Meet the GAU-8 Avenger by General Electric (“We Bring Good Things to Life.”)  This is the seven-barreled, 30 mm cannon the Air Force built their A10 Thunderbolt (a.k.a. “Warthog”) tank-killer around.  It fires its depleted-uranium-core armor-piercing shell (which is just over an inch in diameter) at 3900 rounds per minute.

This sucker is HUGE.  Below it’s shown (along with its 1350 round drum magazine) next to an old VW bug.

Personally, I hope never to be on the wrong end of one of these babies.

Well, I’m firmly in my taper now.  Today was a mere 13-1/2 miles!

And really, that distance wouldn’t be all that hard anymore — except today was HORRENDOUSLY hot and humid.  High 80s and 75 percent humidity when I started, and the first three plus miles were mostly uphill, downwind, and under blaaaazzzing sun.  I wouldn’t have made it if that had kept up.

Fortunately, at the first turn I not only got a cross wind (and later a glorious headwind!), but the clouds came and turned off the broiler.

I still managed to turn miles in 8:50 on average on a hilly course.  Paavo, here I come!

This past week I took part in a study of great explorers in the context of leadership, including British South Pole explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott.  The key theme involving Scott was blaming various supposed shortcomings in his leadership style for his being beaten to the pole by Roald Amundsen, and for his team’s perishing on their return journey.

This prompted me to further study Scott.  Having done so, I now call BS on this theme.

I find it most compelling that Scott was regarded as a hero in his time (the early 1900s), and had the respect of his fellow explorers, including Amundsen.  It was only in the latter half of the 20th century that he came under fire, often by people with little understanding of the particulars of his endeavor.  Interestingly, while his reputation has been somewhat restored since the turn of our new century, he remains the subject of the kind of criticism I encountered this week.

The tenor of this criticism is that Scott’s leadership wasn’t “inclusive” and that its hierarchical approach, grounded as it was in the Royal Navy’s rank orders, was the cause of his team’s demise.  Umm… really?  The same Royal Navy that ruled the waves for centuries?  That bested the mighty Spanish?  That rendered the Dutch and Portuguese imperial footnotes?  That conquered the New World?  Asinine.

The reality is this:  Scott and his team made the pole, mere weeks behind Amundsen.  They made mistakes along the way, as did every team that ever accomplished anything of any difficulty at all.  But to act as though their effort was anything short of one of the most stupendous achievements of mankind, and that their failure was something eminently avoidable, is to completely misunderstand the scope of the expedition, the hardships the men willingly faced and the risks they willingly took, and the unimaginable successes that got those men to the southernmost point of our globe.

Scott and his team had colossally bad luck and died.  (The weather they encountered was almost impossibly, consistently horrible.)  Other teams had better luck and succeeded.  Such are the vicissitudes inherent in the field of human striving.

Scott should be studied as the success he is and always shall be, ignorant second-guessing notwithstanding, and his leadership style and methods should be incorporated into any of today’s collections of the world’s best.  Was his singular style the best?  No — but neither is any other great man’s, since “the best” is different for every single situation.  Did it achieve the seemingly impossible, even in failure?  Indubitably.

“Had we lived, I should have a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale.”   – Robert Falcon Scott, 1912

Leadership study should avoid merely finding those successful men whose methods were the same as the ones in vogue in our own time and our own organizations.  Self-congratulation is not a means of self-improvement.

Contador wins by the same 39 seconds he gained by throwing honor and tradition to the wind and attacking the yellow jersey on a mechanical.

Bravo to Schleck for a strong time trial yesterday, but it still should have been the case that Contador cleaned up.  Instead he struggled to keep his lead at all, and finished the time trial far off the stage-winning pace I’m sure he’d hoped for.  Perhaps there is some measure of justice in this world.

Schleck comes off as a fighter, a gentleman, and a fine representative for the sport.  Contador, not so much…

The Tour’s going past the spot where Fabio Casartelli was fatally injured in a crash in 1995 reminded me of a similar incident that was much closer to home for me.

Almost two years ago, the last time I did the Six Gap Century in north Georgia (after a full unbroken decade), a rider from Florida, Daniella Izquierdo, crashed on the descent of the most challenging of the six mountain passes on the ride, Hogpen Gap.  Despite nearly immediate attention from two trauma surgeons who also happened to be doing the ride, and a quick airlift to one of the finest hospitals in the area, she passed away two weeks later.

I felt the same way as one of the writers in this thread.  I was floored by the news Daniella had died.

If you ride a bike anywhere, you know academically that you’re running a risk of sudden death.  If you ride in the mountains, that risk goes up dramatically, even if the deaths of Casartelli and Izquierdo are still remote events.  But having someone suffer a fatal injury on a descent you yourself just went down minutes before brings things into much greater clarity.  So it was for me with Daniella.

