Morning Links: Tour de Tucson this weekend, yours truly gets right hooked, and bike theft by drone

It’s a light news day, so let’s get right to it. 

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Frequent contributor David Drexler sends a brief note asking for a mention of this weekend’s Tour de Tucson.

One of the best road bike rides/races in the USA that everyone can participate in, Tour de Tucson, is this Saturday.

Last minute registration is allowed on site on Friday I did that last year, can’t go this year.

I have raced it 4 times over the years.

100 miles, everyone get a timing chip and you can race/ride in your age class so it’s possible to come in 1st, 2nd or 3rd.

Tucson really turns out for it, broadcasting it, shutting down all roads, driveways, tons of police, raised over a million for charity.

At the front start are pros some from Olympics, Amgen, and the WorldTour.

Your name is published with finishing time.

Today is the last day for online registration for the Tour de Tucson. You can learn more about the race — a lot more — here.

Photo by Markus Spiske via Pexels.com.

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Ride long enough, and you develop a sixth sense for when you’re about to get right hooked, long before a belated turn signal.

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Local

CiclaValley looks at the before and after images of the tragic Woolsey fire, comparing the aftermath to the scenes from some of his previous rides.

What could be more LA than watching a bike rider get hit by a car in the background as TMZ interviews comedian Mike Ross as he steps out of a WeHo bar?

 

State

An Op-Ed in the Orange County Register says lawsuits against scooter makers threaten innovation.

The San Diego Bicycle Coalition invites you to join them for the opening of a new bike art exhibition this Thursday, as I Love To Ride My Bicycle opens at San Diego’s SDSU Downtown Gallery.

They’re onto us, comrades. A Palo Alto writer says a plan to add bus lanes and protected bike lanes on a major street is just a scheme to increase congestion.

 

National

Bicycling takes a photographic look at the “long and glorious” history of cycling.

A Seattle website says it’s time to take #MeToo to the streets because planners need to listen to women who walk and bike.

Houston residents argue that public safety isn’t a public health issue, even though public health experts disagree.

 

International

A local magazine offers ten reasons why an Ontario town is a car-first community.

A new report says ebikes could replace up to 813,000 trips in London every day, reducing CO2 emissions by 184 metric tons.

A British county is raising funds to buy five children’s ebikes in an effort to fight childhood obesity.

A Scottish bike advocacy group calls for dropping speeds on rural roads to 40 mph to improve safety for people on bicycles.

Life is cheap in Ireland, where a careless bus driver loses his license — and probably his job — for four years for killing a woman as she rode her bike, but won’t spend a day behind bars.

Another one to add to your bike bucket list, as a bicyclist photographs her way through Crete.

Founders of Moscow’s massively popular bike parades say the city’s Department of Transport is muscling in on them with a goal of taking them over and shutting them down; the three-times a year rides attract as many as 30,000 people each time.

An Aussie website recommends using an ebike to pull yourself out of a rut.

Kyoto, Japan is addressing climate change by setting itself on a path to become the Copenhagen of Asia.

 

Competitive Cycling

Transgender world masters track champ Rachel McKinnon is still facing a backlash — including death threats — a month after winning the title. I’ll leave it up to others to determine if being born male gives her an advantage or not — but she followed the rules, and beat cyclists who had previously beaten her. And no one deserves that crap, especially over a damn bike race.

 

Finally…

When your ride is interrupted by wild Alaskan cows. If you’re going to get drunk and trash a bar, try not to crash into a police car as you pedal away.

And now we have to worry about airborne bike thieves.

Or not.

Because that doesn’t look staged at all.

No, really.

2 comments

  1. Randy says:

    “Transgender”in the case of Rachael McKinnon is a man racing a woman. Biologically he/she will have a huge advantage from a performance standpoint, partly because of higher T levels and partly due to different muscle fiber types and other biological differences.

    That is why historically we have always had “men” and “women” competition separate from each other in every single sport. Transgenders, ie men who believe they are women and women who believe they are men should COMPETE AGAINST EACH OTHER. That is there should be a third category called “Transgenders” which makes it fair for them and fair for biologic men and biologic women who identify as such who wish to compete fairly against their own sex. To do otherwise as “Rachel” is doing is a fraud and gaming the system.

    Then you have the problem of Caster Semenya who we don’t know biologically what he/she is because her genetic sex tests have never been released, but meanwhile she is crushing the competition possibly because he/she has a very high T level relative to her female competitors giving him/her a huge advantage. Is she a hermaphrodite? Who knows but she certainly has enough manly qualities to suggest she has a much higher T level then her fellow female competitors, who are prohibited from taking supplemental T lest they have an unfair competitive advantage.

    The IAAF has now come out with rules that limit T levels in people such as this to increase fairness. You may or may not like that, but since T and its chemical cousins anabolic steroids improve performance and are banned for use by men and women both, it seems that is a reasonable approach to the problem.

    It’s supposedly all about creating a “level playing” field in competition which is very difficult to do worldwide and made even more difficult by men who call themselves women but do not remove their “junk” and do the full sex change operation. They are still biologically men either way as they have the XY chromosomes throughout their body.

  2. Ralph says:

    Crete is a wonderful place. Lived there for 2 years in the 70’s. The people are great especially outside the now build up tourist areas.

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