The LiveStrong Ride with Lance Armstrong was on Sunday morning out at the Nike Campus. It was my first big bike event as “authorized media” and I made the most of it by hanging out with Lance all day. OK, OK, I’m just kidding. Actually it was quite the opposite. We were officially warned to not get closer than 12 feet from him or we would be banned from future Lance events. I’m not kidding. The PR person actually read this to us in an “official memo”. Isn’t that weird? But I guess that’s what happens when you’re bigger than the Pope and Michael Jackson combined. So, I’m sorry I didn’t get to ask any of your great questions.
Anyways, on to the report…
It was still dark when I got to the Nike Campus and made my way to the media briefing. After hob-nobbing with real journalists (like from the AP and stuff!) over coffee and bear claws, the Man of the Day showed up for a little talk. I was pleasantly surprised to hear him go on and on about the Portland bike scene:
“We decided to come to Portland because this is one of the greatest cycling communities in the world…just this morning I read a story in the local paper that was all about bikes and I didn’t know whether to be excited or jealous, because we have nowhere near all that (bike stuff) going on in Austin.”
The best part is when he said our bikey-ness should be, “modeled around the country.” And it just might be because that quote got into the AP story on the ride that is already popping up all over the country.
After the briefing, we checked out the opening festivities. I ran into
