le tour!!!!

How many of you are as mad as I am and watch le tour de france every year on TV? It is late night early hours of the morning here but I cannot stop myself. I used to ride a lot in Europe, these guys are just a phenomenon of fitness and skill. Yes, professional cycling is commercial, year round, but bloody hell, three weeks and whatever your discipline of cycling you have to go up (and down) bloody great mountains, across cobbles, sprint, time trial, all within a percentage of time. I find it amazing, inspiring and fascinating. Before I did my back in I used to cycle the whole four hour length of the broadcast on my exercise bike! Now I just sit on the couch with a sandwich and a drink and a cigar but I can still dream!

Heartily agree, though watching the tour here in China is probably less satisfying for armchair expats than for you in Oz or elsewhere. First, the broadcast is not in realtime, but in excerpts that start after midnight, and of course the commentary is in Chinese. Perhaps there are some satellite channels carrying the tour in real time, but international satellite TV is still highly restricted. Here in Shanghai, you can get a dish and receiver for various services originating outside China, and buy a black-market "cracked" card to decode the signal. But the providers are always updating their encryption, so your card may last anywhere from a month to a half year. I did this for a while but almost never turned the TV on, so I've stopped. Now my only choice is CCTV, also known as the throat and tongue of the C*mmunist P*rty.

So I try to follow via latour.com and other websites, but it's not quite the same to see little stick-figure animations showing the status of riders in the peloton.

I still cycle daily in Shanghai, using the bicycle to go almost everywhere. I save the Jialing for forays out of town.

Oh come on give me a break. Runners and bicyclist are the most crazy people I know! I have never ever understood how they can run or drive the bicycle like they do, it is something totally unbeliavable, yet I respect them highly for being able to do so. Anyway, I don't want to watch them from TV, my head begins to hurt enough seeing them in real on the road where I don't have a choise to not see them.

I admit to crazy, until I smashed my back I ran 10km daily and cycled for many years so I have done plenty of it Mikko, it is exhilarating to cycle freely through the countryside (or cities as JK does and beat the traffic), and truly once you get fit you don't feel it! In my next life I am going to be a tri-athlete and small plane pilot.:lol8:

I used to do a lot of cycling in and around New England. I had a racing bike, always helmeted and with cleats. After a brief spring break-in, we usually do a century over weekends in summer. New England is hilly but very scenic. Flat tire is the only annoying thing about the sport.
Paddling strenuously on a bike for over 45 minutes you surely reach a "runner's high" quickly without too much stress on your knees. It is highly addictive. On a motorbike, you get a sore back. :-)
A while ago almost purchased a folding bike. The scheme was to escape quickly out of Shanghai in a car with the folding bike in the trunk and bike around after reaching a scenic spot. Then I discovered a motorcycling/touring crowd in Shanghai and joined them. Only motorcycling ever since.

Yeah, when I was a kid in the sixties, everyone boy or girl had a pushbike and we all rode them to school and everywhere. never thought of walking. Safer world. Thus we never had that adult fear of effort and stayed fit for years. We all built our own from parts at the dump or did paper rounds and so on to buy a good one later. I still remember fixing a folded piece of cardboard to the front fork with a clothes peg so it buzzed as I rode, placing ball bearings into grease, learning about derailleurs for the first time and the invention of bloody quick release wheel fittings your mates would kick surreptitiously as they went past in cross-country race, so you lost your wheel on the next bump ... aaah nostalgia. Nowdays my heart pumps wildly and my back goes into spasms before I get to the end of my bumpy 80 meter driveway and I turn round and go home.

I went around parts of France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Holland when I was 15/16 with a couple of mates, staying in Youth Hostels and so on for six weeks. an adventure on a very few bucks! A few hills made us walk and a few headwinds or rain made us stop for a rest. Met up with 16 year old girls on bikes too ... woohoo. No hurry, no cost almost. I think you could still do similar today in some parts but hey, most people wouldn't be able to do a kilometer without a heart attack these days, too unfit. And in most countries the roads are full of idiots.

Ah, nostalgia!

Jape's and Milton's experiences are pretty similar to mine in northern California, and I think it's an excellent point that an early life suffused with bicycling indeed left "our generation" with a notion that great distances could be covered with human energy. I never, ever gave a second thought to riding 30 or 40 or 50 miles (aka 80 km) to go somewhere, and would occasionally cycle the 100km to the Golden Gate Bridge and into San Francisco. In those days we wore helmets only when racing, but these were little more than leather hairnets.

