Dave Fahrner - Santa Rosa, California

That sounds like a great idea, Dave. I highly recommend it.

Personally, I think that for the real Classics experience you should try and check out at least one of the three races of what I like to call The Classics Week. It all starts with the Ronde van Vlaanderen on April 4th - Easter Sunday. If you can only take in one event and are looking for the crazed Euro-fan, knock-down, drag-out bike race experience, this is the one to take in. The Ronde van Vlaanderen is admittedly not as much on the radar of American fans as Paris-Roubaix is, but most of us consider it to be the harder of the two. Also, without too much difficulty, you can check out at least a couple different sweet cobbled climbs without having to break too many laws. In fact, I have often talked about bringing a small group over for the Ronde and riding bikes from one cool viewing spot to the next.

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This year marks the 20 year anniversary of Greg LeMond’s 1989 amazing comeback Tour de France victory. His ADR team has long been disparaged for being too weak to help the 3-time champ. I respectfully beg to differ. The ADR team, while no great shakes in the mountains, could get the job done on the flat, rolling and windy roads.

Greg LeMond’s 1989 Tour de France squad has won the Tour of Flanders a bunch of times – before 1989 and after. Let me know how many times the 9 rider collective won the Ronde van Vlaanderen, who they were, and in what year they won their respective Rondes. The first person to “comment” the correct answer wins all 3 of the Competitive Cyclist 20-dollar gift cards that I harvested from Downieville.