Senator Floyd Prozanski plans to propose expanding Oregon's bicycle helmet law.  Currently, the law requires helmet use for anyone under 16.  This expansion would make it apply to adults, too.

Full story at bikePortland.

I really hope this doesn't happen. Since I've already explained my position, I don't really need to do it again.  I think helmet laws are just going to discourage bicycle use. 

I feel we're approaching a defining moment, where gas prices will have a lot of people seriously considering alternative modes of transportation.  We need to encourage bicycle use, but I feel this expansion of the helmet law will discourage it. 

And please note, I'm pro-helmet use.  I always ride with one, and I scoff at those that don't.

Jacob Rathe made it in one piece to South Africa for Jr. Worlds.  Here's an update he sent our way:

After over 40 hours and 12 thousand miles of airport travel, we finally arrived in Cape Town, South Africa. A gourmet buffet breakfast gave us a warm welcome the next morning in our surprisingly upscale hotel. Food has never tasted so good after almost 2 days of airplane (barely) edibles.

The geography around here is amazing. On one side is the atlantic ocean, and on the other is the wall of cliffs that forms table mountain.This has to be the coolest place I've ever ridden, giant craggy mountains are everywhere with rolling green pastures in between.  See the attached pictures.

There are parts of cape town that are quite upscale, and there are parts that are...not so much. Driving on the left side of road can be confusing and at times hazardous.

I don't race until Sunday, but everybody else is doing the time trial tomorrow, along with the road race on sunday. We saw the time trial course today, but we havent seen the road course. The report is that it has a longe r hill with lesser gradients , but may still be a selective race. The time trial went pretty good for the other guys ( and gals). We got 3rd ( Taylor Phinney) and 11th(Nathan Brown) in the mens time trial and 11th( Jerika Hutchinson) and 20th(Sinead Miller) in the womens time trial. Last week Phinney won the mens pursuit on the track.

As they say here, Good Bye!

Send fast thoughts Jake's way on Sunday!

Oh and he mentions pictures, but his internet connection was so slow, he couldn't actually upload any.

Forget that Ricco crap, I just saw the final sprint in today's stage of le Tour de France.

Cavendish's sprint was nearly perfect.  Perfect timing, and the acceleration was amazing.  That's the good stuff.  That's how you win a sprint.  Awesome.

That Riccardo Ricco kid is a pretty screwed up young man. I'm not one to assume guilt...I even think Landis might have been clean.  But Ricco, no.  I wish him the best of luck in his new life, away from professional cycling.  Maybe throw in some therapy, too.

Remember this one from last year?

I reckon I'm not in very good shape right now, but so what.

It's been hot out here.  When the mercury reads 90 something and you want to go for a ride, what do you do?  I've kind of been cheating and riding my 'cross bike up to Forest Park.  I've got a nice little route all set up.  I go up Springville road, which is hot, but often shaded.  Then I ride over to Germantown, and hit the entrance to Forest Park, which is well shaded.  I ride up something, sometimes ride back down, and stay in the shade.  I like shade.

Lately, I've preferred to ride under a shady canopy of trees, over an inferno of hot reflecting asphalt.  I've really enjoyed getting out on the cyclocross bike, refreshing my memory of how to take a fast corner in loose gravel and accelerating through a silent cushion of pine needles.

There's a couple criteriums races coming up on my calendar that I'd really like to ride respectably.  If I even want a chance of that happening, I will have to shift gears back to roadieVille  pretty soon.  Maybe tomorrow.  Certainly Thursday.  Maybe. 

I've been following the Tour de France, and it's been kind of cool to watch.  Here's some thoughts on what's happened so far - 10 stages down, 11 to go.

Stage 1
I was kind of bummed that there was no prolog this year, because it's such an exciting event.  Instead, the first stage was a mass start road race, with Valverde taking the win with a very impressive uphill sprint, along with the yellow jersey.

Stage 4
The first time trial event, an individual race against the clock.  At only 30km, this was a short race, and promised to yield a surprise winner.  Stefan Schumacher took the stage victory, and moved into the yellow leader's jersey. 

Stage 5
Finally a mass sprint.  I love the mass sprints of the first week of the tour, but they haven't been happening here.  Cavendish takes the win.  He went early and didn't show a huge acceleration.  But he went early, and won.  Impressive.

Stage 6
First mountain summit finish, and punk-ass kid Riccardo Ricco takes the win.  He sure can climb. 

Schumacher climbed well to stay in yellow for another day, when he rubbed wheels with Kim Kirchen and went down, not 300 meters from the finish line.  To make things sting just a little more, Kirchen was the one who took the yellow jersey as a result. 

I enjoyed the irony of this cruel event, as Schumacher himself took out George Hincape last year in similar fashion, denying him the overall victory.  Karma?

