is stoked.

He鈥檚 almost always stoked鈥攈e even signs his emails 鈥淪tay stoked, Doug.鈥� But today he is especially stoked, because we鈥檙e skiing a foot of freshly fallen snow at one of his favorite resorts, 鲍迟补丑鈥檚 Powder Mountain. I follow Fish through a line of evergreens onto a wide-open, nearly untracked slope, making effortless turns all the way down.

鈥淏est run of the year!鈥� he says at the bottom, giddy and out of breath. The other two in our foursome agree: Kevin Mitchell, the general manager of Powder Mountain, and a guy named Erik who has tagged along. Apparently, he鈥檚 some sort of tech entrepreneur. 鈥淭hat was like heli-skiing!鈥� Erik exclaims as we wait for a shuttle to drive us back up the mountain.

At the top, Mitchell peels off and heads back to work. Erik also vanishes, leaving me with Fish. 鈥淎nother lap?鈥� he asks. Obviously. We鈥檙e supposed to be doing an interview, but that would kill the stoke. Later I鈥檒l learn why Fish has millions of reasons to be stoked today, but for now there鈥檚 pow to be shredded.

Doug Fish is 67, with a wavy-gravy mane of white hair and a matching beard. A long-time ski-industry marketing guy, he鈥檚 also the founder of something called the Indy Pass, an unconventional alliance of small, independent resorts that has unexpectedly become the hottest ticket in skiing.

The Indy Pass entitles holders to ski two days at each of more than 180 smaller resorts. Launched in 2019, the pass initially cost $199 for adults and $99 for kids. A family of four could ski all season for less than the cost of a single Epic or Ikon Pass, the 鈥渕egapasses鈥� offered by Vail Resorts and Alterra Mountain Company, respectively, the two corporate giants that dominate the ski-resort industry. 鈥淲e鈥檙e kind of the opposite of Vail,鈥� Doug tells me, understating the point considerably.

The Indy Pass is aimed at skiers who aren鈥檛 interested in racking up 30-day听 seasons at ultra-expensive, big-name resorts like Vail or Deer Valley. They don鈥檛 need to be whisked uphill on high-speed chairlifts to ski wide, groomed runs with more traffic than the New Jersey Turnpike. They just want to have fun on a pretty, un-crowded mountain.

The pass wasn鈥檛 terribly popular initially. The first winter, 2019鈥�20, pass holders clocked all of 9,000 skier visits to the forty-some resorts on the pass. (Vail Resorts alone recorded nearly 13 million skier days that year.) But then two things happened: the pandemic hit, and everyone went skiing.

The following year, the COVID-19 winter of 2020鈥�21, the big resorts on the Epic and Ikon passes got maxed out. Images of serpentine lift lines and miles-long traffic jams filled social media. Staffing shortages made a day on the slopes feel like flying Spirit Airlines, and savvy skiers began eyeing the smaller, quirkier resorts left behind by industry consolidation. Indy caught on. Pass sales grew tenfold, and dozens more resorts signed up. (I bought one for $259 in 2022, when Indy offered a discount to Epic and Ikon holders.) Fish started to think that his crazy startup might work.

The Indy business model is simple. When someone buys a pass鈥攏ow priced at $399 for adults, $199 for kids鈥攖he money goes into a big pot. Show up at a partner resort to redeem one of your two ski days and that resort receives a percentage of its daily walk-up lift-ticket price, known as the yield, from the big pot of money. Indy pays out 85听 percent of what it takes in back to the resorts, using the rest to cover overhead like credit-card-processing fees, staffing, and customer service.

It鈥檚 still a shoestring operation. 鈥淩ight now our assets consist of four laptops and a Toyota 4Runner,鈥� Fish tells me during a chairlift ride between powder runs.

As the day progresses, the wind picks up and we seek shelter in the trees. Despite his years, Fish keeps charging. 鈥淚t might be steeper over here, let鈥檚 check it out!鈥� he yells before disappearing into a gladed bowl. A few minutes later, I watch him bounce off a buried stump and cartwheel into several feet of powder. 鈥淚鈥檓 all right,鈥� he says. 鈥淢aybe my knee.鈥� The charging continues.

After a couple more runs, we head to the Powder Keg, a cozy on-mountain bar that鈥檚 buzzing. We find seats near a live band. A woman is dancing to 鈥淟ovely Day.鈥澨� Everybody鈥檚 happy. We drink pilsners and relive the day. It鈥檚 skiing.

I drive home, still stoked.

The post Can the Indy Pass Save Skiing from the Ikon and Epic Pass Hordes? appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

I heard the rumbling before I saw anything. My first thought was that it might be a military jet dipping low through the alpine valley, as sometimes happened. But that didn鈥檛 make sense; it had been snowing all day, and clouds still hung over the Elk Mountains of Colorado, just outside the ski-resort town of Crested Butte.

Late in the afternoon, after alpine skiing all day, I鈥檇 decided to go for a quick cross-country jaunt on one of my favorite trails, a forest road leading to an old ghost town now used as a biological-research station in summer. In winter the road is closed to vehicles, and it鈥檚 a fun four-mile out-and-back ski. I was pushing it, but figured I鈥檇 make it back by dark.

At the time, I lived in the East and had little notion of what can happen when new snow falls on top of old snow in big, steep mountains. I clicked in and followed the tracks, gliding through stands of aspens and, without realizing, crossing two active avalanche paths along the way.

Eventually, the trail emerged into a big meadow, right at the base of Gothic Mountain, so named because its rocky flanks resemble cathedral buttresses and drop steeply down into the valley. It鈥檚 only 12,000-some feet high, not much by Colorado standards, but it鈥檚 one of my favorite peaks, nature鈥檚 answer to Chartres. I started across the meadow, planning to tag the edge of the ghost town and then head back.

滨鈥檝别 loved cross-country skiing since I was in third grade. Even as a little kid, I preferred the quiet of the woods to launching off jumps at Greek Peak, our local alpine hill in upstate New York. At the time, in our comfortable university town, it wasn鈥檛 great socially to have parents who were getting divorced. I got sent to the principal鈥檚 office a lot. The snowy woods held more appeal than the playground.

What鈥檚 that sound?

My eyes moved up the flanks of Gothic. The entire side of the mountain, a vast snowy bowl, seemed to be moving, as if all the snow had decided to flow downhill at once, from top to bottom. A cloud formed at the leading edge of the slide, billowing up like the foam of a breaking wave. Oh right, I thought: This is an avalanche. I鈥檓 actually seeing one. Shit.

The cloud billowed higher and the roaring got louder as the snow funneled down to a narrow choke point right above a cliff face. For some reason I expected it to stop there, but of course it didn鈥檛. The funnel concentrated the slide鈥檚 energy, and the river of snow poured over the cliff wall with unbelievable force, like water blasting out of a dam. It kept going, plowing through the trees now, heading in my general direction. I took five frantic strides back up the trail, but it was clear the avalanche was too big to outrun if it had the momentum to reach me. I stopped and watched it come.

This was not your ordinary release; it was a massive deluge. A person caught in it would have no chance. I felt ordinary and small, like a wild animal that knows, deep inside, that Nature doesn鈥檛 care whether it lives or dies.

