Lance Armstrong hates Plano Texas

"666" wrote in message
om...
Houston Chronicle
July 23, 2004

To Lance, hometown just a bad memory
Armstrong grew to detest Plano in high school years
By THOMAS KOROSEC

PLANO - New York City has had an official Lance Armstrong Day, and
Austin has had two.

But here in the town where the cycling star was raised, Armstrong's
name is as apt to invoke expressions of discomfort and regret as
celebration, even as he closed in this week on an unprecedented sixth
straight win in the Tour de France.

"If they held a Lance Armstrong Day, he'd probably boycott it," said
Jack English, principal of Bending Oaks High School in Dallas, from
which Armstrong graduated in 1989.

In fact, Plano officials invited Armstrong back on at least four
occasions in 1999 and 2000 to celebrate his own day and to name a
hike-and-bike trail in his honor. "We never received a response, so we
dropped the effort," said Don Wendell, director of parks and
recreation. "In his book, he wasn't very complimentary about us."

That's putting it mildly.

In his ghostwritten 2000 autobiography, It's Not About the Bike,
Armstrong calls this Dallas suburb of 240,000 residents
"soul-deadening" and conformist to a fault.

Born in Dallas, Armstrong moved with his family to an apartment in
suburban Richardson, then to a house in Plano, when he was young.

"It was the quintessential American suburb, with strip malls, perfect
grid streets and faux-antebellum country clubs in between empty brown
wasted fields," he writes. "It was populated by guys in golf shirts
and Sansabelt pants and women in bright fake gold jewelry, and
alienated teenagers."

If you were not upper middle class or a football player, he writes,
"you didn't exist."

As the son of a secretary, who raised him as a single parent, and as
an aspiring athlete with little hand-eye coordination and no skill at
moving laterally, he was neither.

"I felt shunned at times," he recalls in the book. "I was the guy who
did weird sports and who didn't wear the right labels." Kids in the
"social" group made fun of his Lycra shorts.

His adolescent resentments became fuel for his competitive fire, he
writes. "Back then I was just a kid with about four chips on his
shoulder, thinking, 'Maybe if I ride my bike on this road long enough
it will take me out of here.' "

Armstrong's most pointed criticism he saves for Plano East Senior High
School, "one of the largest and most football-crazed high schools in
the state."

In the second semester of his senior year, he was invited by the U.S.
Cycling Federation to train for the next season's Junior World
Championships, his first big international bike race.

School administrators objected to him missing six weeks of school, and
told him and his mother he would not graduate if he skipped school to
train. "I knew damned well that if I played football and wore Polo
shirts and had parents who belonged to the Los Rios Country Club,
things would be different," Armstrong recalled 11 years later.

His mother persuaded Bending Oaks High School, a tiny private school
located in a north Dallas office park, to give Armstrong credit for
his 3 1/2 years at Plano high schools, and after just a few months in
attendance he earned his diploma.

Within a year, he moved to Austin and has lived there since, when not
training in France, California or Spain, where Armstrong, now an
international celebrity with a rock-star girlfriend, also has a house.

"It's a disappointment," said Rick Gurney, owner of Plano Cycling and
Fitness bike shop. "We have someone who we should be able to claim as
our own but he's not willing to give us that. I think his book gives a
reasonable explanation about his feelings, though it's not one any of
us would like to hear."

Gurney's shop is plastered with posters of Armstrong and products he
endorses: bikes, helmets, sunglasses, clothing.

Even if it is unrequited, "we love Lance," said Chris Mathews,
president of the Plano Bicycle Association. "We have 200 members out
there every Saturday morning trying to be just like him."

At Richardson Bike Mart, in an adjacent suburb, manager Woody Smith
said he did not think people and cyclists in Plano and Richardson are
more interested in Armstrong's Tour de France bid than they are
elsewhere in the state. "I thought people would be doing more," he
said.

The store held a Tour-watching party last weekend and plans to hold
another this weekend, as the race ends.

On Wednesday, as Armstrong solidified his lead in the Tour by winning
a time trial up the mountain switchbacks of L'Alpe d'Huez,
administrators at Plano East were setting up their offices for the
start of another school year.

None wanted to talk about Armstrong, the most successful athlete the
school ever produced.

"Nobody has anything they want to share," said Debbie Weaver, the
office administrator. Around the school's main lobby there are track
and football trophies, and not a hint of Armstrong.


SNIP
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----


In other words, "Sure we treated him like crap as a kid and we still do, but
hey, that doesn't mean he shouldn't kiss our ass."

From: HAPPYDANCE

I think that sports, in general, can teach a lot of good life lessons
but football might be the exception.



