FLOYD LANDIS appears at his apartment door wearing his usual expression: a sharp, knowing smile.

"Welcome to the palace," he says.

His gaze flickers playfully around, taking in the small room's bare white walls and jumbled contents, which resemble a college dorm room after a mild earthquake. Here is the mantel clock frozen at 8:40, as it has been for two years. Here are the shiny piles of helmets and shoes; the tiny balcony stuffed with bikes. Here, sprawled on the couch, is fellow American cyclist Dave Zabriskie, a.k.a. Z-Man, Landis's sometime roommate. Here's the stereo vibrating with Ludacris. Here is the crammed bookshelf: How the Mind Works, by Steven Pinker, alongside thick biographies of Che Guevara and Frank Zappa. Should have known: Landis has a weak spot for revolutionaries.

All in all, it is a glorious squalor, a sophomoric playpen. Compared with the digs of the dozen or so top American cyclists who live here in Girona, Spain—elegant continental apartments within the city's charming old town—this tawdry cell, in an anonymous Lego-block building a mile outside the town center, constitutes a purposeful intrigue. Especially given that Girona's most legendary residence, an impeccably renovated apartamento that had belonged to a certain retired Texan, is rumored to have sold to a Madrid businessman for $2.4 million. Which leaves $700-a-month Casa de Floyd—beyond whose dented door a select few have ventured—emanating an ever-increasing sense of transition and mystery.

"I hear it's completely disgusting," one young American rider told me worriedly.

"Does he still ride around on that toy scooter?" another wanted to know.

Landis, 30, is the kind of person other bike racers like to tell stories about. A lot of it has to do with the narrative potency of his background, including his escape from a strict, oldfangled Mennonite childhood in Pennsylvania's Lancaster County. A lot of it has to do with Landis's penchant for offbeat, memorable feats—like riding wheelies after detaching his front tire or seeing how many bags of airline peanuts he can eat during a cross-country flight (28, for those of you keeping score). The result is that his fellow bike racers are constantly telling and retelling Floyd stories, creating a highlight reel that resembles nothing so much as old Warner Bros. cartoons. There is "The Time Floyd Dove into a Dumpster to Get a Pair of Shoes" and "The Time Floyd and Z-Man Drank 30 Cappuccinos in One Sitting" and "The Time Floyd Rode the Tour de France Nine Weeks After Having Major Hip Surgery." The stories hang together because they have the same plot: a curious, unusually determined guy pushes against conventional limits, causing varying degrees of pain, humiliation, and triumph, not necessarily in that order.

Landis begins our visit by showing me something on his computer: an image of his grimacing face superimposed on the heavily muscled body of an ax-wielding maniac. Beneath the image, in stylish typescript, are the words I'M A HOMO.

"I e-mailed this to Lance and Z-Man and my wife," Landis says, smiling hugely. "Z-Man and my wife got right back to me—they thought it was pretty funny. I never heard back from Lance, though."

"I wonder why?" Z-Man asks, deadpan.

They contemplate this question with amused expressions, the two former U.S. Postal teammates tapping easily into a convenient theme: Landis's semifamous feud with another former teammate, seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong. The clash, which began in 2004 when Landis left Armstrong's Postal team, and reached soap-operatic proportions during the 2005 season, is now officially over. But it would be unlike Landis and Zabriskie to leave the scab alone, never mind any attempt at diplomacy. So they joke about it. Landis and Zabriskie might be riding the Tour for rival teams—Landis the leader for Phonak, the 27-year-old Zabriskie a key lieutenant for CSC—but it's instantly apparent why the two have been best friends since they first wore Postal blue together back in 2002.

"We were just wondering if, when this biking thing is over with," Landis says, "we could apply to Harvard."

Judging by the bookshelf, I offer, they might have a shot.

"We were thinking we'd get in based on life experience," Landis says.

"And death experience," Z-Man points out.

"We know how to kill things," Landis says with enthusiasm. "Killing things can be extremely useful."

"For eating," Z-Man says.

I ask what they eat around here. Bike racers are prodigious eaters, yet the cupboards and counters are distinctly bare. "We eat a lot of eggs," Landis says. "And we boil chickens."

"Boiling chickens," Z-Man says, in a Beavis-like voice. "Gotta boil the chicken."

"That's our philosophy, in a nutshell," Landis says. "You gotta boil the chicken. Until the bird flu comes. Then the chicken boils you."

"Boo-yah," says Z-Man.

Landis offers another of his philosophies, one that comes courtesy of comedy writer Jack Handey. "If life deals you lemons," Landis quotes, "why not go kill someone with the lemons, maybe by shoving them down his throat."

"Lemons," says Z-Man. "Leeee-mons."