I was experiencing what the University of California at Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner defines as awe: 鈥淏eing in the presence of something vast that transcends our current understanding of the world.鈥� That it did. Keltner says that awe is at the root of religious feeling and creative inspiration; it鈥檚 essential, he believes, to maintaining our emotional equilibrium. We need this connection to something larger鈥攖o things we can鈥檛 understand.

Awe has fallen on hard times lately, in part because we can all witness such wonders鈥攁valanches, giant waves, breaching whales鈥攐n our phones. I didn鈥檛 have a phone with me that day, or a camera. But I can replay the memory as vividly as if it happened yesterday.

The snow cloud billowed across the valley, pellets of ice stinging my face. I turned away to breathe, bracing myself. Would the river of white reach me? Or would it lose momentum first? It petered out on the flats, but the flying snow took a while to settle. It was getting dark, but I could see the trail well enough to follow the tracks back toward the trailhead, crossing those other avalanche pathways I didn鈥檛 know were there. Eventually, I could see the lights coming on in big ski houses, twinkling between the trees. My car was the only one left in the parking lot.

The post Nothing Prepares You for Seeing an Avalanche with Your Own Eyes appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

Out in 鲍迟补丑鈥檚 barren West Desert, past the hazardous-waste landfill and the military bombing range, on the far side of the Great Salt Lake, sits a silent, mysterious structure that will make a great ruin someday. Scratch that: it already is one.

The three-story industrial building was hastily erected in the late 1980s, at a cost of $60 million, to house a pumping station with an urgent task: to suck water out of the Great Salt Lake and spew it into the desert flats farther west. The lake was then at record-high levels, threatening to flood railway lines, 颅interstate highways, and farmland. The pumps were in operation for about two years before nature took over and the lake receded on its own.

More than three decades later, the Great Salt Lake has the opposite problem鈥攖oo little water. Twenty years into a once-in-a-millennium drought, exacerbated by the 颅effects of climate change, the lake level has declined to record lows. Marinas have closed, migratory birds are struggling, and high winds whip up massive dust clouds.

In January, a group of scientists and environmentalists warned that what was once the largest lake in the West could disappear completely in as little as five years. 鈥淓xamples from around the world show that saline lake loss triggers a long-term cycle of environmental, health, and economic suffering,鈥� they wrote in a . 鈥淲e are in an all-hands-on-deck emergency.鈥�

Translation: shit is getting real. How real? Even Republicans recognize that we have to do something to save the lake鈥攖hat鈥檚 how real.

The Great Salt Lake crisis has spurred a novel and extreme idea: Why not build a pipeline to bring in water from the ocean to revive and replenish it?

The concept sounds like something dreamed up by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, but it seems to have originated with the Utah legislature鈥檚 powerful Water Development Commission, which placed the pipeline idea on its annual agenda last May. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a lot of water in the ocean, and we have very little in the Great Salt Lake,鈥� noted commission chair David Hinkins.

Environmentalists were urgently dismissive; the Salt Lake Tribune called it a 鈥渓oony idea.鈥� But the loony idea persisted. In 颅December, President Biden signed a bill that will provide $5 million per year in federal money to study possible ways to resurrect the Great Salt Lake and dozens of other saline lakes in the West. One option is the aforementioned ocean pipeline. 鈥淲e must do whatever is necessary to save [the Great Salt Lake],鈥� said Utah senator Mitt Romney, who sponsored the bill.

Which raises an urgent question:听 What is going to be necessary to enable us to survive climate change? And how much of that are we actually听 willing to do?

鈥淢y oil and gas friends tell me we build oil and gas pipelines all the time,鈥� Romney told me by phone, 鈥渁nd water is more important than that.鈥�

But the water pipeline is a much bigger deal than an oil or gas pipeline.

The problem, or set of problems, is not only relevant to the American West. Other places are preparing to spend boatloads of money to mitigate the effects of further climate change. New York State has budgeted $52 billion to armor its pricey coastal real estate against rising sea levels and ever stronger storms. Israel is exploring ways to deliver water from the Mediterranean to its own dying saline lake, the Dead Sea. Scientists in the Netherlands and elsewhere are developing salt-tolerant potatoes and other food crops that are less reliant on fresh water.

To climate scientists, Great Salt Lake and its basin, including the greater Salt Lake City area and famous ski resorts like Park City and Snowbird, offer a perfect little case study in doomsday planning, because the region is a largely self-contained water system. Snow falls on the surrounding mountains in winter, accumulating into a high-elevation snowpack that can measure 20 feet deep. When the snow melts in late spring, the runoff flows down via creeks and rivers into Great Salt Lake, raising its water level. As the summer wears on, a great deal of that water evaporates, and the lake level goes back down. (The water leaches salts and minerals from the soil as it runs down from the mountains, but none of the water flows out to other places, or to the ocean, which is why the lake is salty.)

The post The Plan to Save 鲍迟补丑鈥檚 Great Salt Lake Involves a Big Pipe appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

滨鈥檝别 written for this magazine on and off for 30 years, and here鈥檚 a confession that might end my run: I don鈥檛 like tents very much. In fact, I dislike almost everything about them. The cramped quarters, the zippers, the moistness. The swish-swish sound nylon makes when you brush against it, which sets my teeth on edge. The lone mosquito that always seems to sneak inside.

Lately, however, my tent-phobia has become a problem I need to work on. I live in Utah, surrounded by idyllic campsites, yet it鈥檚 been at least a year since my partner and I have slept outside. We have a multitude of reasons and excuses for this, but when the subject of tent camping comes up, there鈥檚 always a moment when we look at each other and decide: I鈥檇 really rather not spend the weekend crammed into a Hefty bag with you, love. And that鈥檚 that.

This attitude started to change when I came across the wondrous family of all-canvas tents. Last May, I wandered into a prepper show in Salt Lake City, which was kind of like Outdoor Retailer for the Apocalypse. (Appropriately, the state GOP convention was happening right next door.) There were the usual intense hucksters pushing water purifiers, solar panels, food dehydrators, combat-grade wound care products(!), and, of course, lots and lots of guns.

Then I came across something unexpected: two millennial hipster guys who were showing off nifty compact stainless-steel , which were designed to be used inside real, large, honest-to-goodness Boy Scout鈥搒tyle canvas tents鈥攚hich, it turned out, they also made, right there in Salt Lake City.

Their names were Pace Measom and Jordan Nielsen, and I arranged to interview them by phone two days later. 鈥淲e鈥檙e not preppers,鈥� Measom hastened to point out when we started talking. A couple years ago, he explained, he and three partners, including Nielsen, bought an old-school canvas tent company called Springbar, which had been quietly operating in Salt Lake City since 1961. Their tents are simple but classic, with elegant lines and solid canvas construction, and they鈥檙e all sewn by hand in a Salt Lake City factory. 鈥淚t鈥檚 like the Airstream trailer of tents,鈥� Measom said. I liked the sound of that immediately.

In the past few years, Springbar鈥檚 designs have gained a devoted following, not only among nostalgic Americans like me, but across the Pacific. A quick search for or pulls up some stylin鈥� glamping setups, many from places like Korea and Taiwan and 鈥攁nd we鈥檙e not just talking about individual campsites, but entire hootenannies of Springbar fans and their beloved tents. If you want one for yourself, you have to sign up and wait months鈥攑ossibly longer, if you鈥檙e picky about the color.

