4 American Teams in the 2010 Tour de France!

Holy! That just hit me. 4 American based/owned cycling teams in the 2010 Tour de France. That is 20% of the teams.

Interesting to think back on the lineage of American teams in le Tour over the last 25 years:

1) Team 7-11 in 1986. My boss, Ron Kiefel, raced on that team!

2) Motorola - (7-11 version 2.0 and begin Lance Era....again my boss raced on that team, even with Lance

3) US Postal - More Lance

4) Discovery - Even More Lance

5) Garmin/Transitions/Chipotle (Slipstream) - Go Go Local Burritos and Boulder, Colorado team to the big leagues.

6) Team HTC-Columbia (Highroad) - Guten Tag! Team Telekom/T-Mobile calls on American big wig Bob Stapleton to buy the once dominant, turned druggie German powerhouse.

7) BMC - Phonak blows up (thanks Floyd) and the Swiss hearing aid company's boss decides to build an American team around the bike company he also owns.....BMC.

8) Radio Shack - need I even mention.....more Lance and remote controlled monster trucks and CBs.

8 American teams have (or will have) raced in le Grand Boucle over the last 25 years.

I need a Big Glup and maybe a Carnitas burrito.

Dudes riding bikes

Techno Interlude....

Aside from Jay Z....the only other thing on Ali's iPod:

B-R

Linus

Other people have noticed, too.

Hollywood

Cognitive Dissonance

Saw this on Cyclingnews's coverage of the NAHMBS. It's a brake-track-less Deep V with a reflective coating for "safety":

Super Commuter

tuesday is bruise-day

daylight savings time switches this weekend. i'm not sure if it switches "on" or "off", but i do know it's "spring ahead" and that we get extra daylight time in the evening. the other thing i know is that extra daylight time in the evening means the start of The Tuesday Night Ride:

The Tuesday Night Ride

FakeRacing at its finest

Departing from The Bicycle Chain Durham

Twice up Mount Sinai, sprint finish on Old-NC 10

Tuesdays 5:30 pm

[unlike the guys from Fort Garry, we don't make new flyers for every ride]

it goes like this: everyone rolls out together, things get kinda tempo-y, then (d)evolves into a race-type situation. there are attacks, breakaways, chase groups, drama, suffering, sprinting. no actual bruising on this ride, but it sometimes hurts and rhymes. i'm lobbying to keep things civil for the first few weeks so that we'll regroup periodically after accelerations and everyone can get a good workout and do some quality fake racing.

come out and give it a try.

Malliot Gris

From today's Velonews Paris-Nice report:

Wednesday’s weather-shortened stage into Aurillac was a tale of the oldest and the youngest at the 68th Paris-Nice.

The pack’s oldest rider, Jens Voigt (Saxo Bank), proved he’s still got the knockout punch at 38 by following a searing attack by Alberto Contador (Astana) over a short, but very steep second-category climb with 3km to go to sneak into the yellow jersey.

And the youngest rider, 20-year-old Peter Sagan (Liquigas), proved he can tangle with the big boys by winning out of a six-man group just a day after finishing second into Limoges.

“There’s a difference of 18 years between us,” a happy Voigt pointed out after taking the yellow jersey from Lars Boom (Rabobank). “If there’s a white jersey for younger riders, I think there should be a jersey for riders over 35. Call it the maillot gris.”

Oh,Jens! Thanks for being awesome.

Hoop it Up

According to the New York Times hula-hooping is the verge of exploding onto the national consciousness and the Hoopers have found their Jane Fonda in the person of Marisa Tomei, one of the most unlikely Academy Award-winners in history.

Doesn't this sound familiar? Celebrity and the corporate powers they feed off identify an activity people enjoy in its various dimensions (alone, with friends, in competition with others) and turn it into a profit-making enterprise. Soon, hula-hooping will be "cool" and like any like growing community Hoopers will divide- with those who favor clockwise rotation insisting on its "purity" relative to those who spin counter-clockwise. Or maybe it will be the other way around. There are already "hooping instructors" (in Carrboro, no less- quelle surprise?) with hooping coaches, calorie counters, and power meters on the horizon.

Hoopers: think again or else there may be someone like this in your future.

Bull City Cycling Running

Someone should tell these boys that if they're in such a hurry, a bike is a far better way to get around this town.

(That would be my own neighborhood, Trinity Park, featured in the early parts ... where our rappers emerge from quaint historic bungalows.)