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Monday, July 13, 2009

No Radios: Tour De France Turns to Twitter Type Text Messages

(Nose Hit News Service:) In a bold move, essentially thumbing thier collective noses at the Tour De France radio ban, tour teams will turn to Twitter style text messaging during Tuesday's 194.5km stage from Limoges to Issoudon and Friday's 200km-long ride from Vittel to Colmar. Many teams are running on-bike GPS already. In anticipation of the radio silent stages units have been equipped with SMS technology and features to send & receive text messages to and from the team car. The technology is in its beta form at the moment. Like Twitter, messages to riders will be limited to 140 characters. The example message pictured above is like a director sportif shouting "Get to the front you slacker. There's a headwind 2k ahead."

“It was tough deciding which language to go with,” according to a team mechanic, "but we all decided on English, the new language of the Tour De France," he quipped. Teams have received a crash course in deciphering text messages. For example instead of a team director shouting “Go go go, there’s been a split in the peloton and Contador’s been caught out, the gap is at 22 seconds,” GPS/text units will display “Go 2 frnt drilit conta d drpd gap 22.” Riders, in the past who’ve turned down the volume of their earpieces to quash the over excited directors screaming in their ears, are excited about the quieter more relaxed technology. The younger riders are super excited about the radio-silent stages. “I text on my bike all the time,” said one white jersey contender.

Here is how some common cycling phrases will appear on bike mounted GPS units and translate to tour text:

Attack now. The summit is in 5 kilometers.

Jens drop back to team car to pick up water bottles

Yellow jersey has been dropped go to front and increase speed to 65 kilometers per hour

Gap to breakaway is at 3 minutes and 31 seconds and increasing.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Fix It: Broken Cycling Jersey Zipper

Ka-bloop! Zip! Ka-bloop! Zip! So there I was at the table, my jersey zipper unable to cover up the spare tire. Ka-bloop! Maybe it was a sign. Maybe I’ve spent too much time reading the Fat Cyclist blog and not enough time riding. My jersey zipper broke during a post-ride lunch at Paxton’s revealing my untanned and untamed tiger trail exposed for all of Loveland to see. The little metal piece at the start of the zipper fell off somewhere. Great. I was THAT guy. Mom's covered their children's eyes. Eventually, I was able to zip it and roll the lower part of my jersey to keep El Gutto in check, for at least another 20 minutes. Then I got on my bike. Ka-bloop! Dammit. My riding buddies were quick to tell me that Widmers, the local dry cleaning chain, could fix it or I could send it back to Verge. At home, I had a stroke of genius.

In the laundry room were a few recent race bib numbers, still with their safety pins in them. The curve at the top of the pin that holds the pointy business-end caught my eye. It was the right length and, if cut in half, could simply be pinched on to my zipper to replace the little metal piece that fell off. Brilliant!

I broke out the wire clippers and snipped the curved piece in half. I slide the metal piece over the end of the zipper and crimped it with pliers. (photo shows an original jersey zipper on the left and my fix-it job on the right) Wah-freaking-lah! I zipped up. Zipped down. Zipped up. Zipped down. It worked to perfection. That's something to keep in mind in case of a race day blowout.