Springbar tents were the creation of a World War II naval draftsman named Jack Kirkham, who went home to Salt Lake City after his discharge and started making canvas awnings for buildings. When the rise of air conditioning weakened the awning biz, he began making tents that he designed himself, starting in 1961. He created a handful of standard looks, from a two-person Boy Scout鈥搒tyle tent all the way up to a modular design called the Leisure Port, which you can add rooms to as needed. (Useful in Utah, where people have lots of kids.)

Kirkham鈥檚 son, Jack Jr., told me that his dad wasn鈥檛 exactly what we think of as an outdoorsman today. 鈥淗e , he liked painting outside, but he was a little more from the generation where camping was not a real vacation,鈥� he says. A man after my own heart.

In 1962, a Springbar Traveler tent cost $83.62, according to an old catalog. Now that same model runs $1,299. It鈥檚 nice and roomy, ten feet on a side, and more than tall enough to stand up in. It also weighs about 60 pounds and comes with very substantial steel poles, so you鈥檙e not backpacking this thing anywhere. (Another plus.) The design hasn鈥檛 changed in 50 years. 鈥淚t works,鈥� says Jack Jr., 鈥渟o we kept it the same.鈥�

Springbar was around but struggling when Measom and Duncan approached Jack Jr. about buying it in 2018. The company was still making tents by hand in Salt Lake City, but production was slow and the brand was fading. 鈥淲e were always out of stock,鈥� Jack Jr. says. At the time, the tents were a side business connected to Kirkham鈥檚 Outdoor Products, a camping store that the two Jacks founded in the late 1970s. The shop did well at first, as interest in outdoor sports surged, but business slowly dwindled over time when big-box retailers like Cabela鈥檚 and REI moved into Utah.

Having grown up in Utah, Measom knew about Springbar, and their products reminded him of other iconic outdoor brands like Filson and Pendleton that sold well-made old-school gear at boutique prices. But nobody outside Utah seemed to have heard of Springbar. At the time, Measom was a marketing writer for Backcountry.com, and he sensed an opportunity to revive the brand. Measom鈥檚 father, Ty, knew the Kirkhams from the outdoor business鈥擳y had , makers of backcountry and backyard cooking and grilling devices, in 1990鈥攁nd a deal was struck with Jack Jr. (Jack Sr. died .)

The tents themselves are sewn in an unmarked industrial building south of downtown Salt Lake City, which I visited on a hot June morning in the summer of 2022. At 9:15, shop boss Pam Russell announced the next run of tents: 46 Travelers, 32 of which would be labeled for export to Korea. There were about 20 employees on the floor, a mix of old-timers who鈥檝e been with Springbar for decades, arts-and-craftsy young people, and immigrants of all ages from Chile, Uganda, and Afghanistan.

Russell asked if anyone had anything they鈥檇 like to say, and a middle-aged guy in a headband piped up. 鈥淚 wanted to sing a song about our unsung heroes, the inspector dudes,鈥� he said. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e awesome. And I think we can help them by getting things right the first time.鈥�

Everyone applauded. The 鈥渋nspector dudes鈥� set up each and every tent as it was finished, to check the stitching and other details, like metal stake loops and the rope sewn around the tent bases. If the tent passed muster, they signed the label, right next to the name of the employee who led its production, and it was bagged and readied for shipping.

This was the last stage in a long but carefully thought-out process inspired by the way Toyota makes automobiles, a system called 鈥渓ean production.鈥� The way it works, Measom told me, is that each sewer or group of sewers works on a single part of the tent. One person will be putting together a wall while someone else works on the roof, or a window, and yet another person does the floor, and so on.

When all the pieces are ready, they鈥檙e joined to form a whole. Then the 鈥渋nspector dudes鈥� step in to check out the finished product. Measom says it鈥檚 all about efficiency. 鈥淵ou鈥檙e looking for these time savings of one minute here and five minutes there,鈥� he explains. 鈥淚t adds up over a week, or a year. But there鈥檚 a reason nobody does this anymore. It鈥檚 too hard鈥攊t鈥檚 much easier to just have it come in a box.鈥�

As Russell finished up the morning meeting, Sheryl Crow came blasting through the speakers: 鈥淎ll I wanna do is have some fun.鈥� Everyone stood and stretched, paying special attention to backs, wrists, and fingers. Sewing tents is repetitive manual labor, and no one wants to get sidelined by carpal tunnel. The song ended, replaced by the percussive sound of industrial sewing machines. Time to get back to work.

U.S.-made Springbars cost anywhere from about $650 (for the two-person Compact) to $1,500 for the 10×14-foot Family Camper, which has a big door and windows and even a porch-like awning. The company also makes some of its models in China, at a slightly lower price point. Most of those are imported to the U.S., while a substantial fraction of the Salt Lake City-made tents are shipped overseas. 鈥淲e make tents in America for people in Asia, and we make tents in Asia for people in America,鈥� Measom听observes wryly.

In Asia, as well as eastern North America, rain is more of an issue than in the American West. The canvas that the company uses is advertised as 鈥�,鈥� because the fibers in the canvas expand in the presence of water, tightening the weave and making it waterproof in all but the most brutal downpours, says Measom. The cloth is treated with something called Sunforger to resist both moisture and mildew, while remaining breathable. Still, it鈥檚 essential to let the tent dry before rolling it up and stowing it in its bag. 鈥淭he only thing you can do to ruin a Springbar tent is to store it wet, which will mold it,” Measom says.

Jack Jr. is working on designs for stove-friendly 鈥渉ot tents鈥� that will enable campers to visit national parks in off-seasons, when the weather is cold but crowds are absent. They also work in desert heat: he鈥檚 just back from a week outside Canyonlands. 鈥淏ut I spend many nights, and days, in a tent just in my backyard,鈥� Jack Jr. admits. Sometimes he uses his backyard sprinklers to test the waterproofing. 鈥淎nd sometimes I鈥檒l just go sit in there and have a margarita.鈥�

Sounds like a great idea to me. After my visit to the factory, I take a loaner tent home鈥攖he 8×10 Vagabond鈥攁nd roll it out in the yard. The first step is simple: pounding in 15 stakes around the edges. Next, I鈥檓 supposed to thread in bent metal bars that give the tent its structure. This part is something I just can鈥檛 seem to figure out. It鈥檚 about to turn into a cussin鈥� job when I take a break, consult YouTube, and figure out the simple move required to tension the bars. (The trick is in how the two pieces of the main crossbar are joined together; hence the name 鈥淪pringbar.鈥�)

All that鈥檚 left to do is install the two side poles and raise the roof. Boom: 滨鈥檝别 got a home outside my home鈥攁 good thing, since our kid just tested positive for COVID, and we need quarantine space. The roof bars tension the whole tent nicely, pulling against the stakes, so there鈥檚 no slack in the walls and no sag in the roof. The almond-colored canvas is soft to the touch. There鈥檚 no swishing whatsoever. The thing is solid.

I set up a couple wicker chairs and a table, open a beer, and settle in to read a magazine and listen to the backyard birds. I have half a mind to throw in an air mattress and Airbnb the thing for $200 a night.

A couple weeks later, we escape the Utah heat for a remote-working stint at a condo in Sun Valley, Idaho. One afternoon, we shut the laptops and drive to a lake, where we set up the Springbar by the shore, in the shade of tall spruces. We spend the remainder of the day and evening paddleboarding and swimming in the crystal waters, returning to land to lounge in the tent with an icy canned Paloma before heading back out again, followed by a deluxe picnic. It鈥檚 the best day of the summer.

