Twitter & Tyler, and You & I

Just a quick post to let you know that I do in fact have a twitter account and I even put things on there pretty regularly.  It's @RobKristoff.  I sure would love to see a few more of you following me on there!  Can't promise that every "tweet" will be a brilliant haiku, but neither am I posting mundane personal details every 10 minutes.

In other news, I am about to head down to the local (a few blocks away) bike shop in a few minutes to hear Tyler Hamilton speak.  Now, if you've followed my writing over the years (does that cover anyone but my mom- including my mom, for that matter?) you might recall that the first time I met him, I accidentally poked his dog in the eye with my thumb.  As in, felt the eyeball.  Honestly, it was the dog's fault.  I then got some of my first publishing success writing about him for his hometown newspaper, the Marblehead Reporter.

And then all heck broke loose.  He won an Olympic gold medal, but almost had it taken away when he was found to be cheating by some hard-to-explain blood doping methods.  Then after declaring his innocence and serving his suspension, he was "caught" using another substance and banned, effectively for the rest of his career.  He talked then about his problems with depression and how he was going to write an autobiography.

You would think things would end there, but they didn't.  Last year, he again became famous (or infamous- it's hard to keep track) when he talked to 60 Minutes about his use of EPO back in the day, and said he'd seen Lance Armstrong using the stuff.

And then, as if THAT wasn't enough- he ran into Lance in a bar in Aspen, CO (I believe), where he lives part of the year, and words were exchanged.  Threatening words that I'm not privy to.

Whew.  Yeah, so he's speaking down the street.  Not sure if any of that will come up, but can I really miss it if it does?

And can you miss following me on Twitter to see what happened?  :)