The World is coming! The World is coming!

Well, folks from other countries are coming to Louisville, at any rate, and there will probably be a few British among them!

For the first time in more than sixty years, the UCI Cyclocross World Championship races are being held outside Europe. Here in Louisville KY! At least a few hundred folks in Louisville are quite excited about this, and a few more are learning of the event and its significance (finally), now that the CeeJ published an article about it. Of course, an event this big comes with some challenges for the locals, along with folks who would use River Road by the event venue. With all the equipment, team trailers, vendor booths, and various other excitement, a section of River Road will be closed for several days.

Small and temporary inconvenience, although I recognize that some will be really put out by it. It won't be as bad as what my mother and stepfather had to deal with some years ago, when the bridge over Floyds Fork on Aiken Road was closed to traffic. They had to drive MILES out of their way to get to town, for well over a year.

There has been a lot of news coverage recently regarding some other famous bike racer, but I've largely ignored it. It seemed odd to customers during the early part of this century that I was working in a bike shop and was not just beside myself with excitement that a man who shares my surname was going so fast on his bicycles. I get that people are excited about the sport of bicycle racing. It has little to do with how I ride a bicycle, and less to do with how I ride as part of traffic. Indeed, people who like to think of themselves as racers are often cited by those who would ban cycling from the roads as a big part of the problem (I know--attitudes about entitlement of faster-moving vehicles are the bigger problem).

On a separate note, my page view count has topped 12,100. No idea what I'm saying that is so popular that people want to read it. I'm wondering whether people's blog list updates are counted as hits.