As the sun begins to sink, we watch a mama duck shuttling her babies around the glassy lake. The tent looks classic, like it belongs there. We take a few pics for the 鈥檊ram, and they draw likes from around the world. It鈥檚 nice to get back to nature with a little bit of style.

There is the minor detail of a 鈥淣o Camping鈥� sign nearby, but my defense is airtight: We鈥檙e not camping. We鈥檙e tenting.

The post How Springbar Became the Airstream Trailer of Tents appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

On a perfect day in Park City, Utah, I got off the lift, removed my skis, and began hiking up a snowy ridge leading to one of my favorite steep stashes. I soon found myself stuck behind a middle-aged woman who was clearly struggling, and whose husband was barking at her to hurry up. 鈥淚鈥檓 coming!鈥� she yelled, in an accent that spoke of proximity to the Garden State Parkway.

My slight annoyance soon turned to genuine concern. What worried me was the way she carried her skis: clutched to her chest, making an X across her body, the metal edges just inches from her throat. My ski-snob sense told me she had no business being up here. On the other hand, getting in over your head is part of the thrill and the learning curve. I watched to make sure the two of them got down safely.

Seasoned skiers will tell you that there鈥檚 only one 鈥渞ight鈥� way to carry skis: clamped together by the brakes, hoisted over your shoulder with tips forward, the toepiece of the binding resting behind a shoulder, one arm draped across the front end of the skis for balance, and the other using the poles as a walking stick. But as I looked more closely into the subject, I realized that this, too, is not听always听the best way to go.

Learning to ski requires picking up a host of new skills that are completely unnatural, like getting on and off chairlifts and walking down a set of stairs in rigid boots. Making matters worse is the attitude of some (not all) other skiers, who seem to believe that if you鈥檙e not following certain unspoken rules, you have no business being on the mountain.

That鈥檚 a genuine barrier to participation for people looking to get into this expensive and clubby sport: it鈥檚 difficult enough without having to deal with secret rules made up by self-appointed gatekeepers. In November 2020, skier Brooklyn Bell pushed back on this front with an exasperated that shows her carrying her skis,听in听air quotes,听鈥渨rong.鈥�

鈥淚 will carry my skis however I please,鈥� she wrote. 鈥淐ause I don鈥檛 need to be perfect to access this space.鈥�

This is true鈥攁ll you need to do to be a skier is ski. At the same time, unlike some of the sport鈥檚 less functional unspoken rules (鈥淭here are no friends on a powder day鈥� is exactly wrong; also, it鈥檚 perfectly fine to ski in jeans, as long as they鈥檙e cutoffs), mastering this particular skill can actually make the experience better, particularly for people who are new to skiing (unlike the听听Bell). Carrying skis effectively helps you start the day with comfort and confidence, and is safer for you and everybody around you. But it鈥檚 tricky to nail, because skis are awkward things that are designed to be skied on, not schlepped around.听And nobody bothers to teach it, so听between the parking lot and the lifts, novice and infrequent skiers are left to figure it out.听鈥淚t鈥檚 not part of the ski-school curriculum,鈥� says , a veteran instructor in Jackson, Wyoming.听鈥淎nd you don鈥檛 want to seem too judgmental.鈥�

Unfortunately, many of the most obvious ways to carry skis are clumsy, painful, and potentially hazardous. Back when pro freeskier Colter Hinchliffe worked at a ski shop near the Aspen gondola, he and his buddies bestowed names on the many different styles they observed,听which he and fellow pro Tim Durtschi later immortalized in a Teton Gravity Research听. Their favorites听included听the Offering, in which you hold the skis in your arms, across the body, like firewood, and the Oklahoma Suitcase, in which the pole straps are wrapped around the skis and the poles act as a handle.听That lady I saw on the ridge at Park City was employing the Decapitator, a surprisingly popular option.

Hinchliffe and Durtschi听dubbed听the听鈥減roper鈥� carry the Local, because that鈥檚 how locals tend to do it. But the Local has its own drawbacks, as I realized one weekend after I tried teaching it to my girlfriend and her听14-year-old son. She felt unbalanced and top-heavy; he couldn鈥檛 take the pressure of the heavy skis digging into his shoulders. The tears welling in his eyes told me that I was being a dogmatic jerk. I had to find a better way.

The Local has other听drawbacks. The most obvious is that the tails of your skis are waving around behind you, bonking into your friends鈥� helmets,听and making the skis positively deadly in听crowded听spaces听like a gondola line.

I needed expert advice, so I called Hinchliffe, who confessed that his preferred carry is not the Local but a simpler, easier method he calls the Escort. First you clamp the skis together by the brakes, base to base. (Always do this when carrying or stowing skis.) Next, grab them between the bindings and bring them to waist level, parallel to the ground, tips forward. Then, he says, wrap your arm around and under the skis, between the toe and heel on the bindings, and proceed as if 鈥測ou鈥檙e walking your daughter down the aisle.鈥�

On a recent trip to Alta, I听decided to give The Escort a try. The local bros looked at me funny as I strutted across听the parking lot, but the joke was on them. It was easy, painless, balanced, and, most important, safe. My ski tails were not waving around in anybody鈥檚 face. Setting the skis down did not require any potentially sketchy aerial catches or sudden drops.

I felt comfortable, and it was听kind of听liberating to not care what other skiers thought. Going forward, I鈥檒l not only do it, I鈥檒l听also (gently)听share it.

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Kevin Perry was riding his bike near the Great Salt Lake when the first bullet whizzed over his head. A couple seconds later, a second round plunked into the sand a few yards from his feet. He hit the ground, crawling under a trailer he was towing. Terror battled confusion: Who the hell was shooting at him, and from where?

It was October 2017, and he was alone on the playa, a wide-open, waterless lake bed that extended for miles in every direction. The nearest cover or vegetation was more than a mile away, and Perry knew this part of the lake was popular with target shooters, so it was not a good place to be exposed. 鈥淭hey just saw something moving out there and decided to take a couple of shots at it,鈥� said the 53-year-old University of Utah associate professor. 鈥淎fter that I was always decked out head to toe in hunter鈥檚 orange.鈥�

Perry is an atmospheric scientist, and he was on an obsessive quest: he was pedaling a fat-tire bike, stopping every 500 meters to collect soil samples, as part of a project in which he would cover the entire perimeter of the Great Salt Lake. All told, he would ride more than 2,300 miles, in snowstorms and baking summer heat, starting early and often not getting home until midnight. His trailer sometimes sank to its axles in oozy mud that looked perfectly dry. More than once he wanted to cheat, to shorten the project, but thinking about the ridicule he would face kept him going.

Perry was doing the kind of boring science that suddenly becomes not so boring if certain bad things happen鈥攆or example, studying coronaviruses prior to November 2019. The largest natural lake west of the Mississippi, the Great Salt Lake is roughly four times saltier than the ocean and five times bigger in surface area than Lake Tahoe鈥攆or now, anyway. In the 1980s, the lake鈥檚 water levels rose high enough to flood highways and threaten railway lines; today it鈥檚 flirting with all-time lows, brought on by a period of drought that has parched the Southwest since the early 2000s. Some models predict that the lake, an iconic feature of the Intermountain West and a contributor to 鲍迟补丑鈥檚 legendary snowfall, could disappear almost entirely in the next few decades.

