Break out the tiaras, high heels, and red lipstick. This Saturday, April 12th, Cross (dressing) the Bridge Ride will commence at 12:00 noon.

The ride is to celebrate Nashville’s bicycle lane and greenway system, as well as bring attention to cycling in the city and the use of bicycles as viable forms of transportation, as well as bring attention to more opportunities for road and mountain biking.

That sounds just wonderful, but when those panty hose wedge up… well… NO.  I’ll be at the Youth Incorporated Ranch in LaVergne on a clean-up day with Girl Scouts, followed by sitting in my front lawn watching the Blue Angels scream overhead for the Smyrna Air Show.

I think more people in Tennessee would take up cycling if we had these scattered around.

Floyd Landis guilty of doping. Must give up 2006 Tour De France Title.

From Caple’s column on Page 2 of ESPN.Com.

I love the Tour. I love the history and the geography. I love watching the shots of the riders climbing the towering mountains. I love listening to the Versus broadcast team. I love the dedication, endurance, athleticism and pain thresholds the riders display over the three weeks. I love getting on my bike after the broadcasts and racing away as fast as I can, pretending I’m breaking away from the peloton as I struggle up my own modest slopes.

And before this Tour began, I wrote that despite cycling’s many scandals in the past year, I still was excited for and eagerly awaiting the event. Just this Monday I wrote a couple paragraphs praising Vinokourov for the way he had fought on through injury.

I don’t feel embarrassed about that any more than do people who eagerly anticipate a football season when they know that sport is dirty as well (one reason cyclists get caught so often is because they are tested so often).

Mostly, I feel depressed and saddened by the latest scandals. And worried that the Tour’s very future is in jeopardy.

According to Music City Miracles, the Titans just signed receiver Eric Moulds.  Moulds has been an exciting receiver in the past, primarily for the Buffalo Bills.  As Jimmy points out on MCM,  Moulds is not the same receiver as he was with the Bills.  He’s 34 years old, which in wide receiver years is almost 40 years of age.

The stats for Moulds here, show a depressing decline since his heyday in the late 90’s.  But, as pointed out on MCM, even in his ‘later’ years, he caught more passes for the Texans than ANY Titan receiver caught last year.  Here’s hoping that teaming with V. Young will rejuvenate Mr. Moulds.

And in racing news, Tour de France leader Michael Rasmussen was thrown out of the Tour by his own team when it came to light that he was lying about his whereabout during the previous month when drug testing was going to take place.  Don’t say you’re in Mexico when you are publicly prancing around Italy!

German rider Patrick Sinkewitz crashed into a spectator and was thrown out of the race when it was  discovered that he, too*, was a doper.

The entire Italian team took a powder when their rider, Cristian Moreni, failed a drug test mid-race.

I think next year, the MCB cycling correspondent Tim Coble should enter the race.  I know he’s an honest non-doping kinda guy, and perhaps would be the only person left standing by the time the race ends.  I suspect he will have more thorough (and intelligent) commentary later on.

*As reported earlier, one of the favorites of the race, Vinokourav, has already been expelled from this year’s tour for blood doping.

Vinokourov out of the Tour de France for Doping.

Dan’s asking us all to man up:

[I]f you see cars parked in bike lanes, call the cops. If you eat at those places, tell the manager. People had to fight just to get the bike lanes, guess we gatta fight to keep them.

Sounds like there’s a major problem over in East Nashville.

As is often the case, the first week of this year’s Tour de France saw its fair share of carnage. Whether due to nervous energy and hopes of making an early mark or the onset of fatigue and good old fashioned bad luck, more than a few riders – including several favorites for the overall win – went wheels-up during the first seven days of racing. In addition to adding a bit of excitement to stages that were otherwise a bit on the vanilla side, these crashes once again raised one of the perennial questions of the sport: What’s with all these guys shaving their legs?

For some reason, this particular cycling practice stands out as odd to the casual observer. Years of torturous training? Fine. Months spent away from home and family? Not a problem. Risking life and limb as a matter of course? Done. Gams that are as bald as Britney Spears? Gonna have to think about that one… Embracing the razor is something of a rite of passage for the serious rider and a great way to invite mockery for mere novices. If an average guy shows up at a local club ride sporting shaved legs, chances are he deserves whatever ridicule his buddies heap upon him. For your typical rider, shaving their legs is as much of an empty gesture as voting libertarian in a presidential election. (Hi honey, how’s your vacation going?) Read the rest of this entry »

We’re four days into this year’s Tour de France and that wooshing you hear isn’t 187 bicycle riders flying by; it’s the sound of cycling fans all over the world collectively exhaling, albeit ever so tentatively. As of this moment, no failed drug tests or accusations of illegal performance-enhancing substances have tainted this year’s Tour, and it’s only a matter of time before this extended clean streak becomes a bigger story than who’s rolling around France in yellow. That’s not to say that there haven’t been some spectacular performances that have led people to speculate, “Hmm… I wonder if he rode like that because he’s dirty.” After all, Swiss rider Fabian Cancellara not only won the opening prologue by an impressive 13 seconds, he pulled off an amazing last-minute surge in today’s stage #3 that left some of the world’s most powerful sprinters wondering what happened. Now, to the best of my knowledge, Mr. Cancellara’s drug testing record is perfectly spotless and I’ve never heard anyone even suggest that his numerous cycling accomplishments are the result of anything other than hard work, good coaching and God-given ability. Still, it’s indicative of the sad state of professional cycling that the more impressive a rider’s successes are, the greater the suspicion they must endure.

