Ear to the ground

“Help! I think I’m choking on my Jello shot.”

– A local rafter relating one of the potential side-effects of the Durango town run

Colorado to Champs-Élysées
Colorado has gotten a little taste of yellow in recent days. The 2011 Tour de France is under way, and the Centennial State is enjoying the limelight at the famed stage race.

A cyclist who got his start at Fort Lewis College and still calls Durango home is already riding a strong tour. Tom Danielson, 33, lined up at the Tour Prologue in Passage du Gois on July 2. Danielson then helped propel Garmin-Cervélo, a professional team based in Boulder, to its first stage win in the team trial on July 3.

The team time trial covered 23 relatively flat kilometers through the town of Les Essarts. Though few had Garmin-Cervélo picked for the win, the Boulder-based squad came out charging. With the help of workhorses like Danielson, Utah’s David Zabriskie and Christian Vande Velde, the Garmin squad averaged a speed of 58 kph and covered the distance in a blistering 24 minutes, 48 seconds, besting BMC Racing and Team Sky for the title.

The win also propelled teammate Thor Hushovd into the overall leader’s yellow jersey, an honor he still held at press time.
Garmin-Cervélo continued its winning ways in stage 3, a 123-mile flat route from Olonne-sur-Mer to Redon that was tailor-made for the sprinters. The argyle squad’s Tyler Farrar claimed his first stage win and he did it on Independence Day. The feat made Farrar, one of the world’s top sprinters, the first American to win a stage on July 4 and the first American to win any stage since ’07.

The victories have been welcome ones for Garmin-Cervélo, and Team Manager Jonathan Vaughters has been grinning since the Tour started rolling. However, there is concern that Vaughters may be most fatigued when the race returns to Paris on July 24. The self-confessed wino told the AP that the victory parties are already starting to wear him down. “My liver may not tolerate this Tour if it continues like this,” he said.  

‘Tour de Racks’
On the subject of Tours, Durangoans can tackle their own stage this Friday. The Tour de Racks, the first annual community celebration of Durango’s new downtown bicycle racks, takes off at 5 p.m. July 8.

Beginning at the City Transit Center, and led by Mayor Rinderle, the fun bicycle tour will visit each of the new bicycle racks for a ribbon cutting by the Durango Chamber of Commerce Diplomats. The Tour de Racks makes stops at Mountain Bike Specialists, Maria’s Bookshop and concludes with a celebration at Carver Brewing Co. Each of the locations now boasts a new rack providing free parking for dozens of bikes in the place of a single parking spot.

For more information visit www.getarounddurango.com.