Because the Great Salt Lake is so shallow鈥攊magine pouring water onto a cake plate鈥攅ven a small drop in levels exposes large areas of its bed to the elements. Thus, while the lake once covered some 1,750 square miles, its waters now dampen barely more than half that area, leaving a zone of playa larger than the San Francisco Bay. Perry鈥檚 mission was to check for heavy metals in the soil, and to determine whether this vast swath of newly exposed sediment could end up fueling apocalyptic dust storms and render Salt Lake City all but uninhabitable.

That would suck, obviously, but I was more intrigued by what Perry 丑补诲苍鈥檛 seen during his circumnavigation: other people. For company as he worked, there were huge flocks of migrating waterfowl, herds of grazing cattle, knots of deer, soaring hawks and eagles, a fox, even pelicans, and he saw tracks left by coyotes and cougars鈥攂ut there were no humans, other than a couple of angry ranchers. Even the guys who shot at him didn鈥檛 stick around to say sorry.

鈥淧eople don鈥檛 go out there,鈥� Perry told me. 鈥淚鈥檇 lived here 15 years and had barely explored the place. When I started to, I was like, Oh, my gosh, this is amazing.鈥�

鈥淚t鈥檚 kind of like on Antiques Roadshow, where you might have a book that doesn鈥檛 look like much,鈥� says Marjorie Chan, a professor of geography at the University of Utah. 鈥淎nd my job as the appraiser is to tell you that you have an extraordinary book. It has all this history and tells you so much about the world. Even though you don鈥檛 think it looks like the Grand Canyon or Zion, this is an extraordinary place. It鈥檚 one of a kind. And we just take it for granted.鈥�

As I would find out, the Great Salt Lake has that effect on certain people. But not many. In the spring of 2020, as the pandemic deepened and stir-crazy hordes piled into 鲍迟补丑鈥檚 national parks and mountain trails, I decided to head in the opposite direction and explore this strikingly weird, sometimes disgusting, almost always beautiful, and seriously endangered resource.

Ultimately, I was escaping one crisis only to go down the rabbit hole of another, far more serious one: the climate-change-fueled extreme drought that has taken hold across the Southwest. But at the time, I had a much smaller question: Why does nearly everybody hate this place?

The post The Great Salt Lake Is Desolate. It鈥檚 Also Divine. appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

As a lifelong cyclist, 滨鈥檝别 always sort of hated running, on some deep biological level. Oh, sure, I may have entered a handful of 5Ks and 10Ks in my time, and even finished a half marathon (once). But I remain convinced that the reason bicycles were invented is because running sucks.

There is one thing I really envy about runners, though, specifically male runners: they get to run shirtless. When it鈥檚 warm out, they just whip their tops right off and prance along in nothing more than their tiny little flappy shorts. I resent them deeply for it.

Because for some reason, 鈥渟erious鈥� cyclists are not permitted to do this. It doesn鈥檛 matter that we ride around in skintight, crotch-hugging outfits鈥攚hat former pro rider and Education First team boss Jonathan Vaughters calls 鈥渢he functional equivalent of underwear.鈥� On a very hot day, we might unzip that too-small Lycra jersey for a smidge of ventilation. But no matter what, said jersey must remain on, at all times.

Among the Lycra set, shirtless bike riding is seen as a big sin committed only by , along with unworthies like , , and . But if you look around, you realize that Shirtless Bike Dude is everywhere鈥攊ncluding the tracks of the and the streets of Venice, which they wheel down听. If you showed up for a group ride sans jersey, or took it off halfway through a century ride (again, I鈥檓 talking about men here), 鈥渞eal鈥� cyclists would shun you like a drunk at a Mormon wedding.

Don鈥檛 get me wrong: I, too, once judged shirtless bike riders quite harshly. I kept a folder of听photos I鈥檇 snapped of the most flagrant offenders. Occasionally I鈥檇 make fun of them on Facebook. But then I tried it myself, peeling off my jersey on a long rail-trail ride a couple years ago on the first really warm day of summer. There were few people around, and it was hot, and I longed for the feel of sun on my skin. I came home a changed man.

Not long ago, CNN tracked down notorious Joseph Mercola as he was leaving the beach near his Florida home. The 67-year-old osteopath was not only , he was shoeless, too. He pedaled away without comment, just another Florida man wobbling off into the sunset. But while Mercola may be wrong about COVID-19 (and much else), he and I are on the same page about shirts and bikes. Riding the latter does not require wearing the former. As the muggy, smoky summer winded down, I became convinced that sometimes you just need to take off the shrink-wrap jersey and enjoy the breeze.

On yet another hot Tuesday in Salt Lake City, a week before Labor Day, I headed out on a noonish bike ride. I鈥檇 meant to start earlier, but nagging work email detained me. I set out on one of my typical lunch loops, a short urban cruise with some punchy climbs. A few blocks from home, I realized that it was already damn hot. And I was sick of being hot.

There was only one thing to do. I pulled over in a church parking lot, took off my fancy Rapha T-shirt, and stuffed it in my saddlebag. Then I set off again, feeling self-conscious.

It鈥檚 difficult to overstate the hatred that cycling cognoscenti have for shirtless bike riders. Earlier in the summer, when I鈥檇 started to become shirtless-curious, I took a quick trip through various cycling-oriented message boards. 鈥淭here鈥檚 something about a guy that rides shirtless that really kinda pisses me off,鈥� wrote one commenter on MTBR.com, a mountain-bike forum. 鈥淯nless you鈥檙e a hot chick, leave it on,鈥� another moron opined. 鈥淓very time I see guys riding shirtless, I feel a strong urge to pick a fight with one of 鈥檈m.鈥�

Recently, a 鈥渟omewhat new to cycling鈥� rider, who lives and rides in Houston鈥檚 unbearable heat, innocently posed this question on : 鈥淒o you guys think it鈥檚 socially acceptable to ride shirtless?鈥�

鈥淣o one wants to see your naked 57-year-old body,鈥� one commenter predictably shot back. 鈥淲ear a fucking shirt like an adult.鈥�

鈥淥nly if your first name is Mario and your last name is Cipollini,鈥� another wiseass replied.

Ouch. That reference was to the Italian sprinter from the 1990s, known as much for his outrageous riding kits (including a bodysuit and a costume, both of which got him fined by Tour de France officials) as he was for winning races. A quick check of revealed that Cipollini, now a retired 54-year-old, does often ride shirtless, displaying his Arnold-esque physique to the world.

Among us mortals, the bearer of the torch is . A legend in Los Angeles cycling circles, Shirtless Keith is a burly man of indeterminate age who rides around hilly Palos Verdes wearing work boots, denim cutoffs, and no shirt. He鈥檚 as strong as an ox, splendidly tan, and able to drop many of L.A.鈥檚 Type A roadies on local climbs, despite pedaling a single-gear bike that weighs twice as much as a fancy road rig.

My own goals were more modest: I wanted a workout, plus some vitamin D and a dose of mildly transgressive freedom. This wasn鈥檛 going to become my lifestyle, nor was I trying to impress anyone on social media.