Today's young people see the world in very different terms. My nieces and nephews would never go anywhere unless there's someone to drive them, and because of this their bodies will consider sustained physical effort to be exceptional, rather than ordinary. I fear this will not do them any favors as they age. Not that I'm some hardbody triathlete; in fact I'm a bit soft around the belly and a few kg over what I should be. But I can still swim 3000m in under an hour, and shame pretty much everyone else in the pool, regardless of age (ah, modesty!). And I can present myself pretty much anywhere in Shanghai, a city of maybe 25 million, in an hour of riding or less; most rides are in the 25-35 minute range, and I do these without a second thought, even on hot or rainy days. Jape's comments prompt me to realize that very, very, very few people, particularly "today's youth," would consider a 35-minute ride by bicycle to be a reasonable thing to do. For me it's sheer joy, followed by a great sense of accomplishment.

Incidentally, and this surely counts as making a virtue of necessity, cycling safely but quickly through traffic is an exhilarating experience that can be compared to downhill skiing, whitewater kayaking and maybe even some types of motorsport. Traffic flows very much like water, though it provides no cushion when you hit it. You need a heightened sense of attention, monitoring scores if not hundreds of vehicles all moving in their own space at their own speed around you, each piloted by a driver lost in his own world of thought, experience, behavior, and mood. To be able to "read the water" is a refined art that comes only with years and years of experience. As I pedal, I often sense local riders trying to keep pace with me, and sometimes they can offer a burst of power that exceeds mine. But inevitably, my experience and ability to read the traffic gets the best of them, and I leave them panting in my dust. Fitness matters, and I work hard to keep mine, but often nothing counts more than one's ability to read instantly the constantly changing opportunities and threats and risks that traffic poses. It's a lovely sport, city riding, and a practical one at that.

One of these days I'll post some helmet video of me shooting the rapids down Huashan Lu into Xujiahui!

And finally, Le Tour! Spurred by Jape, I watched a bit of tape-delay coverage of Stage 5 this morning, and what a thrill. I'd hate to think what would happen if one went down, but the helicopters are making video coverage absolutely sensational. The filming is getting better and better. I love when the chopper flies low over a field along the course, and zooms in tight almost at ground level while moving along at the same speed as the peloton. And I love the shots taken from above the peloton, especially when it meets a traffic circle and half the riders go right while the other half go left, only to merge again on the other side. Having ridden in a peloton many times, it's astonishing to have this birds-eye view showing how the peloton is like a single, living organism. And I love when a chopper hovers over some local castle or other landmark, and the narrator -- an authoritative sportscaster called Sun Yan -- gives a nice bit of history and context.

And then there are the motorcycles! What a lark to be a Tour de France mobile videographer, shooting from pillion on what look to be very nice big bimmers. The shots they give are amazing, and get us right into the thick of the peloton or a breakaway.

Where was le Tour before helicopters, motorcycles and high-speed wireless broadcasting? These have made the sport truly a treat for a worldwide audience!

One more word on CCTV's announcer, Sun Yan. She's been announcing the Tour for CCTV for many years now, and surely must rank as one of the most influential sports broadcasters anywhere, reaching an audience in the tens of not hundreds of millions every day for a whole month. She rarely appears in camera, but her voice is one of cool and uncompromising authority. It's a real testament to CCTV that they rely on her, year in and year out. Here's her glamshot from CCTV's Tour website.

http://sports.cctv.com/special/C1873...3538862269.jpg

That is a classy lady, and I mean that in the best way, she has that age-old imperial look, not that it would be an asset in that way these days!
We do have fun we older buggers, you with the downhill and me with the Kangaroo slalom! (thanks to Craig for that term, I like it)
Thanks for the story mate, enjoyed reading it. I am glad that you enjoyed stage 5, clever lad, time travel eh, hope you placed a bet on it then! It was stage 4 mate! Relatively slow and normal - you should have seen the one the day before on the pave'!

It is funny to see how "universal" kids can be around the world. I can very well relate to what Jape wrote. When I was a kid we did all the same things (except did not travel to Europe with bicycles), though we never wore helmets. None wore helmets when bicycling in those times. The bicycle was faster than going by foot. That's it what it was. And hell yeah thanks of the nostalgia shot Jape. Curiously enough by the way novadays I don't do bicycling because it is too fast. Haven't done in many years. If I want to go slow and silently I go by foot.

hey Moilami, no offence, I always read you writing about tours, but when will we see pictures of your ride through Finland?
this face you show on your profile is not you,
after 241 posts it is time now!!!!!
with courious greetings from Beijing
Sabine

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Originally Posted by SabineHartmann

hey Moilami, no offence, I always read you writing about tours, but when will we see pictures of your ride through Finland?
this face you show on your profile is not you,
after 241 posts it is time now!!!!!
with courious greetings from Beijing
Sabine

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Ditto. :-)

