Are the top pro riders still cheating?

What we learned back in the Postal/Discovery days were that if it looks too good to be true then most likely it is. The dominance of Lance and his team was something to behold. I was sucked in, loved it, had my rose-colored-glasses on, I was a believer! Then that world came crashing down, and finally his confession on Oprah (of all places). Just like Floyd...he claimed, no, he swore he didn't cheat! He even wrote a book about it "Positively False" (I have it, and it's autographed btw). I certainly wanted to believe, and then HIS confession. It was Floyd's confession that really brought down Lance. Having the rug pulled out from under me, I am quite leery of believing again. Anybody who wins must be cheating. Wait...somebody has to win (except for those 7 years of Lance, where there is no winner, or 2nd, or 3rd...how can that be?)  

But now everybody is saying he (Pogacar) is arguably THE greatest cyclist of all time! Just putting him on equal terms with the great Eddy Merckx makes me wonder....if Eddy wasn't cheating, then it's possible for one person to come along, an outlier, that is far and away better than everybody else. And if there was one, then there WILL be another, and another. Michael Jordon, Lebron James, Tiger Woods all come to mind...athletes that pop up every now and then, and suddenly everybody else is fighting for 2nd place. It appears that the only real question is how far in-between we have to wait for the popping up of these mutant otherworldly athletes is all that is up for debate. Every sport has them. Gosh, think back to Mark Spitz, remember him? 7 gold medals in one Olympics! Michael Phelps...he was quite a while after Spitz, and even more dominant! Katie Ledecky, wow was she amazing! My point here is that there will ALWAYS be people that rise above the best. Are they ALL cheating in any way? How on earth would we ever know? 

So...that all said, IF Pogo isn't cheating, then he is that guy. If he IS cheating, then so are his top rivals. 

Everybody is forgetting: yes, Pogo set THE FASTEST KNOWN TIME up the Tourmalet by 2 minutes and 20 seconds! WOW, that's quite the smashing of the record for sure! Hmmm...sure sounds like he must be cheating. But wait...Vingo was only 30 seconds behind Pogo at the top of the Tourmalet...so HE ALSO BEAT THE FKT by a minute and half! But wait, there's more...the group of the top contenders Del Toro, Seixas and Lipowitz were only about 90 seconds behind Pogo, so THEY ALSO beat the FKT by almost a minute! And then, just 30 seconds behind them were the rest of the top 10, Evenepoel, Ayuso, Skjelmose, the Durango Kid Sepp Kuss, and finally Martinez! 

So the top 10 riders in this years Tour beat the old FKT up the Tourmalet. Thats pretty crazzy! Oh, wait, its also been the hottest Tour on record (and lets not forget that just a few stages later they set a new fastest average speed for a stage)! How is this possible? Are they ALL cheating? Or has the training and racers themselves adapted and are doing this fair and square? I certainly can't say they aren't cheating beyond the shadow of a doubt...I mean,, LA pulled the wool over most of us for 7 years in a row! But the Biological Passport that has been going on for a long time now, and would seem to rule that out. 

Consider that just 20 years or so ago it was pretty well established that young racers were physically unable to do well in the Grand Tours, that it was only possible by the more mature and established racers (in their mid to late 20s). And now the youngest rider in the Tour since 1939 (Paul Seixas at 19 years old) just beat the FKT on the Tourmalet. Pogo's teammate Issac Del Toro is only 22, and Florian Lipowitz is 25 (the old guy other than Pogo).

And finally, just 2 days ago (the final stage before the 2nd rest day) Remco beat Pogo across the line to win Stage 15! Is that a chink in the armor of the seemingly invincible Pogocar? It's surely the first time this year that he seems human! And Remco? Wow, good for him! To finally shatter that belief that he can't win in the big mountains. What a confidence boost that must be! And confidence breeds confidence! With Vingo out of the race, Remco, by winning that stage has put himself firmly into 2nd place overall! Now he just needs to use that confidence and build on it. Can he hold 2nd place into Paris? That remains to be seen, we still have a LOT of climbing to do, the Alps await!

And to close, I have to admit it was VERY sad to see Jonas crash out. He was really showing signs of life again, and had his entire team on the front totally dominating Stage 15, right up to that dreaded corner, and now hes out with a broken collarbone. But when one door closes another one opens, and Remco has the chance to hold his position on the Podium. 

OK, back to today's stage (the ITT, tho its an odd one, has a Cat 2 climb right out of the starting gate, a RIPPING descent, and finally a long flat to the finish). Who will win this one? Gosh, that's anybody's guess...its not a normal ITT, that's for sure. 

 Game ON! 

My first forray into night sky photography...cuz you know, I NEED another Hobby!

 

Milky Way Photography! 

So I took my new DSLR out Sunday night to try for some Dark Sky pictures (ie: Milky Way). I bought the camera very recently with my Las Vegas "Winnings" from 2 weeks ago. We went to LV for 4 days (Jeannie's brother/wife and nephew/wife and nephew-in-law/wife were there) and Jeannie loves to go to LV (and give them some of her money).