I sailed down the street and into a busy city park, headed for my favorite bike path. I braced myself for scornful looks, maybe even shrieks and catcalls, possibly even a fight鈥攂ut no one noticed, except for a jerk in a Subaru who shot me a disapproving smirk. He had a reason to be sad: He was stuck driving, while I was riding my bike. Shirtless. I was free. A pleasant breeze riffled through my patchy chest hair, and my love handles jiggled happily, soaking up the sun. It felt freaking awesome.

The most common namby-pamby objection to shirtless bike riding goes like this: What about sunburn? To which I say, have you ever been on a beach and seen ? Those are worse than any sunburn. Plus there鈥檚 this stuff called sunscreen. Problem solved.

Objection two is usually along the lines of: What if you fall? Having crashed many times, I can testify that a cycling jersey isn鈥檛 much help when you fall; it鈥檚 much more important to wear a helmet. Even more important is to not crash. My personal rule is this: if high speeds or sketchy singletrack are likely to be involved, wear the jersey.

There鈥檚 a third objection, which starts with the fact that cycling jerseys play an important role in bike culture. Your jersey tells other riders who you are, for better or . The nicer ones are made of fancy wicking fabrics, and they can cost a lot of money as well, so why not wear them?

Because the ultimate wicking fabric is鈥攚ait for it鈥�no fabric. As I cruised along bare chested, my sweat actually cooled me off via evaporation, just as evolution intended. And I felt extremely aerodynamic, even if I didn鈥檛 necessarily look it. My lack of jersey announced to the world who I had become. I had become Shirtless Bike Dude.

As I turned onto a road that leads to a popular local climb, some other road riders actually waved to me. I couldn鈥檛 believe it. Roadies never wave. I sat up, proudly pushed out my skinny chest, and gave them a big wave back.

Now that Labor Day is past, Shirtless Bike Dude鈥檚 days are numbered (well, except in Florida). Soon he鈥檒l go into winter hibernation, getting pasty and battling seasonal affective disorder like the rest of us. If you see him, be sure to wave.

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The first time I met Jonathan Vaughters, founder and manager of the U.S.-based cycling team now known as EF Education First, he had a secret. Actually, he had several secrets. It was August 2006, immediately after the Tour de France, and like every other sports journalist who covered cycling, I was desperate to get an interview with Floyd Landis, who had won the Tour only to test positive for testosterone. Vaughters and I met for dinner in New York鈥檚 West Village, and he surprised me by casually admitting, off the record, that he had used EPO, the doping cyclist鈥檚 drug of choice鈥攁nd that he had watched Lance Armstrong inject himself with the same substance. I blinked. This was huge.

What Vaughters didn鈥檛 say was that, as we sat there sipping our C么tes du Rh么ne, Landis was just a few blocks away, holed up in the townhome of Vaughters鈥檚 team sponsor, real estate investor Doug Ellis. They were protecting their friend from the media, and perhaps from himself, but they were also trying to persuade Landis to come clean about doping. Landis held the key to the change that they both believed cycling desperately needed. But of course, he was not yet ready to tell the truth; that wouldn鈥檛 happen until nearly four years later, when Landis revealed not only his own drug use, but that of Armstrong and most of his U.S. Postal Service/Discovery Channel teammates. We all know what happened after that.

This is one of several revelations in Vaughters鈥檚 long-awaited memoir, , which was published July 1 in the UK听and will appear in the U.S. on August 27. One-Way Ticket tells two dovetailed stories about Vaughters: the coming of age of a young American bike racer, a misfit kid from Denver who found solace on long, lonely rides in the mountains and pursued his dream of racing in Europe at the highest levels; and his subsequent journey from corruption to redemption, when he became a leading force in the movement to clean up cycling. Let鈥檚 just say it was worth the wait.

Part personal history, part confessional, One-Way Ticket is also a love letter to a beautiful, brutal, hopelessly corrupt, yet paradoxically pure sport. It chronicles Vaughters鈥檚 saga as an athlete, but there are many more layers to the story, and that鈥檚 what makes it essential reading for any cycling fan听and for anyone who followed Armstrong鈥檚 rise and fall. It covers the deep history of American bike racing in a way that has never been done. And it鈥檚 an honest, unflinching听look at cycling鈥檚 darkest era听from someone who fully lived it.

The 46-year-old 鈥淛.V.,鈥� as he鈥檚 universally known in the cycling community, belongs to the generation of American riders who grew up watching Greg LeMond鈥檚 three Tour de France victories. Despite those triumphs, cycling remained a stubbornly obscure sport here; for a time in the early 1990s, Tour coverage consisted of a one-hour weekly summary on ESPN. You had to be different to want to become a professional cyclist. By his own account, Vaughters was a misfit in high school, bullied and ostracized. He chose cycling as an escape, but at first he was hopelessly bad at it. He persisted, though,听and eventually found himself thrown into races and team camps with the most talented young riders in the country, including George Hincapie, Bobby Julich, Chann McRae, and a kid from Texas named Lance.

Vaughters鈥檚 anecdotes are vivid and often hilarious. In the late 1980s, after Lance the newcomer blows up the entire field, and eventually himself, in a junior road race in Moab, Utah, Vaughters tells a competitor, 鈥淲ell, Lance sure is strong, but man, is he stupid.鈥� To which McRae, Armstrong鈥檚 friend and a fellow Texan, responds, 鈥淒uuuude, I鈥檓 telling Lance you said that, and he鈥檚 gonna kick your little skinny ass, motherfucker.鈥�

Which more or less sets the tone for their relationship over the next 25 years. Lance becomes by turns Vaughters鈥檚 rival, teammate, neighbor (in Spain), friend/frenemy, and ultimately his bitter foe.

When the Americans went over to race in Europe in the mid-1990s, they were in for a rude awakening. Suddenly, they were getting crushed by riders who were using reckless quantities of EPO, which increases the oxygen-carrying capacity of blood. At first, Vaughters recounts, the Americans were outraged鈥擫ance most of all. 鈥淭he bizarre truth is that in 1995, Lance was an incredibly talented but very angry cyclist who was having his career stolen from him by dopers,鈥� Vaughters writes. 鈥淗e was vocally against the use of EPO, called it an epidemic, and wanted there to be a test found to catch the cheaters who were taking it.鈥�

It clearly angers Vaughters that Lance won by doping, but at the same time, Vaughters admits that he eagerly joined the EPO generation and became an expert at sticking himself with needles. It worked: he got fast听and became a contender in major races again. (鈥淢y dream was back,鈥� he writes.) His results let him make the jump from a crappy little Spanish team to a new outfit sponsored by the U.S. Postal Service, with many of his fellow Americans听and eventually his old nemesis, Lance. After recovering听from cancer, Lance had been transformed into a potential Tour contender himself鈥攚ith plenty of chemical help.

On paper, Vaughters had the right attributes for a Tour de France contender: he was a climber who could time trial. And there is a sense, throughout this tale, that Vaughters at some point believed he should have been the next American to win the Tour. But Armstrong was clearly the chosen one. Power struggles ensued, as they always did with him. Eventually, the U.S. Postal team gets new management, new riders, and a much more aggressive doping strategy, which resulted in Armstrong winning the Tour.

At the same time, much of the peloton was actually easing off of听performance enhancers, spurred by new drug-testing rules and the Festina scandal of 1998. Vaughters finds himself on the outs, disillusioned with Postal鈥檚 frat-party culture and looking for a way to stop doping. His great moment of glory, winning a time trial up the feared Mont Ventoux in a 1999 race, should have been the best day of his life. Instead he felt hollow inside. 鈥淭his is a joke,鈥� he thinks, standing on the winner鈥檚 podium. The magic was gone.

