New Blog to Follow and Something New in the Works Here

Dear Readers, the Pappillon cupboard has been bare of late, owing in large part to the demands of real-life (it's a time consuming process, atoning for participating in a systemic doping program...) and the drain on resources due to a comprehensive redesign of www.joepapp.com. Yes! You heard that right! We'll be moving the Pappillon blog off of the Blogger.com hosting platform and integrating it into a new JoePapp.com website, and are terrifically excited about the chance to recontextualize these musings and centralize their location on the web.

The site redesign is nearly complete, but until it is updates here will be limited. But not to fear - Twitter is proving very useful for maintaining contact with all of you, and to a lesser-degree there remains the option of connecting via FaceBook. But if you're starved for good eatin' and quality cycling-related musing, check out the new Antipodean blog The Cyclingmuse, which is helping everyone Dig a Little Deeper! Their latest post, "Scuttlebutt," is excerpted below:

"Greetings cycling fans, with another blockbuster Giro behind us (one day everyone will wake up to the fact that it has always been more exciting than its bigger Gallic cousin) and as the days get shorter and colder (in my part of the world at least), it only serves to remind me that the Tour de France is just around the corner.

Not to long ago this was a time of joyful expectation, waiting for the evening highlights of a race which was the only cycling event which existed according to mainstream media. Alas things have changed since then and the sport is easily accessible to anyone who might be curious. Well it’s still a time of expectation for me but for different reasons. You see over the years as interest in the sport has slowly increased I have noticed a pattern. I’m waiting, waiting for the next doping scandal to break.

Of course we have already had Floyd Landis finally coming clean (after years of denial) about his doping experiences and consequently slinging mud in every direction to see where it might stick. When the story came out during the Tour of California I started to think why didn’t he wait till before the TDF? Of course soon after the Landis mud slinging Lance Armstrong had a nasty fall and had to abandon the race. According to some conspiracy theorists this was a clever ploy to avoid the media and there was even the suggestion of fake blood capsules being used by LA to feign the bloody facial injuries he received as a result of the crash! Well done to Floyd for finally coming clean, it would have taken a whole lot of guts. I just wish he had have done that from the start, he may have still had a career as a top cyclist if he did..."