Davis: Whither Cycling?

We just got back from a presentation and panel discussion on the history of Davis as Cycling Capital of America, and of the fact that its status as such is in doubt — unless we do something about it.

There are over 95 miles of bikeways in this town of 65,000. That’s impressive. Yet fewer people are choosing to ride their bikes into town to shop; fewer students ride their bikes to school. A well-subsidized bus system ferries students into campus and back out, at the cost of about $350 per student; considerably less would be needed to increase the quality of bike facilities and routes per person.

The event has made me determined to make more grocery runs by bike. I’ve become a fair-weather cyclist, a far cry from my Boston snow bike-commutes. We’ll be watching what this new grouping comes up with in terms of solutions and suggestions. It’s easy, and it really makes a difference…

Riding South

The Tour of California is turning into a very good race. Today’s stage featured the toughest climb of the whole tour, up Sierra Road east of San Jose. The route went from Stockton to San Jose. There was a breakaway early on of about 16 riders that threatened the overall leader Levi Leipheimer, who was getting little support from the peloton to try to close the breakaway. Finally on the big climb he made his move and caught the remaining riders in the breakaway, though he was edged out at the finish by one of the breakaway riders, the veteran Jens Voight.

Tomorrow is the longest stage in the race, going from near Monterey to San Luis Obispo along the spectacular coast road Highway 1. It is also predicted to be quite wet with winds coming from the southeast at 15 to 30 miles per hour. I think the riders will all hunker in the peloton and not try anything outlandish — look for a sprint finish in San Luis Obispo.

Tour of California Comes to Davis

We got back from a quick trip to Monterey to see birding friends from Massachusetts in time to catch the don’t-blink-you’ll-miss-it third stage of the Amgen Tour of California, running from Santa Rosa to Sacramento via Davis.

My optometrist’s shop is on 2nd street and I needed to get my glasses adjusted, so we opted to camp out at the finish of the 2nd Street intermediate sprint, which conveniently was right outside Mishka’s (ran into my co-trainee for Cold Canyon docenting, Iraj, and we had a good yak about how to cut a reed pen for calligraphy; Numenius’ boss and five of his labmates were across the street).

There’s a lot of waiting about for a race like this. The pink-dreadlocked lass in front of us has taken these days off as vacation and was following the tour as it sped through parts of California she’d never seen before: she coaxed me to the edge of the street as long as I didn’t get in the way of her digital camera. On Thursday, the race heads down Highway 1 past Big Sur, where we were yesterday, looking for condors. (Unsuccessfully.) That’s a long stretch of road to tie up with a bike race, but a thrilling race trajectory (too bad a storm’s coming in that day). My pink-haired friend was wondering whether she should get down there really early and wait for them along the cliffs, or see them off at the start…

The Davis sprint was exciting: a three-man breakaway had one guy clearly in the lead and about to take it when his green-clad rival snuck up behind him and took the sprint by about 12 feet.

We rode our bikes home, into the strong south wind, only to find that our landlord had plonked himself outside Baker’s Square to watch the race (about 300 yards up the road). He said all the waitresses came out to watch too, since there was nobody in the restaurant.

A great turnout for a workday: well done, Davis. After four days off, it’s back to the grind for me tomorrow…

Davis Flyby

It’s not an event that can be predicted to the precision of a lunar occultation, but sometime between 1:52 and 2:20 PM on February 20 the cyclists racing Stage 2 of the Amgen Tour of California will be entering Davis on the way to the finish in Sacramento. This 115-mile stage starts out in Santa Rosa and makes a couple of difficult climbs across the Coast Range mountains before descending into the Central Valley for the 45-mile flat run to the state capitol building in Sacramento. Some of the world’s top teams are in this year’s race — Credit Agricole, CSC, Rabobank, T-Mobile, Discovery, Quick Step — all passing within several hundred yards of where I work. I just better not blink!

Puncturevine

Yesterday I finally fixed the flat in the rear tire of my road bike. Feeling down the inner surface of the tire, I noticed two tiny embedded thorns, each capable of producing a leak in the tire. I gently worked these out of the tire and installed the new tube.

On page one of today’s Davis Enterprise, the paper ran a story on the bane of cyclists that gave me the flat, puncturevine. According to one bike mechanic, most of the flats in the Davis area are now due to this plant. The lentil-sized seeds of this weed have hard stout spines for dispersal, whether via fur or tires. The common names for the weed are somewhat ominous—caltrop, tackweed, goathead, Texas sandbur—and its scientific name is the alliterative Tribulus terrestris. But I never seem to see the actual plant, instead just finding the seeds in unfortunate places.

