In San Francisco we used to call bike lanes “double-park lanes.” Cars used them almost as much as bikes. That’s pretty much true everywhere. But Brookline MA has decided to try to put an end to it with a $50 fine. As they say in S.F., which has a $100 fine against bike-lane parking, Good luck with that!

In Los Angeles, where they don’t even have bike lanes, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa held a first-ever bike summit after he was knocked off his bike and required 8 screws to patch together his right elbow. Good idea. LA cyclists were all over the mayor.

A New Hampshire guy wants to set the world hour record for a wheelie. Guess how far he plans to ride on that back wheel in an hour, then click here to see if you’re in the ballpark.

The story behind Floyd Landis’ $5 bike.

The story behind Precious, the fundraising cross-country bike with real-time Web connectivity.

Whistler Crankworx’s impact on the B.C. economy: More than 100,000 visitors, $10 million. Most notably, mountain biking at Whistler has eclipsed that other extreme Canadian sport, golf.

Meanwhile, Oakridge OR is banking on mountain biking for its own local stimulus package.

Early heads up: S.F. Bike Expo, one of our favorites, is returning to the Cow Palace Saturday, November 6th.

Congrats to Sheila Moon and her clothing line, moving from Oakland to Emeryville (IKEA-land) with a third more square footage. New address: 5900 Hollis Street, Unit T2. Check it out!

To the surprise of no one, former Lance teammates are implicating him in a culture of doping.

To the surprise of no one, Lance’s attorney is trying to cast Armstrong as the victim. But — no surprise here either — Joe Papp is having none of it.

To the surprise of no one, Lance himself continues to stonewall. But when he puts forward syllogisms like, “You can’t prosecute somebody for something they didn’t do — normally,” you have to wonder if he wasn’t just doping but smokin’ something as well. We repeat — fess up, Lance, and we can all move on.

A useful public service from Cozy Beehive, preserving the Floyd Landis — ABC Nightline interview before the links disappear.

And the crackdown continues on the little guys, this time Brit Dan Staite.

The Daily News says a grand jury has subpoenaed documents from Trek, Lance Armstrong’s longtime sponsor, regarding reports Armstrong’s team sold his bikes for money to support doping.

The Times reports “a significant step” — which is about as emphatic as the Gray Lady gets — in the Floyd Landis allegations against Armstrong and others re endemic doping on the professional cycling tour.

It looks like investigators are adopting the classic anti-corruption strategy: Follow the money.

Quote:

Officials involved in the case said the investigators were especially interested in the people who helped finance the Postal Service squad, which included Armstrong.

More links:

Hampton Stevens on “Why it’s good that Lance Armstrong’s career is over.”

ESPN’s Bonnie D. Ford catches Lance in an apparent contradiction over his part ownership of Tailwind.

From the story:

By that fall, Mr. Landis had decided to appeal the drug test, he said, because he hadn’t taken testosterone during the Tour. That, he believed, meant the whole testing protocol must have been scientifically unsound.

The implication here is that Landis, for all his earlier transgressions and current admissions, was disqualified on phony grounds. If so, it would confirm a suspicion we’ve long held that doping authorities regulate by choice rather than the book — playing favorites along the way. This would suggest a system of corruption extending far beyond the riders.

Why the UCI (governing body) would target Landis is a bit of a head-scratcher, though. His come-from-behind performance was a ride for the ages. One can only speculate that some undisclosed pressures or broken promises came to bear in the UCI’s action. (All this assuming that Landis is being truthful.)

By now, Landis has no reason to deceive on this key point. He’s not going to polish his image on this one contention. We’ll be intrigued to see if this aspect gets explained or explored further in the investigation.

Obviously the series is timed for highest point of impact, the first day of the Tour. Speculation immediately is focusing on its impact on Team Radio Shack, which includes Lance and several holdovers from the era in question. Some suggest that Lance will withdraw, or that the team will be forced out by stringent oversight.

We think Team Radio Shack and Lance will continue through the Tour as though nothing has happened. We also think they’ll be squeaky clean throughout. Which means lowering expectations, because a clean Team Radio Shack will be in no position to challenge for leadership roles in this year’s Tour.

