I could see myself breaking my neck on this thing....

SkyWalker 12-Foot-Tall Bicycle Probably Requires Jedi Abilities

The 12-foot tall SkyWalker TallBike is way up there. A little too far up there if you ask me. I know several kids around town that have five and six-feet tall bikes, and even those things seem ridiculous. This one is so tall it has a ladder system built-in so you can actually get on the thing.

In a clear effort to electrocute himself with powerlines or just cut his head with a traffic light, someone has created a 12-foot-tall bicycle from scratch. Called the SkyWalker TallBike, these bikes are not for the faint of heart. In fact, they are built for absolute lunatics. In other words, I want to try and ride one.

Final Virginia Ride of the Year?

Virginia's Northern Neck, "the Garden of Virginia", serves as the host for the 2nd Annual Northern Neck RiverRide. Come tour this special and unique peninsula located between the Rappahannock and Potomac Rivers with 500 cycling enthusiasts.

Mark Saturday, September 29th on your calendar and celebrate the conclusion of National Century Month with an English, Metric, Half One-Third or Quarter Century along the flat back roads of the Northern Neck.

Join me for the Tour de Chesapeake
May 16-18, 2008
http://www.bikechesapeake.org/

The Tour de Chesapeake is a weekend cycling event along the scenic and flat roads of Mathews County, Virginia. It is the perfect way to start your cycling season and warm up for Bike Virginia.

Join a thousand other riders in bicycling flat, rural Mathews County, located on the western shore of the southern Chesapeake Bay. Never more than ½ mile from water, Mathews features quiet and picturesque roadways for cycling.

The Tour de Chesapeake is perfect as a family biking adventure. It will also give the intermediate rider and the experienced veteran a perfect spring warm-up. Various routes are available on the Tour de Chesapeake, so that you can choose the mileage you desire. The Tour de Chesapeake is as close to a “create your own personal tour” as you’ll find.

Mileage options range between 15 - 62 miles.

All routes have fully-supported rest stops, route signage and SAG support. Routes open at 7:30 am and close at 5 pm.

The Tour de Chesapeake Tour Book that you receive at registration will have a color map and complete details on all of the rides available. Be sure to attend orientation when you arrive.

A Great Virginia Bicycle Tour...

One of the rides I am looking forwad to this summer, I hope I can make it this year... I can't wait!!! Up to 325 miles over 5 days

Bike Virginia is a five-day bike tour of incomparable Virginia scenery, history, culture and hospitality. Each June 2,000 cyclists of all ages experience the best biking adventure Virginia can offer. This page will help explain“how Bike Virginia works.”

Support Competing Clean, and look great doing it...

The Agency for Cycling Ethics

The A.C.E has release a full cycling kit that looks really good, thought someone else might like the look, as well as the cause

Buy the Full Kit Here

Set me free, and I can do great things....

The Coffee Tasting Machine Stirs Industry

60-Second Science - February 12, 2008

These days, it seems no one’s job is safe from computerized replacements. Now it’s time to add coffee experts to that list.
Scientists at the Nestle Research Center in Switzerland have developed a coffee-tasting machine that can sip and evaluate a brew almost as well as professional human tasters. The machine takes a sample of the gases produced by a steaming shot of espresso and analyzes dozens of ions associated with taste and aroma. Those ions are assigned to categories in a “sensory evaluation dataset.”
But, that doesn’t mean the results are dry chemical formulas. In fact, the machine has a vocabulary that would make any sommelier jealous. After it crunches the numbers, it spits out words like “flowery,” “woody,” and “butter toffee” to describe its drinking experience.
Researchers say machines like this could be efficient monitors of quality control in the food industry. And no matter how many cups a day it samples, the mechanized coffee taster will never get jittery.
Nevertheless, rumor has it that the machine has already demanded a daily 15-minute anything-but-coffee break.—Adam Hinterthuer

60-Second Science is a daily podcast. Subscribe to this Podcast: RSS iTunes

Levi Wins The Tour of California

After eight challenging days of cycling through 650-miles of scenic California highways, roadways and coastline drives, Levi Leipheimer (USA) of Astana was crowned as champion of the 2008 Amgen Tour of California for the second consecutive year, with a weeklong total time of 29 hours, 24 minutes and 32 seconds of cycling across California.
A resident of Santa Rosa, CA, Leipheimer battled against the best field ever assembled to compete in the United States, which included Olympic medalists and World Champions, among others.

One of my favorite riders, George Hincapie (USA) of High Road claimed the Stage 7win.