I wish I get part one of three part report done today. One dude named Aristotle said a story should have beginning, middle, and ending. So have to make a three part report :) I Have selected the pictures for the first part already, only need to write stuff and I have some kind of mood to write. In part two will be pictures of me. I don't take self portraits because the only tripod I have at the moment is wooden Berlebach weighting almost 3kg and, a great tripod but a little bit unpractical for touring with a bike and I haven't yet found practical and good small tripod. However one motorcyclist had a tripod in Alta Norway and some unknown man volunteered to photoraph me later too.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SabineHartmann

hey Moilami, no offence, I always read you writing about tours, but when will we see pictures of your ride through Finland?
this face you show on your profile is not you,
after 241 posts it is time now!!!!!
with courious greetings from Beijing
Sabine

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by milton

Ditto. :-)

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+3 :naughty:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SabineHartmann

hey Moilami, no offence, I always read you writing about tours, but when will we see pictures of your ride through Finland?
this face you show on your profile is not you,
after 241 posts it is time now!!!!!
with courious greetings from Beijing
Sabine

---

Perhaps Moilami is one of these gentlemen?http://sites.google.com/site/dustywobblssnow/home

Huh, haha, I am not one of those xD Those are some seriously crazy Finlanders. It is pure and total insanity to travel to arctic circle and back in February in Finland by that kind of motorcycles :eekers: I can say that and it is much said by me. There is freezing cold, pitch dark, and icy road. To do it in less than 24 hours requires guts big time. I haven't seen more insane trip done.

Out of curiosity, I googled to see if I could find out anything about the motorcycles you see amidst the Tour de France riders. There's not a ton of information, but I did find two interesting pages. Turns out Kawasaki is an official sponsor, and provide all the bikes for the official Tour organizers, about 27 in all. But there are many accredited news organizations as well, and most ride BMW. It's reported that some of the bimmers are very old, with six figures on their metric odometers (km not miles).

Models, totals and usage:
KLV 1000 x 3 Regulators. Used to position service vehicles behind the riders
ZRX 1200 x 3 Information. Used within the group of bicycles to take the timings and give the information to race control.
KLV 1000 x 1 Info Board. Used to inform break away groups of the advance they have.
ZRX 1200 x 2 Arrival Judges. Used to judge intermediate sprint results during the stage.
KLV 1000 x 6 Stewards. Used to make sure nothing illegal happens during the race.
ZRX 1200 x 2 Drinks. Serve drinks to racers who have not been able to get drinks from alongside the road.
ZRX 1200 x 1 Medical. Used to for following the break away groups.
KLV 1000 x 3 Photographers. Used to carry the official photographers.
KLV 1000 x 3 Journalists. Used to carry by rotate, the official written press.
ZRX 1200 x 3 Caravan Regulators. Used to regulate traffic behind the race of all the publicity caravans.

Here is one representative picture, followed by two links for further reading.

http://photos.imageevent.com/motorbi...Kawasaki-1.jpg

Le Tour motorcycles

Le Tour 2010---motorcycle facts & figures

Oh, and for those of you following le Tour, today's stage just finished an hour ago and there were major developments. Lance Armstrong was embarrassed in the first serious stage in the Alps by a ton of younger turks, and almost certainly will have to hand over leadership of the RadioShack team to Levi Leipheimer, from my home town of Santa Rosa, California, who finished in the lead group about 8 minutes ahead of Armstrong. Leipheimer is now placed No.8 in the overall standings, and is well positioned for a crack at the podium. If Leipheimer indeed is named leader, it will be interesting to see what Armstrong does next. Will he drop out, board his helicopter and blow out of town? Or will he do what so, so, so many unheralded riders did for him so many times over the past decade or more: Ride thanklessly as a supporting domestique, doing anything in his power to help Leipheimer. I'm guessing the former.

Yeah, and Armstrong was described in Today's NYTimes as "under federal investigation for fraud and doping during the years he rode on the United States Postal Service team."

cheers!

The 15th July stage ended with the disqualification of Mark Renshaw after bashing his head onto another contestant.

at 00:04 it is clearly visible, sorry YT only

Bloody woosies disqualifying him, he couldn't punch him, he was holding on to the bars, and he couldn't kick him, he was pedalling! What else was he meant to use? Do not expect gentlemanly behaviour from sprinters, they are NOT gentlemen, and in fact are mostly foreigners. ;-p

And do not expect drug free professional sports on any field with high wages and prizes of a milliion bucks. having said that, I reckon Lance has been accused and cleared before of the same drugs and for the same period. This time it is just the biggest hypocritical wanker of all time, Landis, having a spit. If I ever met him I would pound a stake up his arse, pile more faggots round it and set light happily, whistling while he popped and spattered.

