I miss the antic days when Frank Girardot was a staffer here. He was the kind of reporter who would push the envelope just a little bit, and it was fun. Sometimes maybe he pushed too far; still fun. Like the time I picked up the phone to hear Frank exclaim, "Boss, I'm in jail!"

"Why are you in jail?"

"Well, I'm not really in jail this very second. I'm standing outside the cop shop on Garfield. But I was taken into custody by the PPD after they say I got a little too close to that crime scene this morning and maybe wandered past the barricade - but it was the first barricade, not the yellow tape! And the guy at the first barricade told me I could! And then the guy at the second - hey, I just wanted to ask some questions - hauled me in!"

"Come on back to the office, Frank, and we'll talk."

Great times, I tell you. Frank now heads up his family's traffic-signal business and lives in Murrieta - next door, as it happens, to Tour de France champion bicyclist Floyd Landis.

Frank wrote a funny commentary piece for Sports on Sunday about what Landis is like as a neighbor. Great guy, apparently. He's all about pizza, beer, Lynyrd Skynyrd and fixing Frank's spigots when they leak. Frank has another column in today.

Landis also told Frank that doping in biking is cheating and decried the practice.

This was all before Landis tested positive for a high level of testosterone so that his yellow jersey is in danger of being taken away.

Most of us who follow the sport even casually, who tune in to see a few minutes of those amazing hill climbs in the Pyrenees and the cobblestone finish on the Champs d'Elysee, are finding this a bit dispiriting. Like the baseball situation - can't these jokers just gobble a vitamin each morning and hope for the best?

And why, even when they do deny injecting whatever creepy drug or growth hormone they are accused of using, does it usually come down to matters of being found out than of doing it in the first place?

"I'm surprised that someone could get caught stupidly after making such a beautiful stage win and winning the Tour," Christophe Basson, a former cyclist with the Francaise du Jeu team, told French television.

Such a nice Mennonite boy and all. Here's his mother: "He said, `There's no way.' I really believe him. I don't think he did anything wrong."

Well, I hope for U.S. cycling that in a retest it turns out to be just a macho level of the male hormone courses through his veins, or that someone mixed up the test tubes, or something. But if he's caught dead to rights, I hope he and Barry Bonds are assigned to orange-vested trash pick-up duty downtown on Interstate 5 - for the rest of their lives.

It must be amazing, to take things so literally.

I'm more of a heaven and hell are right here on Earth, plus in your mind when you soar or sin, sort of fellow myself.

But on yet another sweltering morning on the way into work Thursday, I loved reading this week's poetically short and to the point marquee message at the Salvation Army Tabernacle, Walnut and Mentor, as I passed it by: "If you think it's hot here ..."

larry.wilson@sgvn.com