Hosting Aaron's Pro Cycling Team

My family and I had the great pleasure of hosting the Aaron's pro cycling team this weekend for the National Criterium Championships. This is the third year my family has done so and we really enjoy it. They are very enjoyable to be around, socializing with my whole family including my young son and daughter. A teammate of mine hosted a few of the riders from the team and they really enjoyed their family's dog. They share their stories and enjoy our stories, as well. It is a rewarding experience and one that we will continue year after year. Thanks Carmen, Brian, Kat, Meredith, and Erica for staying with us. Also, thanks to Rebecca, Carmen and Anna who stayed at my teammates house.

So, in summary, we had a blast this weekend!! So... how do you get started hosting a team? I am not sure the best way, but I can let you know how we did it. When Elk Grove was planning their first cycling event, I found out they were looking for host families. I talked to my wife about it and we decided to take a chance. We were given a choice on hosting 2 couples from different teams or to take 6 people from one team. We decided to take in 5 riders and 1 director. It ended up being only 5 because one of the team members stayed with a friend. It was a great decision we made. We had a wonderful time. We have continued every year since.

I know that Superweek was looking for host families this year. I would imagine there are still opportunities to host teams for Elk Grove and Downers Grove. I would suggest contacting Special Events Management and/or Elk Grove Village Hall regarding being a host family if you are interested. I have yet to hear of someone having a bad experience.

Please feel free to leave your host family experiences in the comments.

Thanks!!

Quite a few of my fellow cyclist friends have congratulaged me on my job with Giant. Thanks; it has meant a lot to me. Obviously, I am very happy about the opportunity, but others who know my love of cycling seemed more excited about my opportunity than I did and that is pretty hard to do.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who threw a "congrats" my way. I really appreciate it.

2 more things... Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about Giant bikes and No, I cannot get you deal on a Giant bike :-). I will appreciate you patronizing your local Giant Dealer, thought :-).

New Job

I am so happy... I got a new job. I now am the Chicago Account Executive for Giant Bicycles. This is a job I have wanted for a long time and I am so excited to join a great company. I will try not to make this blog an advertisement for Giant, but it will be hard especially given their 2009 road bikes. They are awesome.

I am currently at "The Link" which is Giant's bike dealer event. I have had the opportunity to ride a few of the new bikes and I was blown away. Every road bike wants stiffness, comfort (compliance), and light weight. Comfort was the most evident, but stiffness and weight were also obvious benefits. For those of you that know me, I can't climb worth a damn. I went up a 700 ft. climb with an average 8.5% grade and made it. It was still hard, especially being at altitude, but I don't think I would have been able to do it on my current bike.

Needless to say, I am very excited about Giant's products, people, and my new responsibilities.

Fantasy Cycling Team - I didn't win but...

I played the Tour de France Fantasy Cycling game on the Versus website sponsored by Kenda. I spent a pretty good amount of time selecting the right combination of riders in order to maximize my results while staying within their spending limit. In retrospect, I may have put too much focus on TT riders, but my overall results exceeded my expectations!!

From over 20,000 people who played, I finished 66. I didn't win anything, but I can at least say I beat all the Versus announcer guys. If you played the game, you can view the top 100 finishers of each stage as well as the top 100 for the tournament period (stage 5-21).

If they do it again, I will play again next year, but I think this year's result will be hard to top.

Landis Decision preannouncement

CAS has announced that they will release their decision regarding Floyd Landis on 6/30/2008 at 10am CDT. I am very interested to find out what their decision is and what they have to say about it.