Whence the Tour of California

Floyd Landis won the Tour de France today. It’s been a wild three weeks, it being the most open Tour in ages. Landis and Oscar Pereiro exchanged the lead several times over the past week. Most dramatically, Landis recaptured the yellow jersey in the first stage in the Alps, and then collapsed on the final hill of the second Alpine stage to fall to 11th place. All seemed lost for him, but on the third and final Alpine stage, he went on an incredible solo run of the sort not seen since the days of Eddy Merckx to win the stage by over 5 minutes This brought him in striking distance of taking the lead in the race in Saturday’s time trial, which he proceeded to do. He ended up winning the Tour by 57 seconds over Pereiro. On top of all this, a couple weeks ago he reveals that he has an incredibly painful arthritic hip as the result of a crash a few years ago, and is in need of a hip replacement.

Back in February, Landis won the inaugural edition of the Tour of California, an eight-day stage race through the state. Maybe there’s a new rule here—whoever wins the Tour of California will win the Tour de France. Even if not, next year’s Tour of California will be fun to follow, especially since the stage on 20 February 2007 is going to run from Santa Rosa to Sacramento. I plan to catch that one in person!

Google Earth Meets The Tour

Following the Tour de France has taken a second seat next to the World Cup, but as the latter is almost over, we will begin paying more attention. At this point, nobody has any idea who might win the Tour, the favorites all being out due to drug scandal or injury. Right now, the sprinters are having their time in the sun. Today I looked at the official Tour website to see when we’ll be hitting more decisive stages. There I found that they’ve produced a Tour de France overlay for Google Earth. I don’t remember if they did this last year—Google Earth didn’t run on my computer then. At left is a Google Earth image (click to enlarge) of the famous climb up L’Alpe d’Huez, which is on Tuesday 18 July.

Tour De Californie

Were it not for the fact that we’ve been hanging out this week with our cycling friends Barbara and Susan, I might not have heard of the Tour of California, which would have been a sad thing. This is the inaugural edition of an eight-day cycling stage race throughout California, that started off in San Francisco last Sunday, and winds up in Redondo Beach this upcoming Sunday. This event has attracted the best field of cyclists ever to race in this country, with many familiar names to us from following the Tour de France. What is incredibly neat is seeing this field race over roads I’ve ridden on.

Today’s event was a race from San Luis Obispo to Santa Barbara, climbing over the 2184-foot elevation San Marcos Pass, a couple of miles from where we used to live. This was the biggest climb of the whole tour, though not a Category 1 climb by Tour de France standards. (Had they taken a left at the top of the pass and continued up Camino Cielo to 3900’ La Cumbre Peak, it would have been. But the race organizers thought that would have been too risky a route had it been raining.) The climb wasn’t enough to break apart the peloton, and George Hincapie won the stage in a sprint along the Santa Barbara waterfront, with thousands of spectators watching.

The history of stage racing in this country has been a spotty one, with events being held for a couple of successive years before failing to attract continued sponsorship and thus folding. I hope this race becomes the one to break this pattern, so we can see top-caliber stage racing in our backyard for years to come.

Bike City, USA

Davis has just been recognized as the most bicycle-friendly city in the United States by the League of American Bicyclists. This town of 65,000 has over 100 miles of bikeways, thousands of bike parking places, and most important, 25 grade-separated intersections keeping bicycle and motor vehicle traffice apart.

When I was in San Francisco on Tuesday I was fearful for the cyclists on Market Street. They have every right to be on the road but it’s tough sharing the street with crazed drivers and tramlines. Today, by contrast, I rode my bike from work into town: most of the two miles were on bike-only roads. This was the first day of classes and parking a car would have been a nightmare. Instead I parked my bike right outside Ali Baba and sat and had a very enjoyable time working on my Sudoku, which I just discovered last week. I’ve discovered an unwanted addiction…

End Of An Era

As most know, Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France today, his seventh in a row, and has just retired from professional cycling. As much as one has to admire his accomplishments, it will be nice to have the Tour de France be a wide-open contest again. Meanwhile, there are rumors that Lance might someday run for governor of his home state. Or as Jay Leno puts it, “Well, finally Texas would have a governor who knew how to ride a bicycle.”