It was a long time in the making, but it’s here at last—and just in time to provide a little context for the kick-off to the 2010 Tour. While you wait for this year’s results to roll in, you can follow last year’s race from start to finish in dozens of full-color photos, brought together on twenty 8½- by 11-inch pages.

Maybe you raced in last year’s Tour. Or maybe you watched from the roadside and cheered your favorites on. Either way, Tour of the Battenkill 2009 will bring the memories flooding back. Here’s a sample:

Hint: You can enlarge the view by clicking on the Full Screen Mode icon in the menu next to the navigation bar at the bottom edge of the preview.

What’s it cost? $19.95 (plus shipping and tax). That’s less than a 24-pack of recovery gel. Order the Tour of the Battenkill 2009 Photo Book on our Lulu.com page To get there, just click through the cover image in the sidebar. Or you can click on this button, instead:

Then follow the instructions on the page.

This year’s Tour will be bigger than ever. It now spans two weekends. The pro-am race was run yesterday, Saturday, April 10th. Next Saturday, April 17th, will mark the first run for a new event, the Ride 2 Recovery CycleFest, a benefit ride for wounded war veterans. Then, on Sunday, April 18th, the Tour reaches its climax in the pro invitational. This is where pro teams like Trek-Livestrong go for the gold.

Now I don’t race, and I never have, but I’ve a got a personal connection with the Tour nonetheless. The gravel roads and steep hills around Cambridge, New York, are as familiar to me as the veins on the back of my hand. I grew up in the shadow of those self-same hills, and I cycled down those same roads to swim and fish in the fabled Battenkill. The Tour takes me back to the days of my youth.

I know what it’s like to spin almost effortlessly down the wide shoulder of New York’s Route 313 early in the day, when the sun is still hidden behind Goose Egg Ridge. And I remember the eerie rumble that followed me as I sped under the wooden beams of the covered bridge on Eagleville Road. I’ve struggled to stay upright on rain-slick cobbles and rim-deep mud on Rich and Robertson Roads in spring, and I’ve choked on dust when I passed a tractor on Mountain Road on a hot day in a dry summer. I know the mountain views, the white clapboard houses, and the picture-postcard farm fields. So—even though I don’t race—I’m riding along with every racer in the Tour.

Of course, you don’t have to have grown up in the shadow of Vermont’s Green Mountains to marvel at this challenging, beautiful country, and you don’t need to have ridden the roads in and around Cambridge, New York, to get excited about the Tour. Your personal connection can begin right here. Just bookmark this page and check back often in the days to follow. If you can’t make it to Cambridge for the Tour, we’ll do our best to bring the Tour to you. See you on the course!

 
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When this site was launched in May 2008, I planned it as a place to describe my explorations by bike, boat, and on foot, and to pass on what I know about those activities and other endeavors. It was logical to call my site Tamia Nelson’s Outside Up North, but the geographic focus didn’t stop readers from all over the world from becoming regular visitors. Then, within a few months, I was receiving a steady flow of mail from others who enthusiastically wrote of their own experiences and views, and they hailed from all over the United States and Canada, with a good many from Brazil, European nations, and Australia. Quite a few of these folks have generously shared their photos and stories, while a few have come aboard as regular contributors. It’s heartening and rewarding that people from all corners of the globe are engaged in similar pursuits and want to talk about them with others. That’s no surprise, really, since the Internet has opened up communications and made it possible for people to get to know one another however far apart they are. Moreover, no one group of people has a monopoly on the love of cycling, paddling, walking, photography, and art, and an appreciation of the outdoors transcends civil boundaries, age, and language.

So what’s the bottom line? Simple. For quite a while now, we’ve been boxing the compass and publishing views and ideas from everywhere. Now, to commemorate this, we’ve refreshed our site’s appearance and have adopted a new name, dropping the “Up North” in recognition of our expanded scope.

One thing has not changed, however, and that’s our outlook. We’re still dedicated to no-octane enjoyment of the outdoors, and through our writing, photographs, and artwork, we pass on what we’ve seen and learned. We love bicycles and cycling, whether we cycle for transportation or for recreation—or both. Some of us even enjoy watching the pros, because their grace and skill are inspiring, and their determination and feats are exciting. We love paddling our boats, too, on stillwaters and swift. We’re inveterate trekkers on foot in all seasons, exploring our backyards and further afield.

Our activities bring us closer to the beauties and wonder of the world around us, which we celebrate through our quiet, self-powered pursuits. These revive the soul, enrich the mind, and recharge the spiritual batteries, without leaving a heavy stamp in our wake. If you feel the same way, then you’re one of us, wherever you live. Welcome aboard Tamia Nelson’s Outside. Enjoy the journey as we move forward!

 
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Alright, so we’re already into the new year and everyone’s bought a calendar for the next 12 months, right? Well, not everyone has done so. After receiving some recent requests from visitors to Outside Up North, we’ve assembled a calendar of some of the favorite photos published on our website over the last year, as well as a few that have never been published. Want a preview? Here you go…

 
Click on the right arrow below the picture to advance through the calendar, and select the “Full Screen Mode” icon to see larger images. Note that our calendar is international, and shows the holidays of North American nations as well as many European and some South American countries. Keep track of birthdays and appointments in the large date blocks. Pull the pictures from the spiral binding and frame them. Brighten up your cubical at work with some beautiful scenes. The calendar is discounted, too, to account for its late introduction. So, you see? Procrastination sometimes does pay off!

 
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