I’ve been paying some attention to the news coverage of the Tour of California prologue that I volunteered for on Sunday, and I’ve wound up pretty disappointed. If the Merc is going to put Ann Killion in the main section, then they should ask her to give a wider coverage of the event and not just cover the sports aspects (or ask someone else to collaborate). And her article had such a heavy focus on doping that it didn’t even really cover the race at all. So we get a main section article that’s basically about the politics of the sport, and not about the event at all. The Palo Alto Daily News focused on the effect on local businesses, safety, and the cost of the event. The pre-event coverage in both papers, with the exception of one article about the bike parking published about a week before the event, was all about road closures and hassle, and none of the articles bothered to mention that there would be free guarded and valet bike parking for hundreds of bikes, so that you could forget the worries of driving and just show up on your bike. In a city and on a campus where parking is scarce most of the time, and for an event where bicycles and people on them are the main attraction, it’s mystifying that not only the parking, but that whole aspect of the event was practically ignored.

What I enjoyed most about the event and volunteering, since I don’t pay much attention to the racing, was that bikes were a big part of the scene. People rode slowly through the crowds, parked their bikes in the SVBC corrals, leaned their bikes against a tree, held them while they chatted with friends, compared them, looked at gear for them, admired them. I saw everything — folders, beaters, commuters, old-fashioned road bikes, AL-carbon and all-carbon racing bikes. Crazy tire colors, custom paint jobs, interesting handlebars. Bikes with baskets, panniers, and Burleys. Kids road and mountain and just regular kids bikes. People rode in lycra and in jeans, in sandals and in special bike shoes. Every bike was doing the right job for the person riding it. There was a pervasive joyous feeling that comes from getting a lot of people who love doing the same thing together to watch the people at the pinnacle of the shared activity. None of that really came through in the news coverage, especially not the news that hundreds of people rode their bikes to, through, and at the event, like it was just the most normal thing in the world.

Update: My SVBC mail alerted me to the fact that had I read the news on President’s Day, I would have seen a much more positive spin on the Tour, even mentioning our valet bike parking. Go, PADN, for an actual article about the actual event.