The Ronde van Vlaanderen (Tour of Flanders), Sunday April 3, 2011

Warning: Cycle Crazy Week Ahead! A high of 13 degrees Celsius with showers in the morning becoming cloudy in the afternoon. That’s the forecast for Sunday’s Ronde van Vlaanderen (Tour of Flanders) on the ProTour circuit. One of the five so called “monuments” in the sport, this 95th edition of the race will see [...]

Source: http://www.teamradioshack.us/the-ronde-van-vlaanderen-tour-of-flanders-sunday-april-3-2011/

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Spirited Reception


Kat and I took a break from the heat and humidity under a tree in northern Thailand. We laid our bikes down by the side of the road and dug through our panniers looking for snacks.

The tree was enormous and the base of its trunk was decorated with colorful ribbons of silk. A local art project perhaps?

Trees are often decorated in public places. Just recently an artist "yarn bombed" trees in Occidental Square in Seattle. It was whimsical fun.

In Thailand, we didn't meet many foreign cyclists on the road (at least on the routes we pedaled), so we got wonderful reactions from motorists. But never honks. The people of Thailand are some of the most polite drivers on the planet.

So when we heard someone honk as they passed it startled us. Then the next car honked as well. And the next. And the next. Were our bikes too close to the road? But each car only honked once or twice. And the occupants were smiling. We smiled and waved back. For the next thirty minutes it was like being on a parade route. We waved at every car and every car celebrated our journey in Thailand with polite honking.

What was truly strange was that the honking never happened again. It took us at least a week to figure out that the motorists weren't honking at us.

It was the tree. Or the spirits in the tree. We found someone who explained to us that it is common belief that spirits inhabit certain trees. These trees are often decorated with flowers, garlands, and ribbons.

It is considered good luck to honk once (or twice) as you slowly pass by a spirit tree.

Note: If a couple of touring cyclists are sitting under the shade of that tree, it is still good luck to honk. And it will make the cyclists feel special ... at least until they learn a little bit more about Thai culture.

Photo: Thailand -- 2005 by Willie Weir

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SIGHTS AND SOUNDS appears on Friday afternoons. Willie Weir is a columnist for Adventure Cyclist magazine. His latest book Travels with Willie: Adventure Cyclist will inspire you to hit the road and just might change the way you approach bicycle travel. He lives in Seattle with his wife Kat. You can read about their local adventures and life without a car at http://YellowTentAdventures.com/.

Source: http://blog.adventurecycling.org/2011/09/spirited-reception.html

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TdF Stage 5 ? One Ugly Crashfest

Team RadioShack?s Slovenian Time Trial Champion Janez Brajkovic crashed hard just shy of the halfway point of today?s 165-kilometer 5th stage in the northwest Brittany region of France. After about 75 kms while tightly packed on the far left of the peloton he went down in a heap, hard and fast with little warning, [...]

Source: http://www.teamradioshack.us/tdf-stage-5-one-ugly-crashfest/

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Giro d?Italia Recap of Stages 11 and 12

Stage 11, Wednesday, 18 May, Machado Finds No Level Terrain The profile for the route, covering 144 Kilometers (89 miles) on the east coast of Italy, looked like the cutting teeth of an abused crosscut saw and probably felt like it for the racers. The jagged, irregular climbs ? four category 4 mountains – kept [...]

Source: http://www.teamradioshack.us/giro-ditalia-recap-of-stages-11-and-12/

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Countdown in Portugal


When traveling through a country there is so much to take in -- sights, sounds, culture, language. It can be overwhelming.

Sometimes I choose certain specific things to focus on as I'm pedaling. Trees or birds, or the hats people are wearing. The signs on the side of the road. Or I'll pick a color. It is amazing how your perspective changes if you focus on the color red, and later on the color blue. What your eye takes in doesn't change, but how your brain processes it does.

While we were pedaling in Portugal, I started noticing house numbers. In the small villages, most weren't generic, but often obviously fashioned by the home owner. I began taking photos of them. Then I got obsessed. I started collecting house numbers like you would try to fill out a bingo card. Could I find and photograph all the numbers from 1 to 100?

This was rather entertaining for me, and rather annoying for my partner, Kat, who constantly had to stop and wait as I dismounted my bike to search for the perfect angle to photograph a house number I hadn't captured yet.

I didn't make it to my goal of 100. Somewhere along the way my obsession began to annoy even me. My vision was so zeroed in on house numbers that I was literally missing the big picture.

The video is a shortened version of my countdown to Portugal ... as entertaining or annoying as it may be.

Photo: Portugal -- 2010 by Willie Weir

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SIGHTS AND SOUNDS appears on Friday afternoons. Willie Weir is a columnist for Adventure Cyclist magazine. His latest book Travels with Willie: Adventure Cyclist will inspire you to hit the road and just might change the way you approach bicycle travel. He lives in Seattle with his wife Kat. You can read about their local adventures and life without a car at http://YellowTentAdventures.com/.

Source: http://blog.adventurecycling.org/2011/09/countdown-in-portugal.html

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