Seems like the time has gotten away from me and it has been too long since I’ve blogged. I was working the Sea Otter race for a week. I stayed in a cheap motel in Salinas that promised wifi in every room, but only had connection in their lobby, which they locked at 8 pm. So I hardly got in from the long day at Sea Otter before wifi access was unavailable. So no blogging from there.

That’s not to say that there was no excitement in that motel: One night somebody stole a bunch of bikes from a trailer in the parking lot, and a couple of nights later, as I arrived in the dark from SO, there were two or three cop cars there, busting some guy for something... They arrested him in handcuffs and towed his truck away. Maybe he was the bike thief coming back for more, and they caught the SOB - I hope so.. I never found out what team it was that lost their bikes, but that was a s***ty thing to have happen to them.

So the Tour of Georgia sounds like it is really a fan’s dream this year. And Discovery team’s dream so far, too. And how about Freddy getting the stage win today. How cool is that? He is such a great guy and works so hard for whatever team he is riding for. He is the ultimate domestique, and now he has a great win under his belt. Go Freddy!

I put up about three pages of images in www.velogal.smugmug.com from the Amateur Road Races down in the boonies of Fort Ord. What is left of the beautiful place now that they have sold out to big development, which is putting up (I was told) about 1400 condominiums there. The construction has decimated so much land and trees, which are the homes for so many wild animals. They have put some kind of poison or something on all the trees, which have turned brown, and have bulldozed everything else. It is really sad to see. And of course, when the housing is built, and people have moved in, then all the beautiful wild creatures, who have called this land home for centuries, will become dangerous pests to the human residents, and will be trapped and killed.

As Aldo Leopold said,”What avail are fourty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?"

More: “The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land. This sounds simple: do we not already sing our love for and obligation to the land of the free and the home of the brave? Yes, but just what and whom do we love?

Certainly not the soil, which we are sending helter-skelter downriver. Certainly not the waters, which we assume have no function except to turn turbines, float barges, and carry off sewage. Certainly not the plants, of which we exterminate whole communities without batting an eye. Certainly not the animals, of which we have already extirpated many of the largest and most beautiful species. A land ethic of course cannot prevent the alteration, management, and use of these 'resources,' but it does affirm their right to continued existence, and, at least in spots, their continued existence in a natural state. "
From Aldo Leopold in The Land Ethic