Happy New Year, Bicycle People

Happy New Year, bicycle people. 2008 has been the year of the bicycle for me. I have had the pleasure to meet a great many cyclists in New England this year and explore many wonderful roads on my bicycle. I love to hear your stories and cycling adventures and am starting this blog to share some of my own reflections. This summer was a great adventure for me as I took a self taught full immersion course in bicycle racing. For some time, I have wanted to start a blog to dialogue with other beginner racers about their thoughts and experience....but training and racing took precedence. Please feel free to send me any stories or bicycle related links that you have to cteijido "at" gmail and I will add them to this blog. If you are also a beginner racer, please send a link to your blog.

One topic that I would like to hear about is how you got into racing. My experience has been that this sport is not welcoming to beginners. It is expensive and requires a very large initial investment. It is also brutal. If you can't keep up, you are dropped off the back at the first hill and out riding by yourself. There are quite a few crashes in the races. If you crash, you can have a very serious injury, not to mention lose that beautiful bicycle. I'm interested to read some thoughtful essays about why exactly we are doing this.