A few weeks later, in the second stage of that year鈥檚 Tour, which Armstrong would eventually win, Vaughters crashed hard along with 50 other riders on the Passage du Gois, a cobblestone road that is submerged at high tide. He got up, bloodied and battered, but climbed off his bike and quit the Tour a few miles later.

鈥淚 wanted nothing more to do with the race, I wanted nothing more to do with the team, and I wanted nothing more to do with Lance,鈥� he writes. 鈥淭he world thought I was brave for even trying to finish. I knew I was a coward.鈥�

The second time I met J.V., we were spat on. It was June 2007, and I had finagled a ride in his team car at an important one-day race in Philadelphia. As we made our way up the famed Manayunk Wall, lined with screaming, half-drunk fans, a perfectly aimed glob arced out of the crowd and landed on the windshield, right in front of his face. Nobody said anything, and I still don鈥檛 know whether it came from some random asshole or an anti-Vaughters partisan听during the open war that was then raging in American cycling. Not a lot of fans were neutral about J.V. at that point. On one side, you had the hordes of yellow-wristband-wearing Lance worshippers. On the other, you had people who were beginning to resent the corruption that pervaded the sport.

The 鈥渃oward鈥� actually turned out to be quite brave. After retiring in 2004, Vaughters started a junior-development team in Denver, with a handful of young riders. As they matured, he fretted that they would have to make the same choice he had made: to cheat or leave. When he brought up his concern with Doug Ellis, Ellis said, 鈥淲ell, how can we change that?鈥�

The , as it was then known, became the first to take a vocal stance against doping鈥攁nd to try and back it up with proof. Its mission was to enable riders to compete without having to use banned substances and methods. A six-figure chunk of the budget paid for blood and urine testing of the team鈥檚 own riders. Many of them were former dopers, notably David Millar, although not all had been caught or outed. The team emphasized competing clean over winning races, which gave it a kind of underdog chic, and cultivating good relations with the press was a big part of the plan. I sometimes covered cycling in that era, and I can say that the openness and quirkiness of Slipstream was a refreshing change from the thuggish vibe of U.S. Postal and many of the major European teams.

According to Vaughters, all of this got under the skin of a certain former teammate. Lance had retired in 2005, but he saw Slipstream as a tacit rebuke to his legacy. The implication that he had cheated obviously bothered him a great deal听and may have been one reason for his spectacularly ill-advised comeback in 2009. Vaughters says that Armstrong worked behind the scenes to torpedo the Slipstream project, luring away star riders like then teenage听prodigy 听and even trying to poach his chief backer.

Vaughters fought back. Disgusted by the behavior of his former teammates, especially , who had tested positive for a blood transfusion in 2004, he went听to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) and recounted听everything he鈥檇 done and everything he knew. When Floyd Landis eventually confessed, in an epic e-mail to the USADA, and serious investigations began, Vaughters made his riders available to testify, with no fear of repercussions. Many of them were former Armstrong teammates, and their testimony was pivotal in the USADA鈥檚 2012 鈥渞easoned decision,鈥� which ended Armstrong鈥檚 career and cost him his Tour titles. Probably the most amazing claim in the book is that Lance was actually offered the same deal by the USADA that his teammates accepted: tell all and receive a minimal suspension. According to Vaughters, Armstrong 鈥渢urned it down cold.鈥�

(国产吃瓜黑料 contacted Armstrong to ask about this and other details in Vaughters鈥檚 book. His reply: 鈥淢y only response is that I just checked my calendar and it鈥檚 2019. The fact that people are still sitting around writing about this is a sad reflection on them, and it serves no good, especially for the sport of cycling.鈥�)

I may be giving the impression that One-Way Ticket is some kind of score-settling tell-all. In fact, the doping saga takes up less than a third of the book. On the whole, it鈥檚 actually a fun read, with entertaining stories packed in among the drugs and the darkness. Vaughters covers a lot of ground, and he鈥檚 as hard on himself as anyone else.

He鈥檚 also insightful about the weird economics and politics of cycling, which helped me finally understand why such a globally popular sport has always seemed so Podunk, sponsorship wise. The problem, he points out, is that there鈥檚 no equity value in a cycling team; unlike with an NFL franchise, there鈥檚 nothing of value to 鈥渙wn.鈥� As a result, teams tend to rely on bike-industry sponsors听and medium-sized corporations with CEOs who happen to love cycling. Vaughters鈥檚 own team has gone through nearly a half-dozen major sponsors, from Garmin to Chipotle to Sharp to Cannondale to Drapac (an international property-investment group). Now it鈥檚 backed by a for-profit learning company that specializes in international language courses and travel.

One downside of this haphazard system is that well-funded newcomers can essentially buy their way into professional bike racing and snap up all the best riders. Case in point: Team Sky, whose first order of business was to try and poach Vaughters鈥檚 best rider, . Wiggins was the first legitimate star who Vaughters was able to recruit, and he cultivated Wiggins鈥檚 ambition and talent, helping him make the unlikely jump from the track to the Tour, where he finished fourth in 2009鈥攋ust behind Lance, whose third place has since been disqualified.

What鈥檚 interesting about the Wiggins story is that it highlights one of Vaughters鈥檚 strengths as a team director, which is his ability to spot talent before it becomes obvious to everyone else. Many previously unknown riders have emerged as major stars during or just after a stint on Vaughters鈥檚 team. But Wiggins was the only one (so far) with the ability to win the Tour, and Vaughters was crushed to lose him to the hyperaggressive Team Sky in 2010, after only one year. Wiggins would go on to win the Tour in 2012.

There are some loose ends here, which is not surprising in a book that attempts to cover so much ground. Vaughters does say, somewhat surprisingly, that he believes Lance was clean during his 2009 comeback season. But he doesn鈥檛 address the elephant-in-the-room question that continues to loom: Is cycling finally clean? Or at least cleaner? He doesn鈥檛 offer an opinion. Perhaps he feels that the mere existence of his team, and its survival, speaks for itself.

Toward听the end, Vaughters mentions the recent discovery that he has Asperger鈥檚 syndrome, which he blames for his second divorce and other personal difficulties. This is brave of him, and he describes his occasional inability to handle or express his own emotions. But his condition surely deserves further exploration, at a time when mental-health issues among athletes are finally receiving long-overdue attention. Anyone who鈥檚 familiar with the world of competitive cycling knows that, for some athletes, the sport is a means of escaping, or salving, or expiating, tremendous inner pain. Not all of them succeed, as the tragic suicide of Olympian showed.

The most indelible scene in the book, hands down, remains the story Vaughters told me back in 2006, of听Lance injecting himself inside a hotel room at the 1998 Vuelta a Espa帽a.