I didn’t stop riding because of it.  You have to live, after all — and trying for a risk-free life is a sure recipe for misery.  But I’m awfully, awfully diligent to this day about kissing my wife and my boys before I leave.  You just never know…

As a follow-up to my post about architect Henry Hobson Richardson, I’ll highlight a couple of buildings done in his trademark style.

This is the former Wichita, Kansas, City Hall building, which now houses the Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum.

The building was designed by William T. Proudfoot and George W. Bird and was built in 1890.

This next one is the Erie County Savings Bank, built in Buffalo, New York, in 1893 and demolished in 1968.

It was designed by George B. Post, who also designed the New York Stock Exchange building.

Here’s a site with more pictures and history on this lost Buffalo architectural treasure.

Brother Steve writes, “How weak was that Contador attack when Andy’s chain came off yesterday?”

He refers, of course, to Alberto Contador (and Sammy Sanchez and Denis Menchov, among others) attacking Tour de France yellow jersey holder Andy Schleck after the maillot jaune suffered a thrown chain while himself launching what looked to be a successful attack as the favorites neared the top of the Port de Balès.

That’s the way the ball bounces, right?  Well, no.  In cycling, there’s been an ages-old unwritten rule that you do not attack the yellow jersey on a crash or a mechanical.  Everyone riding is well aware of this, even if the many clueless American commentators ridiculing Schleck and cycling in general obviously are not.  Indeed, our own Lance Armstrong benefited from this gentleman’s agreement  some years ago when he was thrown to the ground by an errant musette bag handle that caught his handlebars when he himself was on the attack in the mountains.  (However, it did take another American, Tyler Hamilton, to remind the rest of the leaders on that occasion that waiting for Lance was the genteel thing to do.)

So yes, Contador is a no-class douchebag.

What’s sadder still is how readily many of those intimately involved in cycling for years and years let this bit of gentility go.  Johan Bruyneel… Phil Liggett… Robbie Ventura…  All disavowed the need for, and validity of, the longstanding tradition.

This is a real shame.  Particularly as the sport continues to struggle with its cheaters and liars, choosing to toss aside this bit of gentility now seems really poor timing.  We’re left with yet another message that winning is the only thing, and should be pursued at any cost.

On the other hand, given that we’ve had yellow jersey wearers who we now know were cheating, perhaps the respect for the maillot jaune as an institution was already abandoned long ago.

I like to think not, given the boos, jeers and whistles Contador endured when he stepped up to get his ill-gotten yellow jersey.  God bless the true fans!

The training plan called for a half-marathon race today.  There were none around I could find, so I went out and did 13.5 miles hard myself.  As usual, it was warm and stiflingly humid.

On the one hand, despite carrying and downing a boatload of Gatorade, I lost six pounds on the run.  (I’m praying for cool and dry for race day.)

On the other, I turned 8-1/2 minute miles.

Feeling pretty good about it all…

This year’s Tour de France has been fantastic viewing.  It’s back to the old days of ups and downs, and no clear winner yet as we head into the Pyrenees (note:  I haven’t checked out today’s results yet).

What I find most interesting is how everyone is down on Lance Armstrong for his performance.  The fact is, Lance’s heyday was an impossibility — that is, for him not only to be on top of his game for seven wins, but to have lady luck on his side all those times.  And the further fact is that his serial bouts of bad luck this year are more par for the course.  So those of you who started watching the Tour during the reign of Lance are finally seeing what it’s all about — welcome to the show!

This article is particularly bad.  Now, Lance may well be a doper; I don’t know.  I do know that to say it’s foregone conclusion because a) he’s not as strong at 38 as he was in his prime, and b) because proven liars have accused him is a pretty good foray into stupidity.  And to ignore that doping has nothing to do with staying upright and avoiding flat tires only adds to Bill Gifford’s numbskullery.

My favorite part:

After a good start, he struggled in the third, cobblestoned stage, losing nearly a minute to Contador.

Lots of top contenders struggled in that stage; I’m pretty sure that’s why they added it.  To heap scorn on someone for struggling on the cobbles reveals Gifford as completely, utterly clueless about the sport.  Note to Bill:  Lance lost that time waiting for his team car after suffering a flat.  And Contador had the ride of his life that day.  That Lance lost less than a minute says he was on pretty damn good form, pinhead.  Maybe you could watch the Paris-Roubaix sometime before writing about cycling again?

Who can forget this scene?

Except now Dirty Harry would need to invest anew to stay at the top of the revolver roundup, thanks to this new gem — the Smith & Wesson Model 500 .50-caliber Magnum:

Gotta love a pistol with a compensator…