None of this is to say that pro riders have anyone but themselves to blame. The lengths to which countless cyclists have gone to eke out an ill-gotten advantage over their competitors are the stuff of legend. All that’s changed in recent years is the level of sophistication that offenders have had to embrace in order to elude equally sophisticated methods of detection. What’s unfortunate is that the sport as a whole is now reaping the consequences of the actions of these riders, whether they represent 10% of the peloton or 90%. No longer can an individual cyclist think that the risks that they assume in taking a banned substance are limited to their own future. In the eyes of a semi-interested public, it’s no longer individual riders who are guilty - it’s pro cycling as a whole. Read the rest of this entry »

One is good; more is better.

• If only I didn’t hate Robbie McEwen so very very much…

• Ganging up on the Tennessee Center For Policy Research

• “McDonalds is full of crap”

• Unlike me, this guy is still willing to sit through John From Cincinatti

• Making big money on the Web

• Killing the n-word

• A Texan is ‘getting over Texas’

• Somebody’s havin’ a baby right about now

…In that they’re fun to have around the house for a couple of weeks once a year, after which they begin to get a bit prickly and are most often seen lying discarded in a ditch by the side of the road. But for the next three weeks it’s Tour de France time, the high holy days of cycling, and we cyclists are going to take full advantage of being temporarily elevated from thinly tolerated weirdos in Lycra to semi-interesting sources of knowledge about an event that a lot of people sorta kinda almost care about.

Because I’ve got an in with a site manager here at MCB, I’m taking full advantage of this opportunity to play the nepotism card and will be chiming in throughout the month of July on all things Tour-related. Whether you’re a die-hard cycling fan (hey, it could happen!) or simply Tour-curious, I invite you to join in the discussion. From the basics of Pro Cycling 101 to doping scandals to discussions of each day’s stage, it’s all fair game and should make for a lively - dare I say interesting? - discussion. If you have a question, ask it. If you have an opinion, share it. If you have a vintage Masi with all original components that you’d like to give away, e-mail me.

To get the ball rolling, here’s the Question for the Day: Your average Tour de France rider burns somewhere between 6,000 and 9,000 calories per day for roughly 20 days. Even when on the bike, zipping around the French countryside at 30+ miles per hour, they’re eating every chance they get. Before and after each stage, they consume massive amounts of carbohydrates, protein and fat simply to maintain their energy levels. Even so, by the time they roll into Paris on the last stage many riders have lost up to ten pounds - and these are guys who start out looking as if they haven’t been in the same county as a Big Mac in months. So I ask you, if you were a pro cyclist who had just finished riding the Tour and found yourself back in Music City, where would you head to throw down for your first no-holds-barred meal? (See how I tied that back to the site’s Nashville theme? Smooth, eh?) Price and status/cool factor are no object - the goal is pure, hedonistic caloric intake. Don’t be shy; this is your big chance to eat vicariously, so go wild!

My buddy Dan has a wee bit of teaching by example at his place.

Wear yer helmet! This was a total accident. It could have happened to anyone. Ivan made a right turn in to Fred and launched him into the pavement. I saw Fred’s helmet last night and it’s smashed. If he wasn’t wearing it, we would have been spending time in the ER instead of beer and pizza at the bar.

I know that it’s Tour De France time, and that gets a lot more people out on their bikes. Heads & brains are irreplaceble, everyone. A helmet may be the best cycling investment you could make.

Josh Tinley is asking a question popular with many of my friends.

Is the Tour de France worth our time?

I’m not sure how much time I want to invest in the 2007 Tour. Floyd Landis’s unlikely come-from-behind win was inspiring; his subsequent positive test for testosterone supplements was heartbreaking. While I allow for the possibility that Landis is innocent (as does Lance Armstrong), the lingering disappointment and the fact that so many of the sports top athletes in the past decade have been connected to performance-enhancing drug use—including stars Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso, who were suspended one day before last year’s Tour—have sucked the magic out of what is otherwise one of the world’s greatest sporting events.

I live in a cycling house. Bikes are a huge part of our lives. Our second car is a bike. My husband builds bikes for charity. He repairs and tunes bikes for free or low charge to anyone who asks.

The Tour de France is like Chanukah in our house. Or, more accurately, three Chanukahs in a row, seeing as how it goes for about 24 days. Missing it would be almost unthinkable. But the politics behind it are troubling to say the least and they are robbing cycling of it’s basic joy.

I plan to cover the Tour 2007 here pretty extensively–and by that I mean at least one post per day. Landis will always be one of my favourites, as will Hincapie. If you’re laying bets in Vegas, the man to go with is probably Vinokourov.

Regardless, the entire Tour is packed with riders suspected of doping. Funnily enough, Josef Hackforth,professor for sport, media and communication at the Munich University of Technology seems to think that’s the fans’ fault–or at least that fans have the cure.

For cycling to survive, Josef Hackforth, believes, it needs a shock to the system like the sudden and mass exodus of fans not willing to put up with supporting a sport that is riddled with the doping disease. “If the spectators say: we are not interested any more, then cycling would have to act,” he said.

Here’s an idea, fellows. Just stop doing the drugs. Quit blaming the fans, the testing agencies and the legendary French cycling snobbery. The lead riders, domestiques and team owners are the ones doping. We fans are just tuning in for the show.