Whenever we got to LV, Jeannie saves a set-amount for each of us for gambling each day (if you lose it all you're done for the day, there's no hitting up an ATM or borrowing from tomorrows envelope of cash...it's a good policy!) However in recent years I've stopped GIVING LV MY MONEY! It's just stupid to me, they're GOING TO WIN in the long haul as they always do when I gamble! But we decided years ago that whether I gamble or not is my decision. So whatever I DON'T spend at the end of the trip is pure Winnings for the Mattster! It's a brilliant strategy IMO...I'm a WINNER every time we go there!!!! Usually I'd be whaling away on my recently updated Amazon list for Bike stuff...but this year I had a different plan. So that's how I got the camera (she did let me spend my money before the trip which us usually taboo, provided that I promised NOT to gamble, but that's really easy, cuz I had no money to gamble with).

So I'd ordered the camera a week before the trip so that I had it there with me, giving me something to do that doesn't involve being inside a smoky casino, woo HOO!  (I also have some nice shots of Hoover Dam and the Pat Tillman bridge, took the youngsters all with me one morning to get us out of the casinos for a while). And I also did some late evening walking around (when the temps dropped down to a chilly mid to high 90's), taking pics of the strip lights and such. The Bellagio fountains are pretty sweet at night!

So back to night sky pics... first and foremost, I need to switch the camera from "Auto" to "Manual", cuz apparently the camera can't do this in Auto...it needs MY HELP! Say what?? I thought this was a fancy camera with amazing capabilities, what did I just pay for? I tried once before about a week ago to get MW shots, and my stupid focus was off just a teensy bit and all I got were a bunch of blurry pics! (I didn't know that until I get home and looked at them on the desktop after uploading them from the camera). So...camera focus (specifically the lens): Challenge # 1.

Even on the fanciest cameras and lenses, AF just can't get the night sky focus right...so here's something that I found out: every lens has a focus ring (for doing Manual focus...in the AF setting it does the focus automatically when you press the shutter button half-way down)...so when looking up anywhere into the sky and press the shutter button (you know, to take a picture), you would THINK that the lens would just go to the "Infinite" distance, cuz, you know, unless there's a UFO that suddenly swooped into your shot, stuff in the sky is pretty far away right? And I'm looking at STARS...Technically NOT infinite, but realistically, yep...infinite. But NO! When focusing on stars at night, if I use AF it's blurry, and if I manually just turn the lens to Infinite, it's still blurry. I have to manually turn the focus back to something 'less than infinite' (just a teensy bit) to get sharp focused stars! Someone PLEASE explain that one to me! What in the WIDE WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS is INFINITE distance if not freaking STARS??) For crying out loud, this isn't ROCKET SCIENCE! It's not like we're trying to do the impossible and LAND ROCKETS ON THE GROUND AFTER THEY'VE LAUNCHED or anything...oh wait, SpaceX has done that MANY HUNDREDS of times now, and apparently China just did it too. Can't ANYBODY make a camera lens setting that WORKS without ME having to go in and manually do the focus? Great Googly Moogly!

And if THAT's not stupid enough, I now STILL need to make MORE changes (these are in the Camera menu)...such as taking ISO from Auto to an actual number (usually between 800 and 3200), Shutter speed from Auto to a number (at night that's usually 15 seconds, any more than that and the stars are starting to move and you have blurry shots), Aperture from Auto to a number (for really dark sky that's usually the lowest the lens will go, the lower the better for Milky Way shots), White Balance from Auto to Daylight (apparently Auto WB can't do Night sky either, how stupid are these fancy cameras these days? What, were they designed by ChatGPT?), and THEN I still need to go into the internal menus on the camera to turn off "Long Exposure Noise Reduction" and "High ISO Noise Reduction" (both of those settings are supposed to HELP with long shutter speeds and high ISO's, which is pretty much, no, it's EXACTLY what dark shy shots are doing, yet those settings are always recommended to be turned off by photo pros...Luuucy, I need some 'splain-in' please!) 

And after all that, how do I actually get a crisp and clear focus on a star on a dark night? (I'm standing outside somewhere in some pretty serious darkness btw), with my camera on a tripod looking UP at the stars I want to focus on, so now I can't even look thru the viewfinder, cuz it's looking DOWN)...so.. I have to turn on "Live View" which puts my camera lens view on my cameras little screen. Oh wait, that doesn't help either, as my entry level cam screen doesn't pull out and rotate around to SEE IT when you have the camera anywhere except level! Grrr....so now I have to now find a star lower in the horizon (where I can still see the little screen on the back of the camera) and then go to 10x zoom on the camera (it's because of the zoom that I need to have the cam on the tripod, as the stars are tiny and even the slightest movements make it all blurry). 

