A couple of quick mentions of some very important news happenings from today. Let's start locally first.

Car-Free Saturday's!!!
Mayor Bloomberg, together with a bunch of other figures including Lance Armstrong (currently last on the poll to the right), announced the creation of "Summer Streets", a car-free city route for health and recreation. Three Saturday's this August, the city will shut down one of the major north/south thoroughfares from the base of the Brooklyn Bridge to East 72nd Street. The route will be closed from 7am to 1pm so wake up early! This program is roughly modeled after similar ones in Bogotá, Colombia and Paris, France. Please read the Streetsblog article here as well as the official press release here. Can you say alternative to congestion pricing? I'd like to thank Elizabeth for reminding me to write about this today. Thanks!

Team Columbia!!!
Back to the world of the pro peloton, Team High Road announced that they had secured a main sponsor for the next 3 years and it's an American company! Columbia Sportswear have taken the gigantic leap into the sport, the same leap that USPS and Discovery did a few years ago as well as the same leap 7-11 and Motorola did even more years ago. For Bob Stapleton to be able to sign a big name American company is such a huge deal in light of the recent bad news in the sport related to doping. This certainly shows that faith has returned and we can begin to see much brighter pastures to come. The team will start sporting their new kits at the start of the Tour de France on July 5th! See the Velonews article here.