exercise bike picture
If you ask me, a bicycle tour is as good a way as any to commemorate a monumental event.
Ryan Bowen would probably agree, as he's bicycling from Los Angeles to Washington DC to mark the election and inauguration of Barack Obama.
The 22-year-old graduate of Occidental College in LA is hoping to interest some other like-minded Obama-supporting bicyclists along the way who might want to join him on the ride into DC.
He told the LA Times that he'd like to have an escort of 50 or more bicyclists by the end of the trip.
"That would be my dream, to roll into Washington with something like that." ...
US-based cycling teams Columbia and Garmin-Slipstream are included among the eight ProTour teams that have announced for the Amgen Tour of California, Feb. 14-22, 2009.Also competing will be Luxembourg's Astana team, which boasts two-time of defending champion Levi Leipheimer (left) as well as Lance Armstrong.
If invitations are forwarded to domestic teams Rock Racing and OUCH, we'll see a reunion of former US Postal Service teammates spread across five teams ...
Usually by the time the Vuelta a Espana rolls around, I'm burned out on the Euro pro cycling scene. The three-week race around Spain follows the Tour de France by 3 or 4 weeks. That's when all the Tour's post-race doping news is hitting its stride, and I'm fed up with the sport and the cheating cyclists.
Who knows whether this year will be different. The course for the Vuelta is certainly unusual, as it starts in the Dutch city of Assen and the bike race's first three days take place in the Netherlands. Then the peloton passes into Belgium before taking a day off to travel to Tarragona, Spain, to continue the race ...
What have you done in the past 100 days? I can't say that anything I've done is as exciting as the bicycle touring adventures by Philippe and Leandra Brient.The couple from British Columbia set off from France on Sept. 1, and so far have visited 13 countries in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa on their bicycles. (At left they're warming up in Turkey.)
According to their website, Vimax Adventures, the pair have reached Egypt after bicycling across the Sinai Peninsula. It looks like their cyclo-touring will continue after the first of the year.
Philippe and Leandra e-mailed me about their adventures and invited me to check out their website "to give inspiration and information to other cyclists (as others did to us). ...
Cycling enthusiasts -- and Lance-o-philes -- can tune in to the Versus cable network for daily half-hour updates from the Tour Down Under, which rolls out Jan. 18-25, 2009.Seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong is making his comeback to pro cycling in the South Australia race, suddenly making the week-long stage race more noteworthy that usual.
The times for the Tour Down Under listed on the Versus TV schedule (all times are Eastern time zone):
4-4:30 p.m. - Sunday, Jan. 18 ...
The Team Garmin cyclists must be licking their collective chops on Saturday after learning that the 2009 Giro d'Italia opens with a team time trial in Venice.An opening team time trial in the Giro last year put the US-based team -- then known as Team Slipstream-Chipotle -- in the leading position with Illinois-raised Christian Vande Velde in the pink jersey.
The Giro rolls across Italy (with brief visits to Austria, Switzerland and France) for 2,105 miles from May 9 -31. It finishes in Rome with a time trial, the first time the bike race has skipped Milan as the finish since 1989 ...
First-time Giro d'Italia competitor Lance Armstrong taped a message for the 2009 course presentation in Venice on Saturday in which he reviewed some of the challenges of next year's bike race.The press has been saying that Armstrong is racing the Giro d'Italia in May to win, then the Tour de France in July to support his Astana teammate Alberto Contador. But on Saturday he said:
"I know there's a lot of talk about the pink jersey. I'm excited to race hard, but Ivan Basso is my favorite. ....