Once I get his far, I can adjust the focus ring to get a crisp looking star. HOWEVER, another thing nobody tells you: when you take the lens off of Auto Focus, the focus ring moves with the freaking WIND...I mean just the slightest wisp of a breeze, or even THOUGHT of touching it, and it moves! So now I need to tape my focus ring to the lens proper, and in the act of doing that the focus-ring yep...you guessed it...MOVES (GRRRR!!!!!!) and it's blurry again! So now I'm peeling the tape back off the focus ring IN THE DARK, and doing my utmost to get it taped to the ring AND STILL BE IN FOCUS! It's harder than it sounds (and I think it sounds hard). 

After ALL THAT, I'm FINALLY READY to take some Milky Way pictures! Oh wait, now it's close to dawn as I spent all night TRYING to get READY to take night sky pics and the Milky Way is no longer visible! Ok, not really, but it does take some extra time for sure. And so...after all that (seriously, it's quite a learning curve to use a fancy-schmancy camera and take pictures of THE SKY!), here are 2 of the shots I took Sunday night (I did move my tripod several times IN THE DARK around my area looking for anything to be in the foreground, cuz it turns out a shot just looking into the sky is just boring...but having something dark in the foreground makes it all better...thus I found trees. The first shot is with the camera Verical, and the 2nd is when it was horizontal (I couldn't decide which would look better in a picture). I took like 100 shots, and these were my 2 best (tho I'm not truly sure, remember there were are about 100 of them...how on earth can I compare that many? What am I, a CIA Satellite Photography analyst or something??  (note: I sent these 2 shots via email to my brothers and Dave, the one of us that's had a DSLR for a while so has some experience here) did some Hocus-Pocus Harry Potter "Pictureisimo FANTASTICO" magic spell on them (ie: post-processing), really bringing out the depth of the Milky Way compared to my untouched jpg shots. (I do still have all those thousands of shots also in the professional RAW format, which are enormous files, and supposedly, if I knew ANYTHING AT ALL I'd be looking at THOSE files and doing Hocus Pocus stuff, getting the very best of what the camera is capable of). 

Yeah...that's not happening (yet). So...well, here they are (the Hocus Pocused versions)!

The white streak in the upper left corner is a satellite passing thru, not a shooting star. That's what satellites look like in a 15 second exposure. (I took one shot looking up with no foreground, and there were FIVE satellites passing thru in that timespan!)
 

Basically this is the same shot with less trees in the foreground and no satellites passing thru.

I was pretty pleased with this first serious attempt to get MW shots...they aren't for beginners (or are they?)! And this is with a fairly cheap 'entry level' lens! Good lenses for these kind of pictures range from between $250 (which is still 'low end' in the big scheme of lenses) to over $1000. The lens I used cost me $109 on Amazon (didn't come with the camera package)...so that tells you where it falls in the big scheme of lenses. I have my eye on one that's $330, which is a lot considering I got the camera bundle for $500 (the camera, battery, a carry case and 2 lenses: a 18-55mm zoom and a 75-300mm zoom).

I just don't get it...it's not like there are just 3 or 4 people on the planet taking night sky shots...the camera has Auto settings for all kinds of things: Flash Off (forcing the camera to change settings knowing there won't be any 'extra' light), Creative Auto (fancy stuff, like background blur and lots of other stuff EXCEPT Milky Way picture stuff), Portrait, Landscape, Close-UP (Macro), Sports, Food, Night Portrait (which is not even in the same Milky Way as you know, Milky Way shots btw), and finally Video. 

And let's not get started on the settings done by rotating the knob the other direction from the ones I just listed above: there's P (for Program AE, where you can program some stuff into a Semi-Auto mode with certain constraints, primarily it DOESN'T WORK with MILKY WAY pics of course), Tv (Shutter Priority, which basically means the Shutter speed is set manually and Aperture is Auto set), Av (Aperture Priority, where Aperture is manually set and Shutter speed is Auto set), and finally Manual mode where you set pretty much everything important. And oh, let's not forget the BASIC Auto setting, where it cooks and serves me food and then takes a picture.

So to recap: in any of the Automatic camera settings, there's no Automatic dark sky settings for the Milky Way (cuz it's so small and hard to find, and even on a dark night when it's RIGHT THERE, why on earth would anybody even want to TRY to take a picture of it?). And not to kick a seriously dead horse around some more here, but we get a FOOD setting to take pictures of FOOD! Seriously???? FOOD, but no NIGHT SKY? REALLY???

So yeah...I've still got a TON to learn, but this is going to be fun (and sometimes frustrating, like driving 35 miles out of town for nice dark sky photography, taking a bunch of pictures, and having them ALL BLURRY, that I don't realize that until I drive 35mi back home to look at them on the computer). And hey....just know that daytime pics are QUITE EASY in comparison...just don't forget to CHANGE BACK ALL THAT CRAP I JUST DID FOR NIGHT SHOTS, or guess what..BLURRY PICTURES!

And maybe I can plan us an LV trip soon (so that I can get that lens)!!