Guest Posts

Colorado’s USA Pro Cycling Challenge, By Bob Joy

Posted on August 17, 2011 - 10:15 am by keith_ritter

I am suffering from a form of Seasonal Affective Disorder. Specifically, I have Post-Tour-de-France-Withdrawal-Syndrome (PTdFWS). Symptoms include staring at the blank television screen each evening and aimlessly wandering the house saying things like, “The elastic has snapped” and “He reached into his suitcase of pain and found that he forgot to pack.”

Fortunately, this year there is a cure. Colorado’s USA Pro Cycling Challenge will be held August 22-28 and will be broadcast on Versus and NBC. The Leopard Trek and Radio Shack teams will be there riding their state-of-the-art Madones. The HTC Highroad team will also participate in what we now know is their final season. Cadel Evans is expected to lead the BMC team and will be supported by former U.S. road racing champion, George Hincapie. It is likely to be a high-altitude rematch between the Schleck brothers and this year’s winner of the Tour de France. Let’s hope there are fewer crashes!

The race will begin on Monday, August 22nd with a fast, five mile Prologue that will begin in the magnificent Garden of the Gods, descend through Old Town and finish in downtown Colorado Springs. Other than deciding who will wear the leader’s yellow jersey the next day, it will be too short to have much effect on the overall results.

But it won’t take long for the real fun to begin. The first stage will include a climb over Monarch Pass that tops out at over 11,000 feet in elevation. The finish will be on an uphill climb to Mt. Crested Butte. Sprinters need not apply.

Wednesday’s route from Gunnison to Aspen is being called the Queen Stage because it will feature two demanding climbs over 12,000 feet. The first will ascend a dirt road to Gunnison Pass and is sure to split the peloton. Watch for Boulder, Colorado resident and former mountain biker Tom Danielson to emerge from the pack on the climb and use his descending skills to gain time on his rivals. With his ninth-place finish in the Tour de France, the highest for any American, this is shaping up to be Tom’s breakout year. He’s been training in these mountains since his return and has to be among the favorites.

The next day’s time trial will be twice as long as the Prologue and will be uphill all the way. Riders will gain nearly 1,800 feet over the ten mile course that will start in Vail Village and end at the top of Vail pass. The route will favor all-around riders like Levi Leipheimer and Cadel Evans who can both time trial and climb.

Friday’s route will provide little respite for the riders. The route from Avon to Steamboat Springs is only 86 miles long but will climb 5,000 vertical feet. Saturday’s route will be like a rest day. It will start in Steamboat Springs and finish 105 miles later in downtown Breckenridge. This may be the only bunch sprint of the race but it won’t do much to sort out the overall leaders.

The race will end on Sunday with a 78-mile looping ride that will start in Golden, climb over Lookout Mountain, and conclude with six laps of a circuit course before finishing in front of the magnificent State Capitol Building in downtown Denver. It should be an exciting finish to a great inaugural race.
And the best part is that we will be another month closer to June 30th when the 2012 Tour de France starts!

For more information about the race and full television listings: http://www.usaprocyclingchallenge.com

Learn more about Trek Travel cycling vacations of a lifetime.

The Tour de France in July…the Rest of the Story!

Posted on June 30, 2011 - 9:00 am by keith_ritter

We have another great post by superstar guest Bob Joy. He has been on many Trek Travel bike trips and captured many great moments through his camera. Here he discusses the joys of July and the 3 weeks of the Tour de France.

If you are a cyclist, July is the best month of the year. Not just because the long days and warm weather are ideal for riding, but because for three magical weeks the Tour de France comes around. For the committed, the Tour eclipses March Madness, the Stanley Cup, and the World Series in importance. It’s like having a Super Bowl every day for 21 days, but with a caravan of vendors instead of the beer commercials. And the best part is that you get to stand right on the sidelines!

The Tour de France attracts the largest live audience of any sporting event in the world. This year, fans will stretch out over 3,430 kilometers of some of the most scenic roads in France. Seeing the Tour in person, especially with Trek Travel, is an amazing experience! No other travel company has the connections to get you inside the action.

The photo below was taken about one kilometer below the summit of the Col d’Aubisque on the final mountain stage during the 2007 tour. Our group had dined with the Discovery Channel team the night before and learned that they were planning to change out the rear wheels for three of the riders – Alberto Contador, Levi Leipheimer, and Yaroslav Popovych – after the first steep climb up the Port de Lareu. This would enable them to start the day with larger climbing cogs “as the road turned up in anger,” as Phil Liggett might say, and then switch to a tighter cluster for the rest of the stage. This novel strategy required split-second timing; the mechanics in the support vehicles had be in just the right positions to switch the wheels without causing the riders to lose precious seconds to the peloton. The gambit worked! Even the commentators were taken by surprise and exclaimed that Levi, “must have had a mechanical or a flat tire.”

