Johan Bruyneel's Ride off a Cliff

I'm reading Johan Bruyneel's book We Might as Well Win.

I just read through a section where he describes his ride off a cliff during a descent of the Cormet de Roselend, a mountain pass in the Alps. He was the GC hope for his team that year. On the descent a rider in front of him (Tony Rominger) started to lose control of his bike. Johan jerked his bike to the right and quickly hit a patch of gravel and lost traction. He went off the road and down an almost vertical embankment. The drop was about 100 feet! Ouch!

The crazy part? He claws his way up the hill, grabs a new bike and finishes the stage. It's no wonder he and Lance won the Tour de France 7 times.

Check out the crash here on Youtube.

The Yellow Devil Eats Snow

I was instantly annoyed by the yellow devil when I saw him on Versus watching one of the ATOC stages. He was dressed in a yellow jump suit wearing a black cape with Live Clean printed on the back. He ran along-side a few cyclists pumping his syringe laden pitch fork. The obvious message here has to do with doping.

I think I speak for a lot of cycling fans when I say I'm tired of the notion that all cyclists are doping, and that Lance Armstrong doped is way to 7 TDF victories. People like Greg Lemond believe that a successful cyclist must be doping, with or without proof.

Lance stuck it to this guy. Love it, go Lance.








Look closely and you'll see riders in the peleton grinning as the guy eats snow. Got the pics from magliarosa. Noone's saying yet who took these pics so can't give credit.

Update: Photo credit Tim De Waele.

Fans out in Full Force at ATOC Stage 2 Finish

There were a ton of fans yesterday at the finish of Stage 2. The streets were lined with people in some places at least 10 deep. We were between the 200 and 150m signs and there were a number of people behind us by the time the finishers arrived. This was the best spot we could get at about 2 hours before the start!

Armstrong helped bring these crowds out no doubt. A few of the people around us were clearly there to see him. Some I don't think understood they'd only see him zip by in a flash. Still, it was great to see so many people interested in cycling in one place.

Here's a shot down Front Street towards the finish line.

People were on rooftops and hanging out of parking structures and windows!

We Might be Groupies

Here we are stalking the Rock Racing team truck as it made its way from the Stage 2 start to the finish. Jodi was actually hanging out the sunroof in the rain to take the first picture.

Anything to Stay Warm and Dry

Stage 1 of the ATOC was super wet. As we got off the 101 freeway on our way to watch the finish I noticed a golf store. I figured they'd have those giant golf umbrellas. They did, and I bought one. It rained nonstop so it was a good buy.

The kids had a great time camping out on this vent using the umbrella to stay dry.

The vent was blowing warm air, which kept the kids warm and dry. I'm unsure why the air was warm or where it came from. I thought it might be a sewer vent... I hope I'm wrong! I doubt it was installed to keep the general public warm on days like this one!

Get Bob Roll to Shave his Head

Donate and Bob Roll will shave his head. See here.

Lance twitter'd about this. The donations seem to be rolling in. When I got his twitter it was at $1k, just checked and it's at $2k. I'd bet this crowd would pay upwards of $10k to get BR to shave it off.

Shout out to Bob Roll for being a good sport and helping out a good cause.

Levi Charging for the Finish - ATOC Stage 2

Levi looks to be on form. He charged up the Bonny Doon Rd climb today and dropped everyone. I have it tivo'd and can't wait to watch it. He worked for every minute of the gain that put him in yellow today. Here he is dragging Thomas Peterson to the finish. Congrats TP for the stage win and GO LEVI!

Tour of California Stage 1

I snapped a really lousy pic of Francisco Mancebo on his first lap around the finish circuit. The guy was away most of the day and rode like a man possessed. What an animal! His average speed for the day? 25.7 mph. That seems awfully fast.

Lance Armstrong at the Tour of California Prologue

It was awesome to see Lance up close during the prologue. Except for a little wobble around the first corner you'd think he never left the sport. 10th place this early in the season is impressive, especially since he isn't planning on winning this thing. He looked to be in pretty good form.

We Might As Well Win

Johan Bruyneel is a legend in the sport of cycling. He's a total stud in my book. He was a fairly successful professional cyclist, and a ridiculously successful Sports Director. He's of course the mastermind behind Lance Armstrong's 7 Tour de France wins. Here he is signing my copy of We Might As Well Win after the Amgen Tour of California Prologue.

Another Eventful Day on the Bike

While on a bike ride out to the end of Bollinger Canyon Road yesterday, I just about ran over what I thought was some sort of lizard on the road. Christopher had a pet alligator lizard that died just last week. His name was Will and Christopher was awfully sad to see him go. So of course I thought I should grab this thing and take it home with me. I downed as much as I could of my remaining sports drink filled water bottle and scooped him up.

I was about 7 miles into a 25 mile ride. This little guy chilled at the bottom of my watter bottle soaking in the remaining drops of my sports drink for another 18 miles. When I got home I tried to surprise Christopher by telling him that there was something wrong with my water bottle and that I couldn't get any more sports drink out of it, etc, etc. He opened it up and started staring at the underside of the cap. He then headed for the sink to rinse out the water bottle, which is where I stepped in.

I used this index of California Salamanders to figure out that this little guy is a Sierra Newt.


We cleaned out the old lizards cage (10 gallon aquarium) and headed to the pet store for the supplies for a semi-aquatic aquarium.

I have to admit, when I was a kid I always wanted a newt. A buddy of mine had one (Walt Todd I think) and I thought it was the coolest thing.

Our little guy's name is Theo. The kids woke up this morning and watched him swimming around under water, and thought it was incredibly cool that he had slept in his little rock house we bought from the pet store.

