Taped on Friday in Chicago with Ben Raby, edited on the plane home yesterday. This probably won’t go on The Road Diaries but similar videos will.

I came across this framed 2006 Kodak Gallery/Sierra Nevada jersey at SRAM’s offices; it brings back a lot of memories, including how long it took me to lay out those cards. That was a fun year.

There were a lot of teams on the market for title sponsors this year. Despite the new sponsorships announced before the Tour, it looks like the first team to fold will be Roger Legeay’s Credit Agricole, according to VeloNews.

To my knowledge, they’re the only current “ASOtour” program with roots in an actual cycling club: Velo Moto Club de Paris. Check out this picture of Roger Walkowiak from 1958, their first of over 40 years as a pro team sponsored by Peugeot. Afterwards, it was Z, Gan, and Credit Agricole since 1998. Former riders include Eddy Merckx, Greg Lemond, Stephen Roche, and Chris Boardman. Thor Hushovd aside, the recent years have been a slight decline for them: 9th, 11th, and 15th in the ProTour from 2005-2007.

Most importantly, they showed a lot of class with Saul Raisin. They didn’t just honor his contract after his injury, but they really included him as part of the team until it was clear that he wasn’t going to race again.

There are some cool videos here, unfortunately not embeddable. But check out the 2001 TTT win at the Tour with Bobby Julich, Jonathan Vaughters, Thor Hushovd, Jens Voigt and Stuart O’Grady in yellow. Chris Boardman’s Merckx-beating hour record is great too.

Someone should post those on YouTube before Credit Agricole takes the team content off their website.

The team formerly known as Saunier Duval-Scott is now… um… Scott-American Beef. There’s not much information on line about the Chihuahua, Mexico based meat processor, but they were briefly “de-listed from the list of authorized plants to export to the United States” in 2004 - see page 60 of this report (pdf) from the USDA. Gross. Here’s what they had to say about the sponsorship.

“We consider that what happened at the Tour is sad but do not have to condemn the whole team, who always showed fair play,” said Ricardo Creel, president of American Beef. “Those who are guilty must be punished, but all other honest racers, as well as the whole staff of the team, must be able to end the season with complete peace of mind.”

I guess I’m happy for them to have found a sponsor but it’s certainly an odd pairing. I wonder if Scott’s contract included veto power of the co-sponsors. Still no word from Kadisco client SRAM on their future involvement with the team following the Ricco mess.

via VeloNews

McDonald’s is running a promotion on MySpace to come up with a new Big Mac chant - you know, “two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun”…

One of the finalists is a rapper from Miami who actually robbed a McDonald’s when he was 14, got tried as an adult, and was imprisoned for 12 years. Obviously, there’s a rich irony here but it’s disgraceful that we live in a country where you can walk out of prison at 26 having spent almost half your life there. Now he’s involved in the Real Talk Project and works with imprisoned youth all over Florida.

Anyways, go vote for BAiNG. He’s contestant #4.

via TechCrunch

After a year off, I spent this past weekend in Philly for the Commerce Bank Philadelphia International Championship testing hardware and web tools to produce content for my project with SRAM. I’ll post some of the results soon, but I came across this giant wooden track bike in the airport and it’s arguably the coolest thing I saw all weekend:

Looks like a 150cm frame with a Corima front and a Spinergy rear (yikes). I’m curious about the left-side drivetrain though.

So this Boloco Heartbreak Hill Grand Prix goes right around where I grew up and used to do hill repeats when I was a junior! I think I’ve got to plan a trip back to Boston for this.

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