when i run into friends off the bike, they are always busting my chops.  "how's my favorite bolshevik, hmmm?  still mad that about the nexis of cycling and corporate culture?"  they don't know the half of it.  the freedom of cycling is being crushed by an attempt to conflate corporate branding and capitalistic business and organizing principles with the rights of the people to be free, to ride their machines, and not be hassled by the man.  you want to take a good, hard look at the following from the local promoter's listserv...

This weekend at Tyson's we had a possible incident where one of the racers from a team other than NCVC, the promoting team, "volunteered" to help out in transcribing the results and may have attempted to place a teammate's name into a results slot that the officials couldn't identify the rider even though the teammate was most probably a DNF. In our final results, we've listed the rider as a DNF, as had the officials. But the lesson we learned that we're passing on to all our registrars and to you is don't allow persons not associated with the promoting team from "assisting" in the transcribing of the results no matter how attractive an offer of help might seem in the rush to get the results posted.

now i love racing my bike, but it won't take much more stuff like that to put me off permanently.  i can't imagine the motivation for something like this.  i can imagine, fairly accurately, what the person who did this thinks about his fellow cyclists.  i'm not interested in "outing" this individual but i want to tie this together with the material from the top of the post.  given how debased a lot of stuff is now, you can lose perspective.  it seems to me that if people aren't taking drugs to win at the amateur level, or cribbing free laps they don't deserve or altering results, our peers are calling that a victory.  that's not what i would call a victory.  the vision i have for cycling and the social order is considerably more radical than that, but given where people are, we've got a long way to go.

what's the moral of the story?  it can be found here...

George Hanson: You know, this used to be a helluva good country. I can't understand what's gone wrong with it.

Billy: Man, everybody got chicken, that's what happened. Hey, we can't even get into like, a second-rate hotel, I mean, a second-rate motel, you dig? They think we're gonna cut their throat or somethin'. They're scared, man.

George Hanson: They're not scared of you. They're scared of what you represent to 'em.

Billy: Hey, man. All we represent to them, man, is somebody who needs a haircut.

George Hanson: Oh, no. What you represent to them is freedom.

Billy: What the hell is wrong with freedom? That's what it's all about.

George Hanson: Oh, yeah, that's right. That's what's it's all about, all right. But talkin' about it and bein' it, that's two different things. I mean, it's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. Of course, don't ever tell anybody that they're not free, 'cause then they're gonna get real busy killin' and maimin' to prove to you that they are. Oh, yeah, they're gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom. But they see a free individual, it's gonna scare 'em.

Billy: Well, it don't make 'em runnin' scared.

George Hanson: No, it makes 'em dangerous.

i want to be free.....free to ride my machine....and not be hassled by the man....

-sg