We also knew that Leipheimer was going to press race leader Michael Rasmussen on the final climb to the summit finish on the Col d’Aubisque in an effort to soften him up for Contador. Johan Bruyneel thought that Rasmussen was at his limit, but that was not the case. Just after they passed us, with Levi setting the pace as planned, Rasmussen accelerated to the finish and won handily. You may recall that he was then whisked away by his team management and forced to withdraw from the Tour, not for testing positive for any banned substance, but for lying about his whereabouts several months earlier.

Alberto Contador thus became the race leader overnight and started the next day in Le Maillot Jaune. He went on to win in Paris and we were able to join the celebration at the team bus. Few people in the crowd knew what had happened in the pivotal mountain stage that led to his victory. But as Paul Harvey used to say, now you know the rest of the story!

Bob Joy’s 2011 Guide Commencement Speech

Posted on June 13, 2011 - 9:32 am by keith_ritter

I was just looking at the photo album of the new guides that Trek Travel posted a few weeks ago. I would have loved to deliver the inspirational commencement address at their graduation ceremony. If I had, here’s what I would have said:

Congratulations to the Trek Travel guide class of 2011! You have distinguished yourselves among your peers by gaining admission to a training program that is more selective than many Ivy League colleges. During your course of study you learned how to refill water bottles and tune bikes while your guests make leisurely laps through the breakfast buffet. You learned how to fit a premium carbon bike to the precise measurements and personal preferences of each guest. You learned how to fix a flat on the road using nothing more than a cheap plastic comb and a folded dollar bill. And you learned the art of laying out a classic Trek Travel Picnic that captures the romance of a small village in the French Pyrenees, the majesty of a Redwood forest, or the abundant sunshine of a winery in Mallorca, each time introducing your guests to local produce, specialty foods, and delicious wines.

For all you have accomplished, you know that you have much more to learn. So, for your first few trips you will be paired with a veteran guide. Jacob Young will share his famous recipe for guacamole so you can welcome your guests back from a long day of cycling with chips, salsa, and cold beer. Stephanie Stewart Chapman will tell you she is an “enabler” because she enables her clients to strive for and achieve more than they ever thought they could. Greg Lyeki will show you the art of happily riding along with the slowest cyclists in your group to be sure they find their way. And Cendrine DeVis will show you how to hide champagne in your knapsack so you can toast your guests in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower after they have completed laps on the Champs-Eleysee.

You will also hear stories about some of the legendary feats of your Trek Travel colleagues. You will learn how Dan Frideger persuaded a local boulangerie in central France to open early so that his guests would be greeted by warm pastries as they boarded the 6:30 AM train to Paris for the finale of the Tour de France. You will learn how Diane Suozzo and Doug Kirkby responded when the Italian authorities abruptly closed of the following day’s route at the Giro d’Italia by devising a fantastic climb into the marble quarries above Carrera that include five “gallerias,” or tunnels. And you will learn how one of the guides spent the night sleeping in a van on the Col d’Aubisque in the Pyrenees so she could make it to Trek Travel’s exclusive viewing perch in time to personally congratulate every guest who scaled that legendary climb the next day. Her name? Tania Worgull, Trek Travel’s president!

A Moment in Italy, by Bob Joy

Posted on May 19, 2011 - 9:56 am by keith_ritter

Trek Travel president Tania Burke recently explained why she thinks Tuscany is the best place to take an Italy bike tour. I couldn’t agree more. Tuscany combines amazing scenery, outstanding food and wine, and some of the world’s friendliest people. One can tour Tuscany by bus, or see it in a car, but the only way to really experience it is on a bike.

Let’s start with scenery. On a bike, you don’t just view the landscape, you feel it. In your calves and thighs, of course, but you also become aware of the breezes, can savor the aromas of flowers in bloom or bread just coming out of the oven in the village paneterria, and can hear the laughter of children kicking a soccer ball or the peal of a church bell in the distance. You aren’t just an observer of the landscape, you are connected to it in a way that the typical tourist never is.

Maybe it’s the effort that cycling takes that makes the food and wine taste so much better. Or maybe it’s the guilt-free knowledge that you are burning off the calories just as fast as you are taking them on. How wonderful it is to indulge in pasta and wine for a week and not put on any weight!

Traveling by bike is a great way to connect with people, too. On a 2009 trip with Trek Travel our group started the day at Lido di Camaiore on the coast just north of Pisa. We climbed up a series of hills as we headed east and were rewarded by ever more dramatic views of the Ligurian Sea. We stopped in a little village at the crest of a ridge to check our maps and regroup. I noticed that the older gentleman sitting on a stone bench seemed to be eyeing us curiously. He motioned for me to join him, but as I did he saw the sweat pouring off my body and made a big deal about shifting to the far end of the bench, clearly conveying the notion that I was untouchable. On impulse, I slid right next to him. His reaction was captured in this photo. Despite the differences in culture, age, and language, we made a human connection that afternoon. It was just another Trek Travel moment, but the memory will last a lifetime.

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Category Archives: Guest Posts

Colorado’s USA Pro Cycling Challenge, By Bob Joy

The Tour de France in July…the Rest of the Story!

Bob Joy’s 2011 Guide Commencement Speech

A Moment in Italy, by Bob Joy

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