We reiterate that Lance’s announcement that this will be his final Tour was a calculated attempt to deflect attention from the doping allegations and redirect focus to his ride as a triumphant farewell rock-star tour. Although the Journal‘s series elaborates on several key facets of doping, naming names and identifying dates, it does not constitute a legal action that would require either TRS or cycling’s governing body, the UCI, to withdraw from competition.

Although we’ve gotten pushback for being naive (see comments), we still think Lance will — at the right time and place — own up to the doping years. There are too many witnesses, too many associates involved, for the scandal to avoid litigation. Rather than dragging everything out in court and risking permanent blackening of his reputation, Lance will choose an “everybody did it” defense. As Richard Nixon famously put it, “It’s not the crime that kills you, it’s the cover up.”

Around the Web:

Cozy Beehive: Testimonies in the Lance Armstrong Doping Crisis.

Joe Papp: Books, Angry Motorists, Greg and Lance.

Bonnie Ford, ESPN: Crunch Time for Lance.

VeloNews: Bikes sold to finance doping.

Bruyneel acted nonplussed after the Giro snub, saying the team hadn’t planned on riding anyway. The Vuelta rejection came out of the blue, though: “I am not only surprised, I am speechless,” Bruyneel was quoted as saying. No one who follows the effervescent and voluble TRS manager on Twitter finds “speechless” a credible adjective, but the point was well taken.

You have to wonder if there isn’t something else going on here. With Bruyneel and Lance implicated by Floyd Landis as a doping cabal, and with both under investigation in the U.S. and abroad, is a message being sent? Might the message be, put bluntly, to prove that you’re bringing a clean game to the event?

Bruyneel said he was told TRS was not asked to Spain because “other teams offered better options on a sporting level.” Bruyneel said he interpreted this to mean TRS was not considered competitive enough. That’s not how we read it. If the director had meant competitive, he would have said so. We interpret “sporting” as “fair,” “above reproach,” “ethical.”

In any case, Bruyneel’s defiant response may not have been the best advisable, given the current cloud over TRS. He and whatever PR handlers he answers to might want to look to the BP fiasco in the Gulf of Mexico for pointers. You’re not going to win any sympathy whining and sputtering under pressure. Nor are you going to endear yourself to event organizers with pointless threats that skirt the real issue.

We may have to live with speculation for awhile. But if there is anything to be read between the lines, it’s that Bruyneel and Lance — whether fairly or not — are considered untrustworthy by at least some influential segments of the cycling establishment.

In his talk with USA Today, LeMond rightly notes his reputation has taken a hit because of his allegations against Lance Armstrong and the cycling establishment.

But we appreciate his pointing out that jealousy had nothing to do with it.

We consider both LeMond and Armstrong to be American icons — heroes of cycling and professional sports in general. But like fans of all sports, from track to baseball, we’re dismayed at rampant doping, steroid use and other synthetic enhancement.

Jealousy has nothing to do with it, of course, any more than jealousy would motivate our opposition to oil spills based on us not being billionaires.

Our motivation is simply that sports should be all about fair competition. Otherwise you’ve got the moral equivalent of fascism — corporate-based governance over a system designed to support only those who ally with corruption while eliminating those who resist.

A spouse or former spouse is always the weakest link in a coverup.

We still believe that if, as mounting evidence suggests, Lance did actually dope, he’d be wisest to go public as soon as possible. To curry sympathy while he can with an everybody-did-it defense.

Otherwise it’s Barry Bonds all over again.

Since Nixon and Watergate, the abiding principle of public reputation has been, “It’s not the act that kills you, it’s the coverup.”

Further developments in the Chronicles:

We’ve discussed this backstory before, but Jonathan Vaughters is no friend of Lance Armstrong’s. So it perhaps is no surprise that his Garmin-Transitions team will cooperate with authorities investigating Floyd Landis’ doping accusations against Armstrong.

Landis’ allegations have forced the inquiry to go global.

Landis’ cooperation may be pivotal in cracking the code of silence.

For one thing there’s the whole biological passport issue.

As Francesco De Bonis found out.

Landis’ confession has led him and Bahati to part ways.

Cozy Beehive’s take.

BikePure’s resolution.

It’s unclear if Novitzky’s pursuit is related, but the USADA (United States Anti-Doping Agency) has stated it is looking into the Armstrong case.

