Rain, Rain, Go Away!

So I get up early for my bike ride today and this is what I see...

Rain! Argh!! Sure, it makes the flowers grow...

...and it's nice to sleep by as it taps on the roof. But I have no desire to ride a bike in it. I know, I know -- there are the diehards out there who throw caution to the wind and head out anyway. But I'm not one of those people. To me, riding in the rain is just downright miserable! It seeps through your helmet, sloshes around in your biking shoes, and fogs up your glasses. Ugh. I've gotten caught in some big rain storms unintentionally at the tail end of long rides, and it turns me into Gollum on a bike: Rainses, we hates it! It gums up our gearses, rusts our pedalses. We hates it, precious, we hates it!

Yeah, it's that bad...

Catching Up with the Giro

I brought myself back up to speed on the Giro d'Italia today, after having missed the streamed video on UniversalSports.com for the past three days (I had to work late a couple nights, and I had some computer problems). It's natural when following a long bicycle race like the Giro or the Tour de France though. Sometimes you have to pick up snippets of news here and there, carve out weekend or late-night time to watch taped segments on the computer or t.v., or you read some blog and twitter entries whenever you can. It's not like football where everything stops for four hours on Sunday. A Grand Tour Bike Race race kind of winds its way around your life (but that doesn't mean its any less exciting).

Whoa, it's late! I want to get up early tomorrow for my bike ride...

The Giro Visits Trieste

Whenever I visit a new city, I like to take photos of street scenes. You know ... narrow roads, big apartment buildings, cobblestone alleys, old shop signs. Sure, the main tourist attractions are great. But it's pictures of everyday life that remind me of what it was like to simply breathe in the morning air of a new place.

Watching Stage 2 of the Giro, I realized that this is also one of the reasons I love watching bicycle races. Take the stage's thrilling circuit through Trieste, for example. Now if you were to watch a show on the Travel Channel about Trieste -- a fascinating city in the far northeast corner of Italy -- they might show you a castle or two, some beautiful old churches, and maybe a Roman theater. All incredible, of course. But when you watch a bike race, you see those things AND so much more ... like little residential side streets, quaint houses that line the roadside, wide avenues running aside beautiful working harbors. It's as if you're watching the great city unfold onscreen layer by layer. And best of all, you actually see where people live. Combine that with the thrill and suspense of the race itself, and you've got one incredible travel show!

Giro d'Italia Stage 1

This sure is going to be an exciting Giro! It's already gotten off to a great start with today's beautiful team-time-trial on Lido Island just outside Venice. Can there be any better place to begin a race?

Actually, I take that back. Start it in Venice itself with the racers leaping their bikes over the canals -- now that would be awesome!!!

Ahem ... anyway ... it was a nice outing today by Team Columbia High Road, whom I've decided to root for along with Team Garmin Slipstream, as the only two American teams in the race. Of course I'll root for Levi Leipheimer and Lance Armstrong on Astana as individuals. But it's nice having a couple of American teams to cheer about as a whole as well. And the Team Time Trial has to be one of the most graceful events in all of sports -- the way the riders keep that perfect straight-line formation, each taking a brief turn at the front of the pack before dropping to the back in a smooth, seamless motion. Watching this occur on the beautiful streets of the Lido was an incredible sight.

The only downside to this year's Giro is not having television coverage by my favorite commentators Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen (see my post from April 11). Races really take on a mythological, epic flavor with them. So I've decided to go an individualistic route when it comes to following the 2009 Giro D'Italia. I'll be pulling in news from a number of sources, including the streaming coverage on the Universal Sports website (www.universalsports.com), some blogs and articles, and a Twitter or two.

Today I watched a bit of the archived Stage 1 live stream on the Universal Sports site, followed Lance Armstrong and Paul Sherwen's Twitters, read a blog by Michael Barry (who is riding with Columbia High Road and keeping a journal with VeloNews [www.velonews.com]), and read articles on Versus.com by Frankie Andreu, Connie Carpenter, and the ever-eccentric, always-entertaining Bob Roll. That's really what makes bicycling so much fun. It's not just about the races; it's all these one-of-a-kind characters who also happen to be great writers.

So tomorrow it's off to Trieste in Stage 2...

May 5th New York Times

There was an interesting article in the May 5th New York Times about yet another controversy surrounding professional cycling: Equipment Crackdown Brings More Turmoil to Cycling’s Time Trials.

At issue ... whether the current trend in exotic and aerodynamic time-trial bikes makes pro cycling unfair, especially to under-financed teams that can't afford all the new technology.

Personally, I kind of like current rhythm of bike races. The regular stages feature bikes that don't look that much different than ... well ... a regular bicycle. But then for the individual time trials it's a virtual free-for-all. Out come creatures from the bicycle-zoo's exotic animals exhibit. Weird alien-style helmets, wildly unstable bikes with strange curves and geometries -- all meant to cut through the air like a knife.

Forcing racers to use conventional bikes for time trials takes a lot of the techie, innovative fun out of the race. To me, the current system seems like a good balance. Keep firm standards in place for the regular team stages, but then let the time trials be open to experimentation. No one faults Greg Lemond for using an aero-helmet for the first time in the 80's. It was bold, brilliant ... and geeky and cool all at the same time.

Let's face it, bike riding is about the bike. Pro racing is esoteric and tradition-steeped enough as it is. Limiting technological advancement will just make it border on stodgy. Besides, the bike companies that are making money selling the new bikes that come out of the Tour aren't some giant corporations. Many are little, innovative companies that love biking as much as you and me. They deserve to be part of the process. And hey, just imagine if some great rider comes along using none of this new aerodynamical stuff and blows the competition out the water anyway. Now that's a story line worth telling ... and worth being given the chance to be told.

Tips for Riding Early in the Morning

Here's a handy to-do list, to ensure an enjoyable early morning bike ride before work:

1. Set your biking clothes out the night before. There's nothing worse than being up at 5:15 am, feeling great and ready to go ... and then spending 20 minutes looking for your favorite biking socks. Actually there is one thing worse than that...

2. Iron your work clothes the night before. There truly is nothing worse than coming back from an invigorating morning ride, only to have to iron your shirt for work. Ugh. It's like ending the ride by hitting a brick wall. Iron your clothes and shave the night before (scruffy is in these days anyway).

3. Go to bed early the night before. Now I have had some wonderful rides on 5 hours sleep, but I pay for it later in the day. In the end, a full night's sleep makes for a better ride, and ... just as important ... a far more productive day ahead.

4. Check the weather report the night before.

So, taking all these steps lets you get up and experience such early morning ride-vistas such as these:

That little bright dot in the left-center of that last photo is the famous Boston Lighthouse.

Dreaming of the Giro d'Italia

There's a wonderful article in the new issue of Bicycling Magazine about the Giro d'Italia (www.bicycling.com). Such a wonderful race, the Giro is. A number of years ago -- right around the time I began riding a bike again as an adult -- I caught a glimpse this strange thing called the "Giro" late at night on the old Outdoor Life Network. It seemed like such a remote, odd, faraway ... and enchantingly beautiful race. At the time, OLN used music from Carmina Burana as its theme, which added even more magic to the Giro's already mystical allure. But mostly what I remember is watching this graceful race wind it's way through medieval villages, over rocky Dolomite peaks, and through the wide streets of Milan. It seemed like it came out of a dream. It was thrilling, and I was hooked.

Versus won't be showing any of the Giro this year; and while that's a shame, it's tough to fault a channel that already does such a great job broadcasting the world's best bicycle races with the absolute best commentary. So now the Giro 2009 retreats back into hard-to-find coverage. In a way, that makes it even more mysterious...