It was one of those perfect days for cycling.

The sky was bright blue with clouds billowing above the windless hills.

Or it could have been grayed over by a full cover of motionless nimbostratus.

Maybe storms were hard approaching with lightening bursts in the distance as winds built toward explosive violence while the first large raindrops were already bouncing off helmets.

Like I said, it was the perfect day for cycling, but Dr. Art didn't exactly say which kind.

He only mentioned he was riding with friends in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, when a lone rider came up behind and asked, "Mind if I come along? Looks like you'll be going through Farmersville."

No problem with that.  It was the perfect day for cycling, and the ride was slow and friendly.

The new rider settled in with the group as Dr. Art moved politely to the back, but soon he heard something interesting so chirped, "What was that? What were you guys saying about Floyd Landis?"

"We just passed his parents' house."

"Really, where?"

"A couple houses back."

In the amount of time it took you to read from one side of the period to the other ending the  previous sentence, Dr. Art had already flipped his bike around and asked, "You mean back there where those two cyclists were standing in the driveway?"

"Right."

Artie took off like he had absolutely no reason in the world to be where he was, and positively every reason in the world to be a couple houses back.

When he reached the driveway the two cyclists were already out of it and going away from him, and he noted they were on bikes which would hardly be considered worthy of a junk heap, but there was something very plain, rugged, and useful about them, so he opened with, "Excuse me, are you Paul Landis?"

A microsecond of a grand double-take later Paul Landis looked back and said simply, "Yes, I am."

Dr. Art launched into a veritable sonnet of praises about Paul's son Floyd, with lots of thank yous and other stuff such as how proud he was about what Floyd had accomplished, what an impact Floyd had on cycling, and in fact what an impact Floyd had on Dr. Art's life plus everything else in the world besides, and how sorry he was that in the end Floyd had been treated so poorly.

Anybody who knows Dr. Art, knows that what he said would have been absolutely perfect and way beyond the possibility of written words to recount.

In summary, what Art said about the tragedy of the raw deal Floyd got is an absolute fact that is well beyond dispute.

It doesn't matter whether you think Floyd took the drugs or not:  it is tragic either way.

I am guessing Dr. Art falls on the side of believing Floyd rode clean (that is just the way Art is), but as for myself I think Floyd was doped.

Not that I think Floyd did it on purpose, but after reading his own book on the matter (Positively False), I decided Floyd probably did the drugs but didn't know he was doing them.

He was just eating what was put on his training table and taking injections of whatever Vitamin B supplements (wink, wink) the team doctor prescribed.

Floyd was born and raised in a part of the world and culture where almost the worst thing you could ever say about anybody is that they are a lier.

Therefore, when somebody said to him, "Here's the stuff you need to eat, and the supplements you need to take. It is all legal real-deal good healthy stuff to help you keep your performance top notch," Floyd likely didn't even question it.

Not to mention, in that part of the world the idea that somebody of stature would ever actually cheat in sport (mind you not just push the edge, but out and out cheat), well that is rather far fetched also.

Such things as lying and cheating were unlikely to have been on Floyd's list of  things to worry about.

I am myself from the midwest (therefore also much of a rube in that regard as well), and my own arrival in the big city was a real eye opener, but it still took me many years to complete my understanding of the depth and deftness of duplicity found in the rest of the world.

My old pappy used to say, "Listen, Bobby. The only thing you have in this life is your reputation, and if it becomes the reputation of a lier, you have nothing."

Therefore, I arrived on the East Coast so resistant to the idea of anything other than the inherent goodness of humankind that it eventually required me standing in membership with local government officials and watching them lie, cheat, and steal like there was no tomorrow (with more or less full complicity of the community around them) in order for me to finally grasp just how bad things can get.

Still, the last vestiges of my own orientation toward honesty caused me to put Floyd's book down the moment he himself admitted to lying about his health in order to qualify for the team while risking the health, safety, and well-being of every other rider, not just his own teammates but everyone he raced against as well.

Otherwise, it does not matter whether the raw deal Floyd got came from him being wrongly accused, or from him being naively used by nefarious forces. It doesn't even matter if he did performance drugs on purpose and knew exactly what he was doing.

It is just tragic no matter how you look at it.

It is most tragic for the simple reason it gives couch potatoes one more bit of misleading information allowing them to kid themselves saying, "Those cyclists in the Tour de France! Of course they are on drugs. Nobody could ever ride that fast and that far in those mountains without being on drugs."

Actually, such a level of performance is absolutely positively achievable without drugs, in fact within the potential of almost every able bodied athlete with a burning desire to do it.

It is stupefying astounding how the body responds to a dedicated effort focused on rational improvement over an extended period of time.

Maybe you can't win without drugs, but is the very last nameless person in the peloton so very far behind the winner?

Unfortunately, the standard regulation size couch potato has almost no chance of knowing that, because everything presented to them on their TV suggests otherwise.

Even the simple art of reading food labels is beyond their comprehension and leaves them open to all sorts of health myth and mysteria, so it is unlikely they have a clue about the insanely wonderful thing Floyd did for us... he rode with a power meter during his Tour de France win, and he published the results so the rest of us could get a true look at the actual effort required.

I doubt any thoughtful cyclist will soon forget Floyd's description (accompanied with metered data) of how his massive once in a lifetime effort on that epic climb was actually no more than a standard workout, and it was only the commentators who made it loom larger than human capacity.

My belief is that Floyd got busted for revealing the truth about the Tour, accompanied with repeatable data, not for doing any so called illegal drugs.

Poor couch potatoes. They may never get such a break in the steady stream of sportscaster hyperspeak again, but that is another story.

When the other riders got back to Dr. Art and his new best friends, they weren't talking about power data and cycling performance. They were talking about...

Well, who knows, because all of a sudden somebody's tire blew out very loud and final.

All the road cyclists looked immediately at their own wheel, then at each other's, but it was Paul Landis who came up with the prize.

Paul said, "Oh, no. Not again. This makes 9 times I've had to patch this tube," as he refused the round of wasteful offers of new tubes from all the excited and glad it wasn't my tire roadsters.

After the ride was over, Dr. Art thought about the sad condition of the Landis bike, and how much Floyd really does mean to all of us, etc, so he stopped by a local bike shop and got a couple tubes.

When he got back to the Landis house, nobody was around, so Dr. Art thought, "Just as well Paul isn't here. He'd probably refuse them," and he dropped two new tubes on the porch and left for home where nobody would be interested enough to hear the story.

And they never did.

Editor's Note: This article based on the true life novel by Dr. Art originally titled, "Have Bob Phone Me: I've got something to tell him."

Editor's Second Note: As an unhappy follow-up, American Road Cycling has learned that Paul Landis was within a single patch of the town record of 9 patches on a single tube, but the title was denied him when it was found he had a hoard of brand new tubes stashed under the dog's bed on his porch.

Editor's Third Note: Paul Landis has requested that in the future curiosity seekers looking for Floyd's childhood home be directed toward Dr. Art's house in hopes they may arrive there on a day when Wallace is running a big circle around the yard chasing the cropduster.