On Bicycles, and.... what else is there?

Amsterdam is considered a cyclist paradise. It's well known that cycling is there the dominant form of local transportation. Yesterday I had a chat with a guy who'd spent the last five years there, just recently moving to San Francisco. The Dutch view on driving and parking is interesting. From 1992 to 2005 Amsterdam cut its ground-level car parking 3% per year to discourage driving. Taxes, according to Trey, are 150% the retail value of a car on purchase, or if you receive the car for work, 25% of the value of the car per year. Of course, taxes on fuel are well in excess of those in the United States, which are among the lowest in the world. These substantial taxes are invested in public transit, which is so good that there's little need for a car for city residents, in striking contrast to San Francisco where our bus system, inefficient and forced to compete for space on crowded streets with private automobiles, is virtually unusable for timely travel across the ci...

It's amazing to me all three of the Grand Tours within a 12-month window begin in Holland. I'd love to go to Holland, especially Amsterdam, and take in the refreshingly bike-friendly culture in which the need to slow down cars to protect public safety is well established (in stark contrast to the "drivers own the road" mentality in good-old-friendly U-S-A). But from a racing perspective, the convoluted roads and complex network of traffic circles make racing there quite a challenge. Challenge is good when it's a test of skill, but with the Russian Roulette of a peloton surviving an almost endless series of traffic circles in the final kilometers of a win-at-all-costs pro bike race, not so good unless you're into random blood-letting. So here's the profiles for the first three stages of the Giro d'Italia, from CyclingNews , each stating in Amsterdam: Heck, I can't ride from home to the local market (in San Francisco) without doing more climbing t...