Bringing back the biffo: Fight like a man!

While on the group ride on Sunday, I encountered a turtle in the road in Arrowhead Lake Estates- not an uncommon finding.  The little dude had dropped over the 8" curb and was small enough that there was no way he would be able to get back up over it on either side.  I braked, reached down, plucked him up and lightly tossed him into the field by the road that led into the wooded shoreline of the lake.  And I did so, I might add, at great peril to myself.  Not for the risk of not being able to rejoin the group, or being hit by a car, but because this little dude could have been a decoy luring me into a trap of an awaiting ravenous horde of killer turtles of the sort I had just reading about in my Man's Life Magazine the night before.

Of more interest to me than the "Chewed to bits by giant turtles!" story was the article on how "Masculine inadequacies drive women nuts!"  We'll discuss that one more in a bit.

And speaking of how treacherous a curb can be, I stumbled upon this new video of Lance's initial crash on Stage 8 as he clipped a pedal on a roadside curb.  What is more disturbing than watching him slide on his back going 35 MPH, however is the way the videographer is screaming as the peloton comes by.

Now - back to male inadequacies.  Of equal interest in my rest-day video watching, I found this post on some Aussie and Kiwi reponses within the peloton to the fight on Stage 6 between Barredo and Costa.  Famed experts in the arena of fisticuffs, the question being posed by the interviewer to his Aussie compatriots is whether or not the Tour should encourage "bringing back the biffo." I'm unfamiliar with the term "biffo" but think it must be Australian for a 'handbag fight', which is essentially what the scuffle amounted to, with a lot of open hand slaps and empty swings and both men flopping on the pavement in pretty short order.......aside from Barredo initially trying to pistol-whip Costa with his front wheel, of course.  Of particular insight are the comments of Mattie Lloyd of the Lotto squad.

Barredo is obviously catching some flak about quick-releasing his front wheel and using it in the fight, but this may be analagous to breaking off the bottom of a beer bottle to wield in a bar fight - he used whatever he could grab quickly.  I contend the real problem with most cyclist fights is the shoes, which makes them dance around like Seinfeld in cowboy boots.  They would be so much more effective if they took a moment to prepare themselves and remove their shoes before they fought, like hockey players removing their gloves before coming to blows.  I know male cyclists are in an uphill battle with respect to masculinity from the get-go with wearing rubber pants and shaving their legs and everything, but staying upright during a fight might go a long way to helping the cause.  And it could open a whole new catchphrase....imagine Phil Ligget yelling "And the shoes are off!" right before Cavendish and Heinrich Haussler go at it at the end of a bunch sprint.  Or better yet, they could duke it out while riding, almost like a joust of sorts.....oh wait, Cadel tried that during the Giro and that didn't go so well in the masculinity department either...