Then you've never played. Yet another Dumbass heard from.
Bill C

explorer wrote:

snip

In other words, "Sure we treated him like crap as a kid and we still do, but
hey, that doesn't mean he shouldn't kiss our ass."



.... which might be a pretty accurate description of Plano in general.

--
The e-mail address in our reply-to line is reversed in an attempt to
minimize spam. Our true address is of the form .

"Moorehead Johnson" wrote in message
om...
(james) wrote in message
news:DiVMc.9690$fB4.6523@lakeread01...
In article ,
666 wrote:

In his ghostwritten 2000 autobiography, It's Not About the Bike,
Armstrong calls this Dallas suburb of 240,000 residents
"soul-deadening" and conformist to a fault.

If you've ever seen Plano, you surely understand this.

I'm a rabid Lance fan (I've also lived in Plano), but permit me to
make an observation - maybe someone could identify the suburb in
America that ISN'T "soul-deadening", "conformist", etc? I grew up in
a suburb of Phoenix. It was soul-deadening and conformist. I was a
geek, a band nerd, and picked on. I hated the cliques and the jocks.
I was also a cyclist, thanks to a teacher who turned me on to cycling
as a freshmen. My geek friends and I would cycle all over hell and
gone every weekend, but in the late seventies, we had no American
cycling heroes - we did all go see the movie "Breaking Away" a dozen
times and dreamed of winning bike races, which none of us ever did.
Since then, I have lived in a dozen states and half a dozen countries.
Invariably, when people I have come to know harken back to their high
school days, they ALL talk about how they were outcasts, how horrible
the cliques were, how the jocks got the girls, how the cheerleaders
got the jocks, and how the geeks got picked on. I'm gonna go out on a
limb and estimate that 75-80% of all high school students EVER
considered themselves outcasts, geeks, and picked on. Lance's
experience was not unique, although I'm sure he probably felt it was
at the time. I wonder if Lance realizes that that 75-80% of the
students at Plano East NOW feel exactly like he did then, and that for
him to show up in Plano for a parade or an event or something would be
an awesome, inspiring event for the geeks and outcasts that feel
solidarity with him...

Again, this is NOT intended to be anti-Lance flame at all - I've
followed his career for years, contribute to his foundation, and am a
HUGE fan. I just wonder if he realizes how many budding "Lances" are
probably in Plano right now who would LOVE to see him come back to the
town where he was raised and provide some moral support.

MJ

Ya definitely sounds like Phoenix, texas wannabe (and who in their right
mind would?) insane place, will never return.
-a

james wrote:
In article ,
666 wrote:


In his ghostwritten 2000 autobiography, It's Not About the Bike,
Armstrong calls this Dallas suburb of 240,000 residents
"soul-deadening" and conformist to a fault.


If you've ever seen Plano, you surely understand this.

I lived in Plano for 6 years. I got to know many wonderful folks. I
found that the city planners in Plano were far less incompetant that
their counterparts in most other cities in which I've lived.

Yes, there are too many SUV (stupid user vehicles) for my liking, but I
never felt out of place riding my bike.

Yes, there were plenty of cookie-cutter strip malls. Yes, the high
schools are arranged to win the state football championship. But if
those are the worst things about the place, that ain't bad.

As for cliques, I ignore them. If someone chooses to ignore me because
I don't meet their criteria for being important, that person is probably
too stupid for me to really enjoy their company anyway.

I enjoyed living in Plano.

From: gwhite

Wonderful. A chance to annoy the rbr king doofus who would certainly not
give me permission to turn
this into a school voucher thread.

Noticed you tried, anyhow.

He should. Weakening the public school stranglehold is performing a
community service.

There are any number of private schools, most everywhere, that you can send
your kids to (assuming you have children). Or home school them. The
"stranglehold" is that the public schools pretty much have to accept any and
all, while the private schools can hoist up their panties and only accept the
exceptional, and boot out any who don't toe the line ("conformity").
Doublespeak as usual.

"The time is long overdue to get rid of the outdated notion that liberal
Democrats represent
ordinary people. They represent such special interests as trial lawyers who
keep our courts clogged
with frivolous lawsuits,

Translation: "Cost good businessmen money when their defective products cause
injury or loss of life". This is a constant, take away the little guy's right
to recoup loss, and to punish the big guys for wrongdoing. Profit is holy,
little people are dirt.

busybody environmentalists who think the government should force other
people to live the way the greens want them to live,

Yeah, sometimes. Other times, polluting at will, endangering workers and local
residents. See: Maquiladoras. Bad things happen where there are no "green"
regulations.

and of course the teachers' unions who think
schools exist to provide their members with jobs." -- Thomas Sowell

Boy, if there are two things any good neocon hates, it's unions and teachers.

