Google just put my hometown, Topeka, Kansas, on the map. Their April Fool’s prank did at least – Google changing their name to Topeka for a day. Hopefully this bodes well for Topeka when Google makes their selection of cities for their high speed internet access.

It’s finally warm here in Kansas. Too warm it seems. It went from Winter straight to Summer. Yesterday I rode sleeveless. It was in the mid-80’s. And super windy. Same for today. But windier. That is the trademark of Kansas as far as I am concerned. The wind. That is one reason that wind farms in our state make so much sense. The continuous strong wind makes it ideal. It also makes you a strong bike rider just because it is nearly impossible to ride easy a lot of the time.

Last day of De Panne. The TT is going on right now. I assume David Millar will win the TT, thus the overall. Seems like this race was super hard. Cold, rainy and windy. Lots of guys quit. And the Garmin guys were all riding really well. We’ll see how it goes on Sunday for them.

I’m heading down to Dallas for a couple criteriums this weekend. It always seems strange that there aren’t more races over the Easter weekend. But, there aren’t any cyclocross races on Christmas either, so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. It is usually one of the first nice weekends of the year in a lot of places. Just seems like there would be more events.

I raced the Tuesday Night Criterium in Kansas City on Tuesday. That is already a happening. There were close to 70 guys there I’d guess. That might be an exaggeration, but not by much. I’m going to try to do that way more often this year. Riding the 70 miles there plus the 30 miles of the race makes for an easy way to get a pretty long day.

Alessandro Ballan warming up before the TT start today at DePanne.

Live shot from the DePanne TT today. BMC only had a couple riders left in the race, so it was an easier day for the staff.