Last month South Carolina passed new bicycling safety legislation aimed at those who travel with their feet instead of by gas. The new law provides some of the same protection to cyclists as those who travel in vehicles.
This new law hits pretty close to home as a friend of Checkpoint Adventures, Jim Kelleher, was recently hit by a car while cycling in South Carolina. Fortunately for Jim, he seemed to come out of the accident relatively unhurt. The same can’t be said for his bike though.
While I’m very excited to see some of our neighbors increase bicycling laws, when will we see similar improvements in the roads we travel? My recent experience in Europe really highlighted how pour the Atlanta biking infrastructure really is. I just hope it will improve sometime in my lifetime. I’m not holding my breath though.
If you’re like me and stuck at work while the Tour de France is live, at least you can listen online. Just head on over to Eurosport’s Tour de France page. Go down the page about half way and click the button on the right side of the page labeled “Live audio”.
I find the flat stages a little boring to listen to, but the mountains provide lots of action. My top three TDF GC contenders (in no particular order): Evans, Sastre, Valverde.
One of the longest running expedition adventure races starts today. Primal Quest will begin in less than 3 hours with 60 teams toeing the starting line in the Montana backcountry. I can’t seem to find how long racers have to finish the course (at max 10 days based on the race dates), but I expect the leaders to finish somewhere around 5 days based on previous PQ’s.
You can follow the race live at the Primal Quest website. Checkpoint Zero also is also providing PQ coverage.
If you’re curious about past PQ’s you can search this blog. I volunteered for both the 2003 and 2004 events. I didn’t care to travel to Utah to volunteer, but I would have liked to have volunteered for this years race if I had the vacation time.
If you’d like to take a look at the 2008 Ultra O-gaine course, download the map with this Google Earth file. Open the file in Google Earth and have fun exploring the course. You can even head on over to the Race HQ Chat Room and talk about the course with others!
I had problems loading the kmz file in Google Earth on my Mac (tested fine on Windows). If you’re a Mac user and got it to work, let me know the version you’re using in the comments.
Just a quick note about the Ultra O-gaine. If you are thinking about registering for the UOG, you should consider doing so shortly. Registration will remain open until May 5th, 2008. After May 5th, we will no longer accept registrations. We stop registration early so we can order the correct number of maps and allow proper time for printing and shipping. Don’t let your chance at participation in this fun navigation event pass you by!
See you in May!
Kevin and Patrick