Liberals also run the schools of education, the law schools, the high schools
and the
elementary schools."

Liberals run the LAW SCHOOLS??? O my God. Whopper whopper whopper, a three-whop
alert on that one. Need I recite the history of the law school at UT Austin,
for example?

A school
is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and
tender; therein they are
pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with
official rubber-stamps." --
H.L. Mencken

And having the schools run by religious nutcase neocons is going to *reduce*
pressures for conformity? Just how in hell is *that* supposed to happen?

If you don't pay taxes, where is your voucher money going to come from, gwhite?
Taken from someone else at the point of a gun? --TP

In rec.bicycles.racing Brandy Alexandre wrote:
(666) wrote in
om:

"It was the quintessential American suburb, with strip malls, perfect
grid streets and faux-antebellum country clubs in between empty brown
wasted fields," he writes. "It was populated by guys in golf shirts
and Sansabelt pants and women in bright fake gold jewelry, and
alienated teenagers."

Why did that suddenly remind me of the "prettiest girl in the whole
development" Citibank ad?

Twirl
(Kinky Friedman)
Just a small-town girl
Till you learned to twirl
Then you set the world on fire
LiKe a drive-in Cinderella
In a Chevy named Desire
So leave your teddy-bear
At the county fair,
Honey, Hollywood’s on the phone,
For a small-town girl
From a small-town world
You’re a long, long way from home.

They say that dreams come true in Indiana
That Momma loves you up in Abilene,
And if you wish upon a star in Texarkana
Some day you may be a twirling queen.

Just a small-town girl
Till you learned to twirl
Then you set the world on fire
LiKe a drive-in Cinderella
In a Chevy named Desire
So leave your teddy-bear
At the county fair,
Honey, Hollywood’s on the phone,
For a small-town girl
From a small-town world
You’re a long, long way from home.

Then you turned around and yesterday was over,
Childhood’s like some long lost lullabye
Way back when all the pearls were in the ocean,
Way back when all the stars were in the sky.

Just a small-town girl
Till you learned to twirl
Then you set the world on fire


Actually that sounds better than I first pictured a place named "Plano,"
but his memories of the place are pretty common for the outcast teen. I'm
sure he'd hold any city in the same low regard from the same point-of-view
experiences. It's not the city's fault.

Tom Paterson wrote:

From: gwhite

Wonderful. A chance to annoy the rbr king doofus who would certainly not
give me permission to turn
this into a school voucher thread.

Noticed you tried, anyhow.



Dumbass, you weren't the doofus I was talking about.

Dear Net Nanny... KAAABBOOOMMM!!!!!

Tom Paterson wrote:

From: gwhite

Liberals also run the schools of education, the law schools, the high schools
and the
elementary schools."

Liberals run the LAW SCHOOLS??? O my God. Whopper whopper whopper, a three-whop
alert on that one. Need I recite the history of the law school at UT Austin,
for example?

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/d...20030421.shtml
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/col...iams090303.asp

"Meanwhile, freshmen at William College can explore such esoteric areas as an English course on
“man’s desire ... to take, order, idealize and copy nature’s bounty while humanizing, plundering and
destroying the environment” even though there is no comprehensive course in history..... University
academics will resist an attempt to make them accountable to those who pay their salaries. One
solution: Remove obstacles to accountability, such as tenure. At the same time, privatize as much of
the university system as possible so that it becomes responsive to “clients”—that is, to the parents
and students who purchase and consume its services." --
http://www.independent.org/tii/news/031111McElroy.html


"By the way, there is one last academic danger you must face: the commencement address. This
bromide-filled talk invariably reinforces the same falsehoods you have heard in your classrooms. The
speaker will tell you that your highest moral obligation is to choose a career in which you pursue
not your own interests, but those of society. You will hear the statement that self-sacrifice is the
noblest ideal for which any American could strive.

The truth is exactly the opposite. America was founded on the principle of individualism, the
principle that the individual is sovereign and has an inalienable right to life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness. In America, virtue was meant to consist not of self-negation, but of
self-assertion--not of collective servitude, but of individual achievement. Defying centuries of
statist political thought, the Founding Fathers declared for the first time that the individual does
not exist to serve the government, but that the government exists solely to protect the rights of
the individual." --- http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=2787

A school
is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and
tender; therein they are
pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with
official rubber-stamps." --
H.L. Mencken

And having the schools run by religious nutcase neocons is going to *reduce*
pressures for conformity? Just how in hell is *that* supposed to happen?

