The round-trip commute from Rancho Cordova to downtown Sacramento is 40 miles, and for 25 years Jacques Graber has made the weekday journey by bicycle.
The concept is simple: With a few adjustments, a smaller-wheeled or full-sized bike becomes compact and more easily transportable – often in less than 30 seconds.
Professional bicycle racing's most prestigious event could be on the verge of implosion. But for the third straight year, the Tour of California will return next February and will feature many of the same riders and teams currently participating in the embattled Tour de France.
Like every veteran professional cyclist, Mike Sayers knows the sport’s pitfalls. He’s ridden while sick and pedaled for hours in nasty weather. He’s crested snow-covered peaks in rarefied air and he survived a crash in Belgium six years ago in which some onlookers thought he had perished.
Now age 48, the reigning national road and time trial champion, recently signed a one-year, 2007 contract to race international events with the Austrian-based Uniqa Team.
Jeannie Longo of France, one of the greatest athletes in history, was in her prime and American riders like Inga Thompson, Connie Paraskevin-Young, Karen Bliss, Ruthie Matthes, Rebecca Twigg and Julia Furtado rode impressively and unheralded in their respective specialties.