After eight challenging days of cycling through 650-miles of scenic California highways, roadways and coastline drives, Levi Leipheimer (USA) of Astana was crowned as champion of the 2008 Amgen Tour of California for the second consecutive year, with a weeklong total time of 29 hours, 24 minutes and 32 seconds of cycling across California.



A resident of Santa Rosa, CA, Leipheimer battled against the best field ever assembled to compete in the United States, which included Olympic medalists and World Champions, among others.



George Hincapie (USA) of High Road claimed the Stage 7 win.

Killer Koffee...

Kinetic Koffee Company is a gourmet micro roaster, located in Arcata, California that specializes in super-premium coffees from around the world. Each of their roasts are custom designed with distinctive profiles.

Kinetic Koffee is a firm believer in the "Think Globally, Act Locally" philosophy. All of their coffee blends are certified organic, shade grown, and governed by fair trade practices. In addition to purchasing from environmentally aware vendors, they are also contributing 10% of their net proceeds to charities to support worthy causes.

Is caffeine a legal stimulant which can be an endurance aid for activities?

Caffeine is a legal stimulant which can be an endurance aid for activities of > 30 minutes duration. It is a member of a group of compounds called methylxanthines found naturally in coffee beans, tea leaves, chocolate, cocoa beans, guarana, and cola (kola) nuts and similar to the asthma medication theophylline.

During prolonged exercise, the onset of fatigue correlates closely with the depletion of muscle glycogen stores (and is delayed if glycogen is spared). The metabolism of free fatty acids (FFA) as an alternative energy source can lead to decreased use of muscle glycogen. Caffeine can increase blood FFAs, and it is felt that this is its major method of action. In one study, caffeine produced a 50% increase in FFA at 3 to 4 hours. This effect was seen after 300 mg of caffeine (an average 6 ounce cup of brewed coffee contains 100 - 150 mg of caffeine but a Starbuck's 8 oz cup contrains 250 mg!).

There is speculation that some of its benefits may also be related to its central nervous system effect as a stimulant, and a recent study has demonstrated a direct positive effect on the muscle fiber itself via a mobilization of calcium from the sarcoplasmic reticulum with a reported 7% increase in power output over a 6 second cycle exercise task.

In one controlled study, subjects were able to perform for 90 minutes to fatigue as compared to 75 minutes in controls (a 20% increase) after the drinking the equivalent of 3 cups of coffee or 6 caffeinated colas 1 hour before, even though values for heart rate and oxygen uptake were similar in both groups. Another study, looking at performance with acute altitude change (4300 meters), demonstrated a 50% increase in performance with caffeine supplements. How this would help at lesser elevations, riding in the Rocky Mountains for example, is not clear.

The suggested dose of caffeine for the recreational rider is 5 mg per kg of body weight (range 3 - 9 mg/kg) taken 1 hour before the ride although some riders take smaller doses periodically throughout the ride itself. (Source - http://www.cptips.com/caff.htm)

'Gotta Have It', but I'm going to need quite a few of these...

Being such an avid reader & having a wife who is a Rhetoric Professor, I need a good place to store all our various forms of literature.

Enter the Elastic Bookshelf. Designed by Arianna Vivenzio, the form fitting shelf consists of an elastic band stretched over two pegs. I love it, so simple.

Just make sure to hit studs when you're putting up the pegs or the bookshelf will transform into all your stuff on the floor.

AmGen Tour of California - Stage 3

Levi Leipheimer and his Astana teammates plotted a path to take control of the Amgen Tour of California today by dominating the tenacious climbs of Mount Hamilton and Sierra Road.

They executed their strategy to perfection.

With the help of as many as four teammates on the tour's toughest day, Leipheimer landed in downtown San Jose with the overall lead of 13 seconds after the grueling 102.7-mile

Stage 3 won by Robert Gesink, with Levi right on his wheel.

I knew it all along...

A University of Connecticut (Storrs) study presented at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) in New Orleans had trained cyclists perform a max-strength test on the leg extension before and after an intense two-hour bout of cycling. Researchers reported that when subjects ingested caffeine during the cycling session, they didn't lose leg strength as they did when they exercised without caffeine.

If you're not currently taking 200-400 mg of caffeine an hour before workouts, now may be the time to start. This low-cost supplement can help you block out the muscle pain that causes you to end an intense set, possibly allowing you to complete more reps and therefore encourage greater muscle growth. In addition, caffeine may blunt muscle pain after an intense workout.

Let Levi Ride - Petition

Help put Levi’s dreams back on track by signing the petition to Let Levi Ride. Petitions will be sent directly to Christian Prudhomme, Director of the ASO, as well as to VS, the official US media partner of the Tour de France.