"Socialization

The primary advantage of socialist education, we are told, is socialization. [LOL] The ability to
sniff the behinds of those around you, and ascertain your position in the pack, your place in the
pecking order. In adult prisons, rapists help to put and keep 'fresh meat' in its place. In kiddy
penal institutions, bullies serve the same purpose. Several studies, including my own MS thesis,
have measured the social maturity of home-educated children. This characteristic is normally far
higher in kids who were raised in their families, than in those who were surrendered to The Lord of
the Flies. It's easy to pick out the home-schooled kids at family reunions. They're the ones who can
organize the younger cousins into games, or comfortably discuss politics with the sober aunts and
uncles.

If most people today could aspire to government work from high school graduation to retirement,
public education might make sense. Training people to beg permission before using the bathroom makes
them more dependable line workers. In terms of preparation for the real world, however, the
home-schooling family links effort with reward, input with output, in a direct manner that social
promotions obscure. The discipline of independent learning, imparted early, equips kids with the
preparation they need to excel on the university level. The typical home-educated child can handle
selected community college classes soon after he hits puberty, and hungers for adult-sized
challenges."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/smedley1.html



"The biggest difference is that successful schools teach in ways that are directly the opposite from
what is fashionable in the public schools in general. Successful schools spend their time on the
three R's, they teach reading with phonics, they memorize multiplication tables, and -- above all --
they have discipline, so that a few disruptive students are not able to prevent all the others from
being educated.

Despite the self-serving claim from the teachers unions that successful schools for minorities skim
the cream from the public schools, often these successful charter schools or other private schools
admit students on the basis of a lottery, so that those they take in are no better than those they
don't." -- http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell092503.asp



"Many of the pronouncements coming from those who run our public schools range from fallacies to
frauds. The new book 'No Excuses' by Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom exposes a number of these
self-serving lies.

You may have heard how hard it is to find enough teachers — and therefore how necessary it is to
raise salaries, in order to attract more people into this field. One example can demonstrate what is
wrong with this picture, though there are innumerable other examples.

A young man who graduated summa cum laude from elite Williams College decided that he wanted to be a
teacher. He sent letters and resumes to eight different school districts. Not one gave him even the
courtesy of a reply.

Does that sound like there is a teacher's shortage? Moreover, any number of other highly qualified
people have had the same experience.

The joker in the deal is that, no matter how highly qualified you are, your desire to become a
teacher is not likely to get off the ground unless you have jumped through the bureaucratic hoops
that keep people out of this field — thereby protecting the jobs of unionized incompetents who are
already in our schools.

The most important of these hoops is taking unbelievably dreary and stupid courses in education.
Using these costly and time-consuming courses as a barrier, those in the education establishment
"maintain low standards and high barriers at the same time," as Secretary of Education Rod Paige has
aptly put it.

Factual studies show no correlation between taking these courses and successful teaching. Private
schools are able to get good teachers by hiring people who never took any such courses. That is
where our Williams graduate finally found a job.

The very people in the education establishment who maintain barriers to keep out teachers are the
ones constantly telling us what a shortage of teachers there is — and how more money is needed. This
is a scam that has worked for years and will probably work for more years to come." --
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell092603.asp


I bet you could write your own "silly letter." --
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell100103.asp
I bet you could write the book.


If you don't pay taxes, where is your voucher money going to come from, gwhite?

Uhmmm,.... my pocketbook?

Taken from someone else at the point of a gun?

No dip****, that's how you took *mine*.



While it is a change in topic, I get the feeling you are a Moore-on:
http://www.davekopel.com/Terror/Fift...enheit-911.htm

"Ewoud Dronkert" wrote in message
...
On Thursday 29 July 2004 22:58, Ken Leander wrote:
Ken Leander, from beautiful Austin in the great State of Texas!
(where men are men, women are women, and we know the difference)

I saw a documentary on TV last night, about the obesity epidemic in
Texas, Houston foremost. Apparently 2 in 3 people are overweight, and
one of those even "mortally obese". One woman portrayed weighed more
than 500 pounds, and felt good about her appearance, thought of herself
as cute and showed us a picture of her in a fishnet body. That really
made her look like a beached whale. The only thing I saw was a
disgusting mountain of flesh, not a woman.

Anyway, in 25 years western Europe will be just as bad, it seems.

What a lovely post. It's so nice to hear from snotty pukes on the other
side of the pond. Do write again. We're just all so interested in what you
will vomit up next!


--
Republicans = Providers!
Democrats = Takers!

LOWER MY FRIGGIN TAXES!

(Paid for by a concerned American, sick of Democrat PIGS
feeding at the American taxpayers trough)

Ken Leander residing in beautiful Austin in the great State of Texas!
(where men are men, women are women, and we know the difference)