The Real Season Begins

This needs to be a really short post because I am in the midst of multiple Idaho Supreme Court appeals and am getting ready to go the the Seattle International Bike Expo this weekend with Mrs. Cycliste Moderne.

The Real Season Begins

Saturday marked the begining of the real European season with the first major Belgian races of the year: Saturday's North-South traverse of Flanders, Omloop Het Volk, and Sunday's East-West traverse, Kuurne-Bruxelles-Kuurne. Fillipo Pozzato and Tom Boonen won the races respectively and both are worthy winners and will be in good form for the rest of the Spring Classic season, assuming we have any racing.

The Stand Off Continues

Friday's meeting of the council of ProTour teams failed to result in any action, other than for the teams to sternly announce their displeasure with both the UCI and the Grand Tours. Something will have to give by next weekend's start of Paris-Nice, otherwise the season will be thrown in to turmoil. Unfortunately, it will be the riders who suffer from this stand off. My prediction: the French and German teams disregard the UCI's warning and show up for Paris-Nice. The Spanish, Belgian, Italian and remaining ProTour teams hold out and boycott Paris-Nice. Ultimately, the UCI will blink and the ProTour will be dead as the sponsors will demand their teams race.

Boise Bike Swap

This year's Boise Bike Swap was something of a let down. Now, I have bought bikes at the event each of the last two years and in the years prior to that purchased a lot of parts. This year seemed to be poorly advertised. Additionally, the selection of bikes was not as good as in years past. Finally, even the selection of used parts and components was disappointing. Maybe my recent purchase of a Trek 5200 clouded my judgment but others I talked to were of the same belief. At least my parents managed to sell their older 5 speed tandem. They bought a brand new Raleigh road tandem at last year's event and decided to part with their old red tandem. Of course they only sold it in the parking lot after they picked it up after it failed to sell at the swap.