My dad is a huge cyclist and worshipped the ground Armstrong walked on. At 68, he still rides 30 miles nearly every day at lunch. To the point where he has what he deems a "260" goal/chart every year; 260 being the number of workouts one would tally in a year if working out five days a week, 52 weeks a year. And he accomplished 260 fifteen years in a row until finally missing last year due to a knee surgery (along with a
two other surgeries I detail below). But "Lance" was the inspiration all along. And whenever we were in Austin, my dad would always point out where "Lance" ate, where "Lance" lived, etc. And when "Lance" finally fell from grace, for my dad, it was like finding out Bush Jr. was actually a liberal or something. It didn't compute, and I remember him being in such denial.
I'm glad it didn't kill his love of the sport, though, because in 2013, my dad took the family on a trip to France that summer to follow a few legs of the Tour. We rented a house in the south of France - like something out of that Russel Crowe movie
A Good Year - close enough to a couple legs of the Tour, which we went and watched. Then we made our way up to Paris for the final stage/day, and watched the riders cross the finish line at the Champs-Elysees. Easily the most amazing trip I've ever been on, and it was all ultimately because of "Lance"...
That said, last summer, my parents and a couple of their friends went back to France, this time so my dad and his buddy could actually
ride a couple of the stages. But for some insane reason - likely having something to do with "Lance" - my dad picked one of the toughest stages, in the French Alps. Yet, at 67 years old, to his credit, just a couple weeks after the Tour had done the same course, he and his buddy actually made it all the way to the top, and completed the entire thing. It was on the way down, however, coming around a corner, that my dad's front tire hit a random groove in the road, he spun out of control, and had a horrible crash. Broke his hip, a few ribs, and punctured a lung. He had to have two major surgeries in a French hospital, but because he wasn't allowed to fly while his lung was healing, he had to spend the next three weeks in that same hospital, and then two weeks after that in a hotel. Mind you, he is a
hard core Republican, and him being forced to spend that much time in a French, socialist hospital was...
interesting to say the least. There was even a period of about three days post hip surgery where he literally went crazy. I can't remember the exact name of the condition, but it's a real thing some patients go through after surgery, when they don't have windows in their room, can't tell night from day, etc, and they experience extremely vivid hallucinations. But he was
convinced one of his attendants was a terrorist who had a fake leg that could be removed and used as a gun. And my dad would text us at all hours of the night, warning us of the imminent terrorist attack on the hospital that he was somehow going to thwart. It was kind of scary, but also legit hilarious.
So I have "Lance" to thank for that as well.
Anyway, I have all four episodes of the doc recorded, and plan on watching in the next week or so. Looking forward to it, if only to see how he rationalizes everything all these years later.