Stage 9
The first real mountain stage, the tour ventured in to the Pyrenees mountains.  Ricco took another impressive stage win, taking off for the win while everyone else stared at each other. 

Kirchen is still in the yellow jersey, but he and his team (Columbia) have been working awfully hard. 

Valverde and his team (Caisse d'Epargne) are looking strong, but also seem to have been working really hard.

Race favorite Cadel Evans had a pretty hard crash, and had to race another 112km all bloody and beat up.  Ouch.

While Garmin-Chipotle team leader David Millar has already given up on his GC hopes, Vande Velde seems to be getting stronger and more confident.  However, he still seems to be regarded as a second tier rider amoung his competition. I just found an underdog to root for.

Stage 10
Another big day in the mountains.  Evans rode hard, even though he must have been hurting from yesterday's crash.  He even rode into the yellow jersey, held by only one second.  I've never seen someone so emotional from taking the yellow jersey. 

The course had two hard summits, and CSC rode an awesome race today.  Sastre didn't come up with the yellow jersey, but the it's not from a lack of well played tactics. 

First, they sent Cancellara off the front in a break.  He stayed away until the top of the first summit.  Meanwhile, my man Jens Voigt absolutely killed it on the entire climb, thinning out the main field along the way.  Valverde was dropped.  Cunego was dropped.  I think Kirchen was dropped here, too.  I was wondering why I didn't see Jens in the breakaways for the first week of the tour, but now I know why.  He was amazing.

Okay, so over the summit, Voight and Cancellara (now back with the main pack) kill it DOWN the hill and up to the foot of the next climb.  Anyone dropped on the climb (e.g. Valverde and Kirchen) is not going to catch up with these two guys driving the pace.  And nobody did.

Second summit begins, Sastre (CSC leader) is in good shape.  Lots of attacks take place on the climb, but nothing really sticks.  Both Schleck brothers (CSC) cause trouble to help Sastre.  Frank Schleck finally takes off with two guys from the Saunier Duval team, and he makes up gobs of time on GC.

In the end, Evans finishes one second ahead of Frank Schleck in GC.  Vande Velde again rides a good race, and stays in third place, 38 seconds back.  Valverde and Cunego are done. 

That leads us in to the first rest day, half way through the race.  With nobody clearly in charge of things, I've no idea who's going to win the overall.  I hope it's a good show.

I couldn't take it any more.  All those banner ads blinking in my face while I tried to read the actual site content just got on my nerves.  So I finally spent two minutes and did something about it. Adblock is just one of many useful add-ons you can get for the Firefox web browser.  Observe:

Before:

After:

I know those banner ads raise revenue for VeloNews, which is why I held off until July 2008 to do this.  But so help me, if I see one more picture of Lance Armstrong selling energy elixir...

Mette went camping with her friend Violet on Wednesday, and she's coming back today.  Julie and Patty have been sending me updates along the way.  My favorite one so far:

Mette's quote of the day:

These pancakes taste like popcorn, and I don't like popcorn.

Annelis is kind of enjoying her time alone with us.  We stayed up late last night dancing to Saturday Night Fever.

Every winter, as the cyclocross season ends, I come away with a few mental notes of what to do NEXT year.

One of those to-dos has been to start running before the cyclocross season gets going.  For some reason, I've always planned on starting on the 4th of July.  It's an easy date to remember, and it's about 3 months before cyclocross starts.  Every year, I've planned on doing this, and every year I've completely blown it off.  I believe the main reason for this is I hate running.

Well, for 2008, I actually did run on the 4th of July.  Just a quick jog, about 15-20 minutes.  It was not awesome.  At least I ran in the woods, where nobody would see me.  And I had my dog, who doesn't laugh at the way I move.

Since I kept records, I can say with confidence my 2008 inaugural run feels exactly the same as last year.  When will I run again?  Probably August.  Yeah, August looks good.

I still have plenty of energy drink left.  However, when it's gone, I think I'll try something new.

If we can home brew an effective chain lube, we can home brew a decent sport drink, too.

Seth Hosmer just posted his recipe.  Looks pretty good. 

Gewilli, a mad scientist, also posted a recipe of sorts, across two posts.  It's a little harder to read than Seth's.  Okay, a lot harder, but worth reading.  Read the comments, too. 

Another recipe I used for years - diluded apple juice. 

Actually, one time, I had my 12 year old nephew in the car with me, and he saw a water bottle full of this.  He asked what it was, to which I told him "diluded apple juice."  He drank the bottle and said "MMm, that's good.  Do they make diluded orange juice, too?"

Diluded apple juice then became the cool drink with the boys in his neighborhood for the rest of the summer.