Heinrich Haussler in the Tour of Switzerland, just before he entered a world of pain. Ouch. Hope he’s feeling better soon.

A 14 year old, Aaron Stannage, rode an eight mile wheelie. That’s just crazy talk. But it should get him into the Guinness Book of World Records. Probably the longest hour of his life, so far.

Good on ya, Aaron!

Someone had recently written me and asked why I didn’t publish all the results from Bromont. Uh, because that’s way more typing than I want to do? Because cutting and pasting off another site is not cool? Because you can find all that here, on the MountainBikeAction website.

Spoiler: Minaar and Jonnier took firsts.

Bromont World Cup women’s XC race.

Willow Koerber was absolutely killing it on the first lap, with the fastest time and a respectable 15 second lead, even after the climb.  And then it happened. A flat. Yeah, I’m pretty upset if I flat while riding my local trails, or heading up the road for some Mexican food after a lazy weekend ride. But this was a World Cup race. And she was leading! I’m sure she’s too polite to have dropped the f bomb, but I bet she was thinking it.

Anyway, she finished 7th (Lene Byberg took first) which is still quite commendable.  She’s got a couple of US Cup races before heading off to Australia. Let’s hope she gets some podium time.

Back in April, I posted about the 3-way battle between motorists, guided bike tours, and the owners of bike rental shops in Hawaii. Now their bike-related tourism takes another nasty hit.

The National Park Service has suspended commercial bicycle tours within Haleakala National Park after the third fatal bike accident there in a year. They get an average of about 90,000 tourists that pay between $100 and $150 for a ride to 10,000 foot summit, so they can coast down 38 miles of lazy, twisting two lane blacktop.

I can see the appeal here, but obviously, there are some safety issues to work out. Just going from around sea level to 10,000 feet and back is probably not ideal for a physically fit rider, let alone an infrequent cyclist on vacation. The math required to figure the grade on that elevation change over 38 miles escapes me, but it seems like the potential to go faster than skills allow is certainly present. The above linked article states that even an experienced guide lost control and crashed. Not a good sign for novices.

Bicycle tourism in Hawaii is sounding more and more like a hard business to be in. And customers getting killed is certainly not helping.