Fear of Flying

I’ve done plenty of stupid stuff that could have killed me, everything from backcountry skiing after a snowstorm without avalanche gear (or knowledge), to riding a moped on the island of Mykonos, without lights and plastered on some sort of blue drink. Bad ideas, all. But the worst it ever got, the closest I’ve ever come to starring in one of those two-inch stories buried in the back of the New York Times, happened in the Poconos. In the basket of a hot air balloon.

If you’ve ever been ballooning, then you know that there’s basically nothing less extreme—and nothing more peaceful. You ascend silently, borne up by the power of warmed gases, and then you drift along with the wind, in perfect relative stillness, high above the world and its busy little tangle of people and problems. Cars slow to watch, the people inside pointing and going, “Look! A hot-air balloon!” Many people seem to get engaged on balloon rides; perhaps you did, too. This is the story of a balloon ride gone terrifyingly wrong...

[To read the rest, go to The Accidental Extremist, a great site maintained by my pal Christian DeBenedetti.]

Attack of the Lance Trolls!

I had it coming, I guess. About a month ago, I published a little article in Slate that charted the rockier bits of Lance Armstrong's comeback: The testy encounters with the press, the headgames with his own teammates, the crashes and miscues, and just the general sense that things were not necessarily going according to plan. And yes, I did find some similarities between his own ultra-touchy, somewhat narcissistic behavior and that of a certain former Alaska governor.

It went up July 7, during the first week of the Tour. And then everyone flipped out. More than 125 comments, and the majority were, how to put it, highly negative. I was called pathetic, a loser, a "whiner"—a classic Armstrong-fan epithet. I was called other names, too, like "Bob." (Next time, LesterFreeman, try reading before you post.)

Some of the points were well taken. A number of people pointed out that journalist Paul Kimmage, who Armstrong reamed out in a Tour of California press conference, had "compared Armstrong to cancer."

Yep, it's called a metaphor. (Read Kimmage's actual column here.) And it's somewhat understandable that Armstrong would be angry. It's less understandable why he would then turn around and make this Nike ad, which not-so-subtly compares his own critics to....cancer. (Metaphorically, of course.)

Anyway: What's clear is that Lance Armstrong commands a devotion from his fans that is unmatched by any other sports star in memory. He's more than a hero to these people; he's a savior. And to cancer people, of course, he really is a kind of savior, if only by example. I get that. (And in fact, I still give It's Not About The Bike to my friends who get diagnosed.) But his appeal goes way beyond the disease. He's the only cyclist ever to tap into mainstream American sports culture.

The diehard Lance fan is typically a middle-aged male who discovered (or re-discovered) cycling during his hero's 1999-2005 Tour de France reign. It's a wholly different group of people from the geeky-misfit kids who were drawn to the sport in the pre-Lance era, like the kid in Breaking Away who digs bike racing because it is European, exotic and obscure. The Lance fans are closer to the Dale Jr. crowd, with their contempt for "The French" and perfervid America, Fuck-Yeah!-ism.

Subtlety and nuance are lost on this crowd. They see nothing wrong—or even boring—with their man's relentless, grinding domination of the world's hardest bike race, or the fact that in seven years he seemed to have suffered (by my count) exactly four bad days. They're the breed of sports fans who always root for the favorites: for the Yankees when they were good, or the Dallas Cowboys in the '80s. In Breaking Away, they cheer for the college boys, not the Cutters.

With other sports stars, imperfect private lives and off-field boorishness are acknowledged and forgiven. (Or at worst, ignored.) But Lance is not permitted to have flaws. Which is why a sizable army of fans seems to spend lots of time trolling the Webernets for any mention of their lord. If there's the slightest negative connotation towards Armstrong, then Boom! The comments section lights up.

Calm down, folks. It's not the end of the world if your hero has a few crashes, gives a pissy interview, or gets in a dust-up with his younger, stronger, faster teammate. It's part of the sport. Not everyone has to love him, either. How he deals with it—and how you deal with it—is what's important.

Which brings me back to my piece, which wasn't nearly as harsh as the commenters perceived it to be. The Palin comparison and the cheeky "Jerkstrong" headline (sorry, I couldn't resist) were provocative but meant to convey a serious point: If Armstrong wants to have a future in public life, as he seems to, then he's going to have to toughen up and learn to deal with (or at least accept) criticism. You can't be that thin-skinned. You can't have that much drama, all the time. And if the cycling press is too tough for you, then you're going to have problems in the real world. Is all I'm sayin'.

Singletrack in the City

Just out in Mountain Bike magazine: My feature on Manhattan's first legal mountain bike trails, way up yonder where the wild things roam...

The backstory: Back when I was a 21-year-old Park Slope "Manny" (long story), I used to sneak into the "backcountry" of Prospect Park for a quick mountain-bike ride, every once in a while. It wasn't much: scrappy, eroded trails, and you never knew who was going to jump out from behind a tree. But there some sweet rocky sections, a few rideable staircases that didn't seem to have been maintained since Olmsted's day. Then some young teacher got knifed for his bike back there, and that was the end of my urban mountain biking.

Mountain bikes were banned from NYC parks almost as soon as the mountain bike was invented—understandably, in the case of, say, Central Park. But Central is not the only park in town, and even as it was restored and renovated, other city parks continued to go feral, particularly in Upper Manhattan.

Four years ago, a group of mountain bikers persuaded NYC Parks to let them "adopt" a section of Highbridge Park, a narrow strip of hillside woodlands near the approaches to the GW Bridge. It looked like something out of the movie Warriors: junkies, homeless encampments (cum drug dens), abandoned cars, wild dogs. The bikers' group, NYC MTB, pulled out literally tons of trash and spent thousands of man-hours forging trails out of the urban wilderness. Almost as an afterthought, they built a dirt-jump park for the kids -- and it's turned into a mecca for helmetless punks from Manhattan, Bronx, even Jersey. I like to sit there sometimes and watch the kids pull spins, even flips—stuff I'd never dare attempt now.

It's a cool place to visit. Take the #1 train to Dyckman Street (be sure to eat at the pork-rice-and-beans joints right by the subway). Better yet, take your bike up there. Or check out Max Breslow's photos of the place--which has already hosted a handful of races, including a Thursday-night informal series. And then there's Yonathan Arava's superb documentary, "The Highbridge Project," worth it for the groovetastic soundtrack alone.