There was a period when it was accepted as 'cool' by most teams and individuals that many drugs or 'substances' were to be used if they were not explicitly banned; for such things as blood transfusions to be seen as clever rather than cheating etc. Times change but few, if any, take no drugs. Depends where you draw the line. Our local aussie footballers speed up with buckets of caffeine quite without censure, then come down on prescribed 'downers', then get very pissed. I have partied with top flight golfers once on a stopover in a hotel in Dubai where the coke was flowing very freely. I have valid information about top politicians taking drugs and what is worse, have personal knowledge of a few 'bent' police over the years that not only took anything going but stole and sold it, controlled drug resources and didn't mind a bit of sex on the side either. Not just the odd cyclist doing it folks. Oh yeah and the USA Onward Christian Soldiers in Iraq and Aghanistan use many drugs without censure as well. I have that from currently serving mates working alongside them. Must make it easier to kill kids and women.

It is the world we live in. Brutal, corrupt and sometimes fun if you have the balls to play in it. Otherwise known as Hell by many who live in it. I still reckon anyone who enjoys cycling up and down mountains and for many kilometers fast along french roads is worth watching. I never said they were anything but mad, drugged or violent though, that just makes then fairly representative of the common man?

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Originally Posted by jape

It is the world we live in. Brutal, corrupt and sometimes fun if you have the balls to play in it. Otherwise known as Hell by many who live in it. I still reckon anyone who enjoys cycling up and down mountains and for many kilometers fast along french roads is worth watching. I never said they were anything but mad, drugged or violent though, that just makes then fairly representative of the common man?

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Jape, Nice rant and in principle I agree that it's a nasty durty world out there. And it's fun to watch these guys go at it on the mountain. Yes, as humans we are all basically fallen. Yet what would happen if all controls, perhaps all rules, were removed from the game altogether? Now that would be a Tour de France worth watching, including sag wagons to shovel up the bodies.

As for the credibility of Armstrong and Landis, before you go selecting that stake and faggots, please have a read of what Landis has been saying, if you haven't. Though of course everyone in the peloton, and the corporate world, wants to impugn his credibility, he speaks from an interesting position -- a guy who's lost everything through his deceits. Armstrong, whether or not you can extend him the full benefit of the doubt, is on top of the world and has everything to lose. A lie has real value for him.

And Landis is being taken seriously by US prosecutors, and major media like the Wall Street Journal. OK, it's Murdoch's paper now, and Rupert (speaking of dark forces) has a dog in the fight (sponsors a team in the tour, don't remember which). But have a read through :deal:THIS ARTICLE :deal:if you haven't already. It might revise your thinking. Then again, it might now. I have a friend who has a cabin in Idyllwild where Landis lives, and he's going to go buy him a beer and get him talking. I imagine Landis is feeling pretty damned lonely right not. All the more so if he's telling the truth. One final word: Armstrong seems always quite careful in saying he never used "performance enhancing substances" but Landis' allegations are entirely about blood doping. If this was true, there should be plenty of other witnesses who will come out of the woodwork. I think there are at least two others who corroborate Landis' story. I'd just like to see all this come out in the wash, once and for all.

Now back onto the bike. I'm in Zhenjiang, heading north to ZMC888's turf, via Nanjing, which is TexasAggie's turf. It's been pissing rain all morning, so my hotel room exerted a particularly strong magnetic attraction. But it's breaking now so I'm up for a good 8 hours of northbound riding. The G312 to the G104 in Chuzhou. On to Beijing and Shenyang!

cheers!

Wot mate? You are on a trip? I thought you were going to post your 'bike! Take care mate and enjoy but not too much of any mind-altering substances (such as alcohol and nicotine) when you meet the other lads. I am about to read the Flandis article and try not to be too cynical, but in part it was him that taught me to be cynical. The GF did the rest.

Yeah, it reads as honest. And I also believe in redemption. However the cost of that is silent suffering, not spewing your guts, emptying old poisons all over the rest of the gang you played with. This portrayal of Landis is of an immature, jealous and spiritually bereft man, now lost in self pity, not one bathed in the light that Azra 'il truly brings those that repent. He needs to cycle up a few more mountains, in silence, before he sees that light.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SabineHartmann

hey Moilami, no offence, I always read you writing about tours, but when will we see pictures of your ride through Finland?
this face you show on your profile is not you,
after 241 posts it is time now!!!!!
with courious greetings from Beijing
Sabine

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by milton

Ditto. :-)

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by ChinaV

+3 :naughty:

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That makes four :rolleyes1:

um, he already started it folks, using an old thread. Lots of great photos as usual for Mikko but you need to wait for them and sometimes refresh as his file-server can be slow.
http://www.mychinamoto.com/forums/showthread.php?2033-Travels-with-Orange-the-honeymoon./page2