Hopefully we can keep this one alive!

Cycling, Tennis and Sunday Afternoon

After church yesterday we went out on a family bike ride. I put Jacob in tow (on his Trail-A-Bike) and we headed north for San Ramon Central Park.



Our new place is very close to Iron Horse Trail. At 40 miles long this stretch of land used to be part of the right-of-way of the Southern Pacific Railroad. This trail's great because we can cruise along without worrying about the kids as we would on sidewalks or in the bike lane.

You do have to keep an eye out for the occasional nitwit cyclist who decides this pedestrian trail is a good place to test out his top gear. Christopher almost got creamed by a guy who had to be going 18 or 20 miles an hour. This was going downhill, I'm convinced he couldn't go that fast on flat ground... but that's probably because he almost hit my son.

Central Park is about 3 miles up the trail. We stopped off at Jamba Juice before the park for a quick smoothie. Then we hit the tennis courts.

Rules of the game:
1. There is no out of bounds
2. The ball has to be in bounds when it goes over the net
3. More than one bounce is preferred

The kids really had a great time. Jacob figured out pretty quickly that he was quite good at serving if he came all the way up to the net and hit the ball straight out of bounds. He scored a lot of points this way. Smart kid!



Christopher played very well. We had a number of pretty good volleys. He has become quite a competitive kid. He seems to have this inner drive to be great (or think he's great) at everything. I'm not sure where he gets that...



Cayla was quite good as well. On our trip to Coloma, her teacher mentioned to me that Cayla was very competitive and sometimes driven (not her exact words). I was a little surprised to hear it, but she's definitely right. She is a very competitive little girl.

The shot below didn't go exactly as she had intended, but it made for a great picture.



See a map of our route here.

Jodi's Got a Bike

I finally broke down and bought Jodi a new bike. Her old ride was a 1970s vintage Schwin Varsity. The thing was a beast! It weighed in at 38lbs, and that's not with a small child sitting on it.

The bike came with a price though. She had to agree to do an organized bike ride of 30 or more miles in 2009. She's planning on doing either the 30 mile or 60 mile version of the Marin ride.

Her new bike is a 2008 Specialized Dolce. I don't know what it weighs, but it's a lot lighter and faster than the Schwin.

Wish I Stayed Fit through Winter

Boy I wish I had stayed on the bike this winter. I went out for my third ride of the season today and I really felt the lack of fitness. I was really slow! The worst part was going up the
hills. It's usually something I enjoy and excel at. Today it was just plain painful.

I've been using a free trial of AllSport GPS. It's a very cool little bit of software that runs on my blackberry. I start it up and stick my blackberry in my jersey and it continuously samples my location according to the GPS on my phone. At the end of the ride it uploads the details to trimbleoutdoors.com which lets me get at some pretty cool info about the ride. Things like average speed, speed profile, elevation profile and of course a map of where I rode. It also lets you compare rides, though I haven't had the opportunity to try this yet.

Here's the details of the ride from trimbleoutdoors.com:

Cayla: I Love My Daddy

I ran across this cute audio recording of Cayla today. She was a little more than two years old and if I remember correctly she was holding Christopher, who was a couple months old. I threw a picture up with the audio.



Here's what she says:
I love my daddy, I love you so much daddy.
Cayla, Brother, Brother, Brother
I fall down. I fall down brother.
I love you so much. I love you so much brother.

So cute.

On a Field Trip

This year the 4th graders in Cayla's school went on a week long field trip to Coloma, CA. Coloma is a small town outside of Placerville, made famous by the discovery of gold there in 1848. To give the kids a taste of what life was like back then they weren't allowed the normal comforts of modern life. They ate all their meals outside, weren't allowed to use any electronics, and worst of all weren't allowed to use phones - all communication with parents was via written letters! There was one exception: they were allowed to take pictures. I sent Cayla with two disposable cameras - she used one whole camera the first day!

I went as a chaperon on the trip. I'm so glad I did, it was a blast. Unfortunately I wasn't able to chaperon for Cayla's group, but I did get a few opportunities to see and talk with her each day. I bunked with 14 boys and one other chaperon. 14 boys in one cabin was a lot to deal with!

It was a really great trip. I hope to go again when Christopher goes. Coloma is a great town too. It's full of gold rush history, which I find very interesting. Read about Coloma at Wikipedia.

I heard stories while I was there about Cayla getting dragged around the girls dorm. This was apparently a game they played each night.

Here's me with a couple of the boys from my group.

Check out pictures of Cayla's group and the pictures I took.

Back on the Bike

I got back on the bike this morning for a ride with the guys. This is the second time I've been on the bike since last summer, so I'm really out of shape! I really felt it today.

I started out at about 8am, temperature at about 42 degrees. I usually won't admit this, but I hate getting out there in the cold. I was missing one of my toe covers, so one foot was really cold.

I rode down Foothill and met the guys just at the edge of Pleaanton. It's just over 8 miles from my place to the spot I met the guys. I pushed it a bit too hard on the way there. I was afraid I'd be late meeting them. Turns out I was about 5 minutes early. I took the opportunity to move my one toe cover from my right foot to my left foot. Brrr.

Once the group showed up we did two laps (~8 miles each) around Sunol Rd and Foothill Rd. I got dropped by the fast group going up the hills, and the fast group wasn't really going that fast. And I guess the hills weren't real serious hills either. My heartrate was off the charts - average for the ride was 170 and topped out at 196. I don't think I've hit 196 before. Mid last year it was more like 160 average for a hard ride. 

Check out the ride details here.