We still await an official investigation, which would include depositions, subpoenas and other legal procedures implying criminality.

Other developments:

New York Times parses out the denials of Armstrong associates, which seem less emphatic than in the past. This is about as close as a journalist that knows something which cannot yet be printed can come to code for “watch this space.”

Bicycling contends “The answer is coming” as to whether Lance doped. Not quite so hedged as the NYT. But there’s still lots of ground to be covered before this gets anywhere beyond murky accusations, carefully worded denials and cheap talk.

To the surprise of no one, the cycling regulatory body UCI is digging in its institutional heels. UCI director Pat McQuaid says $100,000 from Lance Armstrong represents no conflict of interest. The money figures into Floyd Landis’ charge that Armstrong in effect bribed the UCI to keep a positive doping test secret.

Full UCI press releases here.

A brief partial historical recap of previous doping allegations against Lance: “Landis, however, is just the latest in a series of former Armstrong friends to turn foe. And reports suggest others may substantiate Landis’s claims, if he, or Novitsky, manages to convince them to testify.”

All of which may be contributing to Lance still not knowing what his pre-Tour racing schedule is.

Is today’s Giro time trial further proof that a post-doping era is finally taking hold?

Maybe not.

WIN A FREE COPY!!!!

Plus the Tour (of Cali) would give American cycling fans a showcase to rival that of the Giro and Tour (de France) internationally. Instead of the biting cold and wet of February, the May weather would be spectacularly unrainy. Lance Armstrong and his new Team Radio Shack would be on hand to galvanize America’s racing crowd, Lance teammate Levi Leipheimer would take home a fourth straight title, and the U.S. would finally have a place in the pantheon of professional cycling’s grand stage races.

Oops …

Instead we got:

Rain in the early stages, including a deluge in the run from Davis to Santa Rosa. Versus television coverage that pretty much sucked from too few cameras — when they were working, that is (that Davis-Santa Rosa stage went completely untelevised due to technical problems). Compounding it all, Versus actually cut away from the finish of one stage to televise opening foo-fah of a hockey playoff game.

Even Lance tweeted in protest.

Then, just as the race entered its decisive stages, there was the Landis bombshell accusing Armstrong and the marquee U.S. competitors in the Amgen Tour of systematic doping. The King promptly crashed out of the race entirely, leaving Levi without the support (and perhaps less will) to succeed in his valiant quest for a fourth title.

At the same time, the Giro was proving to be one of the greatest Grand Tours of all time, with spectacular crashes, thrilling solos, day-to-day lead changes, brutal climbs and all sorts of strategic permutations keeping cycling fans glued to Universal Sports’ live coverage day after day. Yes, there was live daily coverage. The Amgen Tour planners undoubtedly hadn’t counted on that one either.

Nor has the Giro, so far at least, been rocked by doping disqualifications. If there had been a contest at the beginning of May with the question, “A major doping scandal will strike either the Giro d’Italia or the Amgen Tour of California. Pick which one correctly and receive the chance to win an autographed copy of Lance Amstrong’s “It’s Not About the Bike” and Floyd Landis’ “Positively False: The Real Story of How I Won the Tour” — no one would have won.

Instead, the cycling world is buzzing about the Giro being the first “post-doping era” grand tour.

About the only clear advantage Cali offered was better commercials — and the commentaries of vintage cycling sportscasters Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen, the gold standard of the sport (even if Liggett did refer to the brown haze hanging over Los Angeles, without irony, as “fog”). But even those two could only do so much with an entire broadcast showing a single camera focused on a rain-besotted finish line, cutaways to hockey, and a scandal-battered cast of characters at tour’s end.

Trash in the non–drug sense.

By the time yesterday’s final stage rolled around, all the air had been sucked right out of the Amgen Tour of California. Everyone seemed eager to get out of there and go home. It didn’t help that the cycling world was still buzzing about the 15th stage of the Giro earlier in the day, where Cadel Evans and Ivan Basso duked it out on punishing 15-percent grades up Monte Zoncolan.

The Giro took time out today for a rest day before resuming its epic final week of hellacious mountainous flagellation on wheels. If as the Giro concludes the cycling world continues to talk about the 2010 Amgen Tour of California, it will be for all the wrong reasons. For its organizers, 2011 can’t come too soon.