鈥淵ou鈥檙e one of us now, J.V.,鈥� Lance says, looking him in the eye. 鈥淭his is the boys club鈥攚e all have dirt on each other, so don鈥檛 go write a book about this shit or something.鈥�

The post Jonathan Vaughters Goes Deep into Cycling鈥檚 Dirty Past appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

Once again, Lance Armstrong has worn out everyone else. This time, instead of his Tour de France rivals鈥攚ho he and his jacked-up teammates ground down relentlessly鈥攐r his many real and perceived foes, it was the federal government鈥檚 brigade of lawyers, who their $97 million fraud case for $5 million听plus another chunk in fees. That's chump change for a guy who,听according to an听国产吃瓜黑料听profile by S.C. Gwynne, reportedly told his friend his net worth was around 鈥�100 milski.鈥澨鼳nd of course, the settlement outraged many who believe that much of Armstrong鈥檚 fortune was utterly ill-gotten.

In a just world, a cheat on Armstrong鈥檚 scale should have to give back most or all of his gains. The question has always been: Give back to who? The competitors he beat? Not exactly angels鈥攖hough听of course听there are varying degrees of evil. The teammates who had to put up with his shit? Maybe, though many of them were cheating, too. The enemies he tried to destroy, even when he knew they were telling the truth? It would have been nice to see the Andreus and the LeMonds get something for what he put them through. At least Floyd Landis gets $1.1 million. But it鈥檚 still half a milski less than the $1.65 million that Landis鈥檚 own lawyer gets.

It was only a year ago that the federal judge in the case swatted down Armstrong鈥檚 motion for summary judgment, allowing the dispute to head toward trial. One can reasonably assume that Armstrong badly wanted it all to go away听and had made settlement offers well north of what he ultimately paid. Why would the Department of Justice, which was heading pell-mell for trial, suddenly decide to cash out five years鈥� worth of holy war for five cents on the dollar? No one knows, although the statement released by the Armstrong camp on April 19 mentioned 鈥渟everal significant court rulings rejecting and limiting the plaintiffs鈥� damages theories.鈥�

Whatever the case, it has听always been difficult to see how the U.S. Postal Service was actually harmed by Armstrong鈥檚 doping. Perhaps in the form of his performance bonuses, which Armstrong consigliere Bill Stapleton liked to work into many of his contracts? Regardless, the USPS has much bigger problems now, such as whether it will exist in five years. But imagine how those contract negotiations might have gone if Armstrong had performed as poorly as he had in his first Tour outing, where he won a single stage and then dropped out before Paris. Andy Hampsten finished eighth that year. America yawned.

Also, there was the matter of the government鈥檚 whistleblower and lead plaintiff, Landis, who could charitably be described as a flawed witness. He literally told a book鈥檚 worth of lies, and sought donations from the fans who still believed him, before he came clean. (Why he ruined his life basically to protect Armstrong, and didn鈥檛 tell all when he was caught, has always puzzled me.) He paid the price with his dark days of substance abuse before he decided to spill the beans. A million bucks seems about right. (Although he听agreed听to refund the money to donors to the Floyd Fairness Fund, which was set up to help pay for his legal defense,听to avoid criminal prosecution.)

It鈥檚 worth remembering that Armstrong has lost a lot more than the $6 million or so in this settlement: all his sponsorships, private settlements with other parties, and much of his future earning power, along with his ability to compete in most public events, are gone. Imagine where he鈥檇 be if he 丑补诲苍鈥檛 made the mistake of coming back to cycling in 2009 and stirring up a听hornet鈥檚 nest in a sport that believed it was free of him and his toxic shtick. Governor of Texas? The U.S. Senate? Now he鈥檚 got a podcast.

Some people dislike Armstrong because he cheated; others argue that his real crime was being a jerk. When the history of sport in this century is written, though, I think he鈥檒l be remembered for something else: helping transform athletics into something that more closely resembles organized crime. He鈥檒l take his place between BALCO and the Russian state-sponsored doping machine for his part in driving the institutionalized corruption of sports.

Only he was smarter. Marion Jones played small ball and she went to jail. The Russians are pariahs forever. Team Lance, meanwhile, was pulling off the perfect long con. Armstrong听came in at the precise moment when the sport was already reeling from doping scandals and somehow convinced the world that he was clean because he was American听and a cancer survivor. He used science, via the brilliant Dr. Michele Ferrari, to transform himself from a one-day rider鈥攁bout whom nobody but hardcore U.S. roadies would give a crap鈥攖o a guy who could win the Tour, then leveraged his incredible survival story to make himself a wealthy global celebrity.

His thuggish associates kept the truth contained, at least for a while. Yet somehow, with regard to Landis and also Tyler Hamilton, he failed to learn the key lesson of The Sopranos: if you鈥檝e got a guy on the outside who鈥檚 disgruntled and knows too much, you either buy him off or take him fishing. Instead he let them hang. That obviously didn鈥檛 work out. On the other hand, Armstrong got out this mess for a relative pittance.

Meanwhile, the Tour de France is coming up, clouded by the fact that another recent champion, Team Sky鈥檚 Chris Froome, is听in the crosshairs of suspicion. The similarities are uncanny. The sketchy aura of secrecy around the star, the lame denials and suspicious minor positive test (Froome for an inhaler drug, Lance for a corticosteroid in 1999), even听the tactics, which are out of Postal鈥檚 playbook: amassing a really strong team, doping them to the gills (allegedly, in Sky鈥檚 case), and then grinding down the opposition. (During one particularly blatant year, 2003, U.S. Postal riders swept four of the top ten spots in the race鈥檚 final time trial.) It never ends.

Meanwhile, Lance is going gray and shaggy, working on being a dad, sending his son off to play football in the fall, and听in all likelihood听spending more time at his home in Aspen. Floyd is a chubby weed magnate in Colorado. They seem relatively happy, all things considered. It鈥檚 probably a good thing that they, and we, can finally move on.

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It was the oldest play in the book, and I fell for it hard. I鈥檇 taken time off from college to travel in Europe and Africa, working my way from Paris to Morocco. Within two hours of getting off the ferry from Spain, I found myself in a rug shop, deep in the city of T茅touan. Apparently, I was there to nego颅tiate for a rug, whether I liked it or not.

滨鈥檝别 always been horrible at bargaining, and by the time I stumbled out of the shop, I realized that I鈥檇 just spent more than half my remaining cash. I liked the rug I bought, a striking red and black kilim, but I didn鈥檛 actually possess it. Like a fool, I鈥檇 agreed to let them ship it home for me. Blowing that much money all at once was dumb, but this episode ended up changing my whole way of traveling.听

At the time, I was a pensive undergraduate poet. Naturally, I鈥檇 been going solo, mostly avoiding locals and other travelers. But I couldn鈥檛 afford that luxury any longer, and I wound up connecting with a trio of Canadian farm boys I鈥檇 met on the ferry. They were fun, friendly, and hilarious.

Also, poor like me. This altered the economics radically: we could easily split a $12 hotel room and have a local woman cook us a tagine for a few bucks more.听

The four of us roamed the country, drinking in (and sometimes smoking) everything it had to offer. We stayed with hashish merchants in the north, hiked the Atlas Mountains with shepherds, and crashed on a beachside rooftop in Essaouira. Together we braved a locals-only hammam in F猫s. We rode the cheapest buses on journeys up precipitous mountain roads, climbing onto the roof to help load bags (and the occasional goat). I struck up conversations in my bad French and got to know army officers, students, and families on holiday.听

I filled my journal with observations about places that were so much more vivid and real than whatever was going on in my mopey adolescent mind. And when I finally returned home, there was a mysterious brown package waiting for me. It was the rug. 滨鈥檝别 kept it ever since, a reminder of the moment when I opened my eyes and became a writer.

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