Caption this!

Happy Halloween!

Sunday funnies

For those of you who don't follow cycling, this is a Mapei jersey...

The Tour of Utah mourns the loss of Executive Director Terry McGinnis

I recieved this email earlier tonight:

SALT LAKE CITY (October 24, 2009) – Steve Miller, President of the Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah presented by Zions Bank, announced today the passing of Executive Director, Terry McGinnis, after a prolonged battle with cancer.

“Terry was the heart and soul of the Tour and will be missed. His passion for the race was a deciding factor in the success of the event,” said Miller. “All of us on the staff as well as friends of the race will miss him dearly and will do all that we can to continue the event in his honor and make him proud.”

McGinnis was with the Tour of Utah for four years in different capacities. In 2006 he was a radio commentator, in 2007 he served as a consultant to Chairman Greg Miller, and in 2008-09 he held the executive director position.

As executive director, McGinnis hired key personnel, designed the course, acted as liaison with USA Cycling, secured sponsors and merchandise partners, selected teams to invite, and oversaw marketing and public relations efforts.

McGinnis raced professionally for more than 20 years, spending 10 of those as an Elite Cat 1 cyclist. He was forced to retire in 2007 due to cancer. McGinnis continued to ride recreationally as his health allowed.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to Terry's family at this time. He will be missed.

Caption this!

Amgen Tour of California route announced

The Amgen Tour of California, the largest, and most well known stage race in the United States has announced the route for the 2010 race. Instead of listing the stages on the blog, go to the AToC website.

Traditionally, the Tour of California has been run in February. Last year this proved to be a slight problem, as the cyclists ran in to some weather, including snow on some of the climbs. for 2010, the organizers have moved the tour to May 16-23. While that should be better as far as the weather goes, it does present another problem. The Giro d'Italia traditionally is ran during the month of May. This may prove to be a problem for the Tour of California (AToC) as they will have to compete with the Giro for the top teams and riders.

Thanks to the magic that is Twitter, four of the top American riders have already announced that they plan on riding the AToC:

Yes, Lance Armstrong, Levi Leipheimer - 2009 AToC overal champion, George Hincapie - US National road champion , and Dave Zabriskie - US National time trial champion have personally announced that they will be riding in the states instead of Italy come May. As the year wraps up, and the Pro teams decide on their racing schedules for the upcomming year, we will hear more about which teams will be riding in California.

Sunday funnies

Caption this - sort of

Bicycles and video games

Yesterday I saw on the cyclelicio.us blog that there is a company that is going to be introducing a wii exercise bike controller and video game bundle in early 2010.

According to what I read about it, you ride the exercise bike and control your on-screen character to clean up the planet. It also says that the bike can be used as a control for Mario Cart. My first thoughts when I saw this is cheap, flimsy, more than likely overpriced, and yet another peripheral in an ever increasing list of wii peripherals. I'm also guessing that there isn't any decent resistance on the Cyberbike either.

Seeing this made me think that cycling hasn't really had the best of relationships with gaming. I can only think of, or find a handfull of games that have cycling as a central focus.

Just in case you think that the Cyberbike is the first exercise bike-shaped video game controler, Fisher Price came out with this several years ago. The Fisher Price Smart Cycle is a stationary bike designed for 3-6 year old kids where they pedal to learn, and race. Funny thing is that the kids are on a bicycle, but they are racing cars on the screen.

For the more grown up set, there actually was an arcade game that you controled through pedaling. Prop Cycle.

I have actually seen - and played this at an arcade. You are controlling a flying bicycle/glider on the screen which you have to pedal and manuver to pop baloons in a canyon-type environment. Control is awkward and difficult. Not surprisingly, you don't see too many people playing this.

I could only find a a few game titles for PC and game console systems: A downhill mountain bike race, your chance to be the directur sportif of a pro tour team, and an obscure road racing game from Japan.

Downhill Domintaion was made for the PS2 back in 2003. I remember my local bike shop had this on the TV in the corner of the room, with the controls on the counter. Gameplay was simple, point the bike downhill, hit jumps for tricks, pummel your opponents.

For the PC, there is Pro Cycling Manager, a real-time simulation where you take on the role of Directur Sportif for a Pro Tour cycling team. You can see if you can do a better job than Johan Bruneel by telling your cyclists when to attack, wether to chase down a breakaway, or let them go because they won't affect the GC standings. A new verison is released each year to coinside with the Tour de France. All the current pro teams, and pro riders are depicted.

The last one is the hardest to find. It was never released in the US. Cycle Race: Road Man was made for the 8 bit Nintendo system back in 1988. If you know where to look, you can find it, and an emulator that will allow you to play it on your computer. Cycle Race is a multi stage race around Japan. Team members are out there to help you with repairs to the bicycle, or power ups in the form of extra energy.

There may be more out there, but this is all that I could find.

In my opinion. Cycling itself is the ultimate game. Why would you want to sit in front of a screen, when you can be outside riding. Maybe that's the actual reason why there isn't several more cycling games.

Bike there option coming soon to Google Maps

There has been a petition going around for a while to try and get Google Maps to add a "bike there" feature to their directions. Last week, Google announced on their Lat Long Blog that they will be incorporating that feature into their maps soon. You can read the entire post here, but this is the paragraph that matters the most to cyclists: (the highlighted part is by me, not google)

The best part about this new dataset is that we've been able to add a lot of new, detailed information to Google Maps - information that helps people better explore and get around the real world. For example, college students will be pleased to see maps of many campuses; and cyclists will now find many more trails and paths to explore. Soon we even plan on providing you with biking directions to take advantage of this new data. Of course, in the true Google spirit of "launch and iterate," we plan to work with more data sources to add new features in the map.

This is great news to anyone who is considering cycling in an unfamiliar area. There were very few details in the post, but we can hope that they are going to work with local municipalities to insure that they include, and are aware of the class Im, II, and III bike lanes and routes when they provide routes for cycling.

I am a big fan of google maps. I have used it several times when I have been cycling in unfamiliar areas, sometimes with success (Portland), and other times - not so much (Boise area trying to find the velodrome) It's extremely handy to pull out the Blackberry when you're lost, or in an unfamiliar area and see where you are, or even get directions to where you want to go (assuming that Google has the correct address in their database. Idaho Velodrome in Eagle is a good example of that). I have been routed onto major roads before using that.

I am excited about what Google could do with this. Hopefully they will have it rolled out soon.

Sunday funnies

Today's Sunday funnies is a little different. Instead of providing you with a comic strip, or a one-panel comic, I am giving you a whole comic book today. This is a bicycle safety comic produced in 1972 by the highway safety division of Virginia. just click on the image to open the link to the comic.

Caption this!

photo courtesy of Urban Velo

Share the Road plates now available!

Today you can order your Share the Road licence plate from the DMV. The special plate fee is $25, plus a $10 replacement fee and it isn't pro-rated. Just consider that the money is going to a good cause. Go order your plate today! click here for additional information.