Blog: Line of Best Fit

Visit the Let Alberto Ride site: http://www.contadoraltour.com/

Tristan Brown at Team Timex was kind enough to send these photos back to Trek. The Timex team frames left the factory before I got a chance to snap some pictures! Thanks, Tristan! Orange! Very cool and very unique. I have no idea if this will be a paint scheme that Trek will offer to the public or if it will remain Team Timex issue only. Check out the new Trek font.

A huge congratulations goes out to Levi for winning the Tour of California. It was a well fought victory and he deserves it. Of course he could not have done it without his team but the amount of time and effort that he puts into his training really paid off. Here is a photo he sent to Trek after an epic ride; when you are this dedicated to riding your bike you too might be able to win the Tour of California. Photo by Janez Brajkovic

Click here to read about Levi's stage winning Equinox TTX 9.9 SSL.

Levi received a Madone with the Stars and Stripes theme just before the Tour of California. Unfortunately this paint scheme is not available to the public and will remain a special gift to the US National Champion. No one was weighing bikes at the ToCA but with the spec shown in this photo I expect it to was less than 15 lbs. Levi's grown fond of that Bontrager Inform saddle so he swapped the entire seat cap from his Astana team paint bike. The colors don't match but it performs just fine.

For the first time in its three year history, Trek Bicycle made an expo presence at the Tour of California. Teams riding Trek bikes have won stages and the overall at the ToCA in the past. This year we put in a big effort to be more in touch with the public by having a booth space. Set up and ready to go before the expo was officially open [...]

Levi is the National Champ. That means he gets to ride in a National Champion Jersey. Trek went the extra mile to make sure he matched head to toe. I can't wait to see this put together, for now you will have to enjoy it in it's pieces.

Have you ever wondered how many days it takes the mechanics to build up the race bikes? When the guys showed up at training camp on Monday and had to have everything ready for 30 riders to go on Thursday, I was a little nervous. After all there was only three guys to build 45 bikes. We are not talking bike shop pre-built bikes either, this was completely from scratch with parts in boxes. Well they pulled it off. In an assembly line kind of build, these guys were done Wednesday before 5pm. It [...]

I snapped some photos at the Astana team camp in Albuquerque. Some of these are truly behind the scenes shots so I'll try to point out the items of interest with a caption below each photo. That's Ben Coates, Trek's Liaison to the Astana team. Although he sees pretty bikes all the time, it's still cool to see them all in one place. A stack of [...]

Chris Horner gives the best interview in cycling. Read one of his interviews here: http://www.marinij.com/ci_8232 687?source=most_emailed

Chris tells all during his time at the Jacksonville, FL Trek Store . Read all about it here: http://athletemovie.com/blog/2 008/02/chris_lieto.html

A handful of guys from the Astana team stayed in the US to prepare for the up coming Tour of California. Their reward was a day in the San Diego Low Speed Wind Tunnel with none other than the aero guru himself Steve Hed. Unfortunately I was unable to attend this time but here are some pictures from a day well spent photos by David Wrolstad. Download wind_tunnel_testing.mov

The prep for training camp continues. Getting everything to camp was just he beginning. I met the Truck that was full of all of the equipment and clothing for training on Saturday. We immediately unloaded the semi into a mobile storage container. Moving boxes from one place to another is teidious work, we then had to move the boxes into the hotel so we could sort them. There are roughly 68 people working with the Astana Team, each person recieved 20 [...]

More on the P-One situation. Trek plans to turn on P-One with the new Madone in late summer. One of the driving factors in this delay is that we have chosen to fill standard Madone back orders before we started offering custom painted Madones. If we turn on P-One today, it will further delay the delivery of standard bikes that customers have already paid for. The good news is that Trek's production of Madone bikes has never been higher. We are shipping more product than ever before. The new Madone set [...]

Here are some weights for the Madone 6.9 bikes. http://mattmagee.blogspot.com/ 2008/01/11708-new-trek-madone- 69-now-here.html Matt Magee

The new Jason Reitman film, Juno , is the follow up to his 2005 feature film, Thank You For Smoking . Juno was written by Diablo Cody and stars Ellen Page ( Hard Candy ) and Michael Cera ( Superbad , Arrested Development ). Other cast members include: Jason Bateman, Jennifer Garner, and Rainn Wilson. The film is about an offbeat teenage girl that finds out that she's pregnant, and she decides to search out and find adoptive parents for her child. [...]

Nada Surf has announced that their new album Lucky will be released by Barsuk Records on February 5, 2008. This will be the follow-up to their critically acclaimed 2005 album, The Weight is a Gift . Several artists made guest appearances on the new album. They include: Death Cab For Cutie's Ben Gibbard, the Long Winters' John Roderick, Ed Harcourt, and guitarist Phil Wandscher. As a preview of the new album, the band has released the song "See These Bones" for us to enjoy. If the [...]

Nada Surf has announced that their new album Lucky will be released by Barsuk Records on February 5, 2008. This will be the follow-up to their critically acclaimed 2005 album, The Weight is a Gift . Several artists made guest appearances on the new album. They include: Death Cab For Cutie's Ben Gibbard, the Long Winters' John Roderick, Ed Harcourt, and guitarist Phil Wandscher. As a preview of the new album, the band has released the song "See These Bones" for us to enjoy. If the [...]

• Nada Surf - See These Bones » Nada Surf - See These Bones.mp3

Khaled Hosseini's bestselling novel, The Kite Runner , has been adapted for the big screen. The film, directed by Marc Forster ( Finding Neverland, Monster's Ball ), follows two unlikely childhood friends growing up in Afghanistan. One of the boys is the son of a wealthy businessman, and the other is the son of the businessman's servant. When war breaks out in Afghanistan, the life that they know is forever changed. The Kite Runner is a story of second chances and redemption. If you haven't read the book, I cannot [...]

This past weekend, I made my first trip to Athens, Georgia. I went to see my Ole Miss Rebels get hammered, 45-17, by the Georgia Bulldogs . While checking out Athens, I stumbled upon the restaurant Weaver D's Delicious Fine Foods. The motto of Weaver D's is "Automatic For The People", which was used by R.E.M. for the name of their album Automatic For The People . Being a huge R.E.M. fan and with Automatic For The People being my favorite R.E.M. album, it [...]