Getting pumped for 2012
The Dude Who Found Me, finally, took me out for a ride today. 76 miles from his shitbox McMansion in Arizona suburbia to the top of South Mountain in Phoenix and back. It was a beautiful day to be out on a bike (as if there are any other kinds of days when you're out on a bike) and the nine friends who he rode with were less douchy than his usual friends so in all, it was a good day. And has me thinking that maybe he is going to step things up for 2012. so to motivate him subliminally, I set this video to play every time he opens his browser 
See you out on the roads...
Jeremy Powers is a bad ass cyclo-cross racer
Cyclo-cross, it turns out, is what road bike racers do in the wintertime because they can't take time off from training. Essentially, the rig up a version of their road bike with knobby tires and race on little circuits in parks and farm fields. Apparently, it's a very big sport in Belgium and American road racers tend to latch on to super Euro things like this so I guess it's no surprise. Although why they don't just take up mountain biking for the winter. Or better yet, skiing.
This is what cyclo-cross looks like. Cyclo-cross Nationals 2005. Photo Taken by the Dude's wife, Keli.
With skepticism, I decided to learn more about this sport after finding some articles the Dude Who Found Me wrote about cyclo-cross. I am intrigued by the fact that cyclo-cross racers seem to be happiest when the weather is the coldest, nastiest and dirtiest it can be.
One of the starts of cyclo-cross in America is a young man by the name of Jeremy Powers. Like everyone else in the world, he has a reality show about his life. His runs on Vimeo.com. It's a neat look into the daily lives of a guy pursuing an off-shoot of the beautiful sport that is professional road cycling. Here are the episodes from this season so far.
Dave Zabriskie on your Garmin Sat Nav
So Garmin has allowed Dave Zabriskie to record a session of instructions for your Sat Nav you can download. It may be too obscure a download for regular folks but having been exposed to his quirky personality and mannerisms in my online research into all things cycling, it will be fun to hear the man who brought the world DZ's Nuts chamois creams steer the Dude Who Found Me around in his 1972 Ford Maverick. Here's teaser from Team Garmin on DZ's recording session.
Just in case you're new to the Zabriskie experience, here he is in a promo video for his chamois cream products - his likely post-career business.
And one more. This one with Lance on the Garmin bus during the 2009 Giro D' Italia talking about his upcoming chamois cream for women.
What the cluck!
A South African mountain-bike racer gets railroaded by a Wilderbeast in the middle of a race. Having been almost run over by a car (see my original introduction to the world), I feel for the kid. But his scary moment has been fodder for seven million viewers on YouTube so far. Why not add to the count?
Take a Seat documentary concept
The Dude Who Found me left the remote control to the television in his office so I was able to watch the Vuelta a Espana on the Universal Sports channel on Direct TV. The racing has been good and the terrain on the Mediterranean side of Spain looks a lot like the arid parts of Central Arizona and inland California - but with beaches. But what's been the best find from watching the Vuelta is the show Universal is following the day's live racing with.
The show is called Take a Seat and the basic premise is that the host embarked on a bicycle ride across the country on a special-made tandem and invites people with disabilities to join him for segments along the way.
It seems that Domonic Gill originally planned to ride the route with cancer patient Ernie Greenwald (not sure of the spelling). But Ernie's cancer prevented him from completing the trip so Domonic set off anyway, inviting strangers with disabilities to take the front seat originally intended for Ernie and capturing the entire journey for the show.
He found nine willing passenger/companions. The first, a man with a traumatic bran injury, joined from San Diego to Las Vegas. The second, a young man blind in one eye and 90% blind in the other, stayed with Domonic until Salt Lake City. I have only seen two episodes so far.
The show is great for a number of reasons: The moments of conversation captured while Domonic an his companion cycle along the American roadway are optimistic, and thankful, and pleasant; because it opens the imagination to the concept or traveling by bicycle; because of the giving concept of inviting a stranger to share life with you for a short time; and because of the strangers who say yes to a seemingly random and challenging opportunity.
A little further digging into Dominic's background took me to www.takeaseat.org. The new show appears to be a follow up to an original journey Domonic took on a tandem from the Northern-most tip of Alaska to the Southern-most tip of South America; 20,000 miles sharing rides with regular people as often as he could find a companion. That journey is captured in photo through the site an in a documentary film and book.
Domonic Gill shares a tandem ride with anyone in South America who would join him - www.takeaseat.org
Anyway, after the Vuelta ends every day, stay tuned for the follow-up show. If you're a true cyclist, you may get just as much out of it as you did the race itself.