early so I make myself clear later....clear as mud that is).
One hiding place was in the boys' closet where it was discovered that the carpet was pretty damp, nay soaked under foot. Sarah and I already knew we had some sort of leak next door to the boys room in the basement bathroom. I say the bathroom yet the leak was coming down into the bathroom from the upstairs bathroom.

When I first saw it I told myself it couldn't have been the two newly installed toilets I just installed. After that 'man moment' I couldn't take a blow like that to my ego, so I came up with other conclusions. The conclusions I came to ignored me until I could no longer ignore reality on New Years Eve. I busted through the drywall and discovered the awful truth: the toilet exporter was leaking. I called my DIYer friend/hometeacher (thanks Curtis) in the ward to get his perspective and guidance. He always makes me feel better about things and he came through for me on this one. According to him its a common installation problem to either break the wax ring while installing, or install the wrong size/model depending on if the toilet will be sitting on tile, if the wax ring will be sitting on the same level, etc.

My hometeacher also makes everything sound so darn easy. He is building a house basically by himself that, when he sells, should make him at least 100% profit. I realized this and allowed Sarah to call a plumber and look at the faulty installation from a professional perspective. I had the wrong size wax ring installed. So you live, you learn, you clean up the toilet water, right? Then replace the carpet padding, drywall and pay the plumber even though he showed more butt-crack than should be allowed in a tasteful rated "R" movie.

I have many thoughts run through my head as the man of the house and owner of a house. Not the least of these is my relentless comparison in how I stack up to what I learned a man should be from my childhood model found in my dad. I always use him as a baseline in how I am doing as a man, father, husband, son, etc. I know he isn't the model in everything, yet he is a good baseline to start from, especially in the man category. He could build, fix, create, replace and DIY on any aspect of a home, yard, toy, game or tree. When I think of how I am coming along in this category I think, "Hey, at least I know what a hammer is! Wait, claw hammer, roofing hammer, ball-peen hammer, tack hammer! Fine, I DON'T know! You happy?!"

So happy new year to me and the ones I try to provide for ay?