That's it, children. Gather around. You won't find our underground lizard overlords so amusing when they're eating your parents and making you farm for flies.


Things we like about this photo

• It's an animal on a bike!


• The bike has disc wheels (and isn't made of carbon-fibre)


• Its subject is LITERALLY the only dongaloid along the length of the Thames who isn't being a "living statue"

Apparently Floyd's house didn't burn down at all. It was fairly unlikely, really, but a bit of rumour mongering is always a giggle.

Easy update courtesy of David Brower, Landis's unofficial information minister, and probably a jolly good guy despite the company he has been known to keep.

Monday:
Probably something about folding bikes. Birdy would be much more manageable adversaries than the people we've been antagonising recently.

Some people have told us that Floyd Landis's house has burned down in those American fire things everyone is banging on about. We really hope this is true! Especially those rumours that his Tour de France "winning" jersey was one of the things that was turned to ash.

There's nothing like laughing at the misfortune of a bankrupt man whose career is in tatters.

Good old Victorian bicycles, the mainstay of every cycling-obsessed student's Cultural History essays. Women found freedom through the bicycle, which led to them getting the vote! The great class dichotomy, as cycling evolved from a hobby for the rich to a sport for the poor! That short story by H.G. Wells!

We're not sure why we had this page bookmarked on our work PC, since we already amassed huge library fines earlier this year as a result of taking out hundreds of books about the origins of sport and cycling, and really don't need to read anything more on the subject for as long as we live.

Incidentally, prior research is also the reason why we haven't even read the thing we're linking to! Relax, it's Lazy Update Tuesday, where nobody has to make an effort. Don't even click the link, just scroll on by.

It's probably not really "Candid Camera", since only Americans have ever seen it and is these days just used as a phrase used to describe the exciting genre of "being a complete dickhead to people and filming it without them knowing". Because you're probably not American, you can just imagine Beadle's About instead.


Still imagining Jeremy Beadle? If you don't feel completely shafted by the standard of our TV presenters after watching this, there's something wrong with you. Fearne "Kitten Fart" Cotton isn't even in the same league, before you start emailing us.


The basic premise for the pank is that Mario Cipollini and a friend who's a bit too pixelated for us to identify are out for a ride, followed by a team director in the most emasculating car ever. Cipo is told that his bikes have been stolen by some people in a rubbish campervan, which then drives past. HILARITY ENSUES?!


You might want to fast-forward through the bits where the former World Champion picks up a boulder, only to demonstrate that he throws like a girl. He's probably had sex with every supermodel in Italy, so you're not allowed to laugh at him.


Trust Italy to make a hidden camera prank show that's presented by a woman in her underwear and takes things so far that the reveal still hasn't been done even after the celebrity has knocked out two incognito members of the production staff and is brandishing a blunt object as a weapon.

Official rating:
10/10. Here's the link so you can watch it yourselves.

The top two Queen songs we never, ever want to hear at a cycling event ever again:

• 1. Bicycle Race
• 2. We Are The Champions

Other Queen songs we never, ever want to hear at a cycling event ever again:

• All of the rest of them

Lazy Update Tuesday in all its glory.

Today is "Still A Bit Hungover But We Really Should Update The Website Anyway Monday"! We don't really have many of these Mondays, so when they do come around they're very exciting.

Incredibly, we went all the way to Newport just to check out Future Revolution and the new "feladrom" that the people of "Cymru" are bragging about. Neither were as good as Manchester's version, and we're not just saying that because we've gotten a bit nostalgic for the north all of a sudden.

But!


There were lots of dernies! Craig Mclean was riding one at one point, which was an obvious highlight. If the too-loud music and too-loud commentators were making you feel a little queasy, the introduction of several too-loud dernies and a lot of motor fumes in a not very well ventilated space should have have perked you right up.


Where "feladrom" is positively endearing, "vella drome" is just irritating. No red Sharpies were available for us to correct the spelling on all of the flight cases, worst luck.

And that's about all we saw. At one point we went and had a bit of a sit down far away from the noise and ate chocolate buttons and texted people who were more interesting, and then after that we just read a book.

Tomorrow
Photos from the Cycle Show! Plugging a camera into the computer and indiscretely updating the site from work is rapidly becoming our favourite extreme sport.

A short film about leisure cycling! Paid for by the CTC and the British Rail Film Board, so you know it's going to be fun. It's in two parts, which are both here even though we were tempted to split it into two updates so we don't have to frantically search through our bookmarks at 5.30pm tomorrow trying to find anything at all to write about.



Tuesday is rapidly becoming the new Monday. It won't be long before we give up and just move the whole site to dopefreefriday.com

That's what the media does say.

Ahh, that was a nice easy update. Maybe we'll even backdate this to the coming Monday so we can have the day off. Lovely.

Surprisingly, there isn't one saying "Thou shalt not covet thy team-mate's bloodbag."


Pat McQuaid is already planning a way to bring these into the pro peloton.

You've got to hand it to Slipstream for their services to American fashion: With their peculiar kit they've been doing their damnedest to make sure that Lance's long socks and Floyd's horrible Phonak jersey appeared comparitively pleasant to look at.

Deeming it impossible for anyone to produce something worse that the kit that was made by a professional designer, they've been running a competition to allow the general public pick their kit ofr 2008. We wouldn't trust the general public to pick their favourite number without accidentally making the choice that resulted in half of the human race declaring all-out war on the other, so it's a very bold move for Slipstream.

The competition is now closed, and the winner picked. We've not had an official press release from them or anything, but word on the street is that this is the successful design:


It's not too bad, actually. Maybe you can sometimes rely on the general public, even if it's only in situations when you'd like the most nonthreatening option to be chosen. It's definitely something we'd wear. Especially if they sent us the full kit for free for "reviewing" purposes. Hint hint.

Look at the wide, child-bearing hips on the thing though. It must've been designed by one of those fat birds who're always riding the track.

Stefan Schumacher has been excused for his peculiar pre-Worlds blood test results because he had diarrhoea. And also because Germany is at the center of a campaign to completely discredit anybody whose name appears when they type cycling + drugs into Google, and so they can't possibly have anything bad come from internal German Federation tests taken on the nation's most impressive rising talent. But mainly the thing about poo.

We've always liked Stefan. He looks a bit odd, but he's also the boy who knocked Hincapie off in the final day of the 2006 ENECO Tour to take the overall, then looked upset on the podium while we were jumping for joy in front of the TV at home. And now we like him even more, since he's joined the school of thought that suggests any excuse is instantly credible so long as you make it so embarrassing that you wouldn't possibly have made it up.

Well done Schumi, but we've been doing this for years. In our mid-teens we managed to miss lessons for every single teacher in secondary school by using variations on a story about a penis getting stuck in a jam jar. And in university we managed to miss a whole week of lectures by claiming we'd been locked to a trash barge by a transexual prostitute in Amsterdam.

If this whole situation doesn't spark hundreds of cycling fans worldwide phoning in sick to work describing how they're doing "dribbley bum wees" then we really despair. Take it, use it. It really works.