Everyone's Got Their Own Bike Brand!

I rode down to Boulder on Sunday to watch my teammates doing the Stazio training race. The guys are looking strong for this early in the season. Unfortunately, Parker got crashed by another rider, and broke his fork in half. He jumped on Pete's bike and was back in the race the next lap, driving the pace and making it uncomfortable for everyone. That makes two crashes in as many weeks. Luckily, his body has got off relatively lightly, and hopefully he'll make a speedy recovery.
As for the weather, the sun was shining, the temperature was warm, and I had the ol' spy camera with me. One thing that's cool about these early season training races is that the big time pro guys will usually show up to test their legs before jetting off to big national and international races later in the season. I caught my first glimpse of the newly formed Toyota-United Pro Cycling team's kit, sported by CSU alum Chris Baldwin. I just read in Velonews that Toyota-United could not find a bike manufacturer that was willing to front the kind of money they were asking for, so the team went to Easton (a company who supplies frame tubing to bike manufacturers, amongst other things), and had them make a custom bike. Yes boys and girls, the only way to own a United bike, is to be part of the pro team. [Update: I just got my own copy of the Velonews Buyer's Guide. Apparently, I didn't get to the part of the article that says that Easton will be making 750 team replica bikes, and 250 Chris Wherry signature bikes. So you can get them, but they'll be pricey.]
Talking about making your own brand name, I snuck a shot of Olympic gold medalist Tyler Hamilton's bike while he was of all places, in the pisser! The bike was branded "Tyler Hamilton Foundation" (the charitable foundation he runs). I'm not sure who made the bike for him, or if it was an older bike he had repainted. I'm pretty sure it wasn't a BMC, and I don't think it was a Cervelo either. [Update: I got a tip from a friend that the Tyler Hamilton Foundation bikes are "Hamsten" made. Parlee made Tyler a 11.9 pound carbon bike--yes bike--for last year's Mount Washington Hill Climb, which I now believe is bike in my picture.] Until next time...