Gadling

Would you like your own personal Tour de
France excursion? Cycling Classics can make it happen with their
new program designed for Lance Armstrong wannabes. The
weeklong tours will be timed to coincide with the 2006 Tour de France and will allow skilled cyclists to ride on
segments of the actual racecourse. A six-night guided program, priced at $1,940 per person (double), will run from
Les Deux Alpes to Alpe d’Huez and also features the
Col de Galibier. A self-guided version costs $1,210
for seven nights. Both tours depart July 14, 2006. They also offer
personal tours before and after the actual race
(in May and August), so that cyclers can follow the race route through the Alpes, Ventoux, and Pyrenees without the
crowds. This tour costs approximately $2,200. See their website for complete Tour de France offerings, plus other
cycling tours they offer throughout the year.

You may have never heard the name Joe Kurmaskie, but he’s got a great story to tell. Kurmaskie
pedalled his bike across the entire US of A and wrote about it recently for Men’s Journal. His
personal site tells some of the tale. As his site tells it, Joe has covered
more than 104,000 miles by bicycle, riding extreme adventures from Alaska to South America, Australia to
Ireland and down nearly every backroad in the United States. As he says, you might call him the Forest Gump of the
cycling world.  

Not sure if you’ll get out to do any mountain biking this weekend,
but here’s a story that captures in a kooky kind of way the
way a lot of us feel who have taken up mountain biking at one point or another. Granted I haven’t done a lot of biking
since moving to New York, but fondly do I think about the days in Seattle when I biked most every day. And so I read
with a chuckle this piece on a guy’s first experience biking. The pain, the struggle, the expense….the bliss. A quick,
easy read for a Sunday afternoon.