8 days and 23 hours.
That’s how long it took Race Across America winner Jure Robic. He started in Oceanside, CA and finished in Annapolis, Maryland yesterday.
Amazing.
Category: Cycling Page 22 of 34
My captioned photos from the final Philly Week race this past weekend are up in this gallery. You can also find my photos at Podium Cafe, Cycleto.com, and the Team Type 1 site.
I’d like to start out this Friday Note with a special go to hell shoutout to whichever sad soul on the planet it was that decided to use spoofed blacknell.net return addresses for what must have been an *enormous* batch of spam. Starting late Sunday night, I’ve been getting thousands upon thousands of bounce/spam filter messages, through which I have to sift to find my own mail. I’ve found most of it. I think. But anyway – die in a fire, please. And if anyone reading this is wondering why I ignored your email this week, this is probably why.
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Steve Thurston’s most excellent hyperlocal blog The BuckinghamHeraldTrib is going on hiatus for the summer. He’s been turning out a quality site for a while now, and I can’t imagine how much time that must have been taking. A big loss to the rest of us, but we all need breaks sometime. Thanks, Steve, and I look forward to seeing it pick back up in the fall. In the meantime, if any of you have ever been tempted to keep a blog focused on your own community, go over and check out what Steve’s done.
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Bruce Schneier, as usual, nails it. This time it’s about “The War on Photography“:
Since 9/11, there has been an increasing war on photography. Photographers have been harrassed, questioned, detained, arrested or worse, and declared to be unwelcome. We’ve been repeatedly told to watch out for photographers, especially suspicious ones. Clearly any terrorist is going to first photograph his target, so vigilance is required.
Except that it’s nonsense. The 9/11 terrorists didn’t photograph anything. Nor did the London transport bombers, the Madrid subway bombers, or the liquid bombers arrested in 2006. Timothy McVeigh didn’t photograph the Oklahoma City Federal Building. The Unabomber didn’t photograph anything; neither did shoe-bomber Richard Reid. Photographs aren’t being found amongst the papers of Palestinian suicide bombers. The IRA wasn’t known for its photography. Even those manufactured terrorist plots that the US government likes to talk about — the Ft. Dix terrorists, the JFK airport bombers, the Miami 7, the Lackawanna 6 — no photography.
Yep.
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The 1979 published Disco Handbook is now free for all to partake in its wisdom. From the glossary:
Camp. An ever-changing measure of hipness. Something so bad it’s funny is camp, but something that tries to hard to be funny and fails, is not. Going to camp is not camp, but reliving your camp experiences can be. Camping, as an activity, isn’t camp at all.
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And while we’re talking about amusing, newish cooking blog Veggin‘ explains the vegans’ reaction to the news that Canadian KFC’s will soon be offering a vegan option on its menu.
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Finally, good luck to Gwadzilla and all the other DC locals heading out to race at Big Bear this weekend. Wish I could be there.
I managed to miss the start of the women’s pro race at this past weekend’s CSC Invitational, so I’m not a very good source on what went on. I think I’m fairly safe in summarizing it as dominated – and ultimately won – by an early breakaway consisting of Cheerwine’s Catherine Cheatley, ValueAct Capital’s Lara Kroepsch, and Colavita-Sutter Home’s Andrea Dvorak. For details, check out Podium In Sight or Cyclingnews.com. For my best shots of this race (with a small bit of commentary), check out this gallery.
A modified version has been posted at PodiumCafe.com
As promised, here’s the raw stream of shots of the kids ride at the 2008 CSC Invitational. The photos are all free for the taking under a Creative Commons non-commercial attribution license. The best of the bunch, with captions, are here.
Today’s CSC Invitational was fantastic, and I’ve got a slew of photos from the pro races AND the kids’ “race.” Check back here for links to them late Monday. In the mean time, here’s my coverage for Podium Cafe.
Team Type 1’s Valeriy Kobzarenko checks his six
Women’s Pro Podium
Rock Racing’s Big Guns
Slipstream’s Magnus Backstedt and Tyler Farrar
Men’s Pro Finish
Sunday will bring us the National Racing Calendar event that has become the unofficial kick-off to Philly Week – the 11th edition of the CSC Invitational. Starting off as the Clarendon Cup in 1998, this race has developed into one of the premiere pro crits in the US. Over the years, this race has attracted impressive squads from T-Mobile, CSC, and Postal/Discovery. It has also served as a showcase for strong domestic talents from the likes of Navigators, Jelly Belly, and Rock Racing. If you’re in the area, you’ll not regret coming to check it out. Why? Well, take a look at the map (and more!) on the other side of the jump:
The only pro cycling event held in DC proper, the City Bikes RFK Criterium has shifted from the dog days of August to a Memorial Day weekend event. From the official site:
A full day of bike racing returns to Washington DC with the 6th annual City Bikes RFK Criterium, Sunday May 25th 2008. The fastest women on bikes will once again grace the smoothe, silky, and torturously hot RFK Stadium Grand Prix Race Course. This year, Hub Racing adds a men’s professional category to join its already established women’s pro bike race and multiple amateur categories.
I think the switch to this weekend is a good idea (it is *ridiculously* hot out on that parking lot in August), but that means I’ll be missing this after managing to make it for the last three years. Looking at the confirmed rider list, It also looks like the new date might be putting a bit of a dent in the women’s pro showing, which is a shame. At one point, I’m pretty sure that this race had the biggest prize purse in the US for a women’s pro crit. The women’s race here has, by far, been some of the most exciting racing I’ve seen, and I’m sure that it will be worth a trip if you’re around DC this weekend. More details here.
If I were in town tonight, I would have asked you go with me to the Bike Prom. Really.
