It's that time of year again . . . .

That's right, the beginning of the wacky season where companies start to roll out new product they've been developing in their super secret laboratories scattered through out the world to be used for that little edge over the competition.

Many of the things you will see will be available to buy at your shop by next spring, some even by this fall. Now and then, if the reported has a sharp eye and a quick trigger finger on the camera, we'll get to see those odd requests from a rider to help him one way or another.

Then there are those few ultra one-off test prototypes that are really pushing the edge of technology. That stuff which may take years for the technology to trickle down to the customer because of its' manufacturing complexity, or simply the retail cost is beyond anything we could remotely rationalize.

As I am a total bike tech geek, and I'm sure some of you here are too, I'm gonna try to toss links to all Tour Tech I can find on this post.

Please feel free to add to the list, or comment on any doodad, thingamabob, or gizmo you find interesting.

CN had put together a nice article on cycling terminology, all be it French skewed.

For many that frequent this site, but are not super hardcore regarding all things cycling, this article may be very valuable.

On a personal side note: Last year I was apart of a product development project code named 'Grimper' and during the project we all kept asking the Project Leader what the heck that actually was.

In fact, we were suffering from the classic bad American English translation of 'Grimpeur'.

No wonder the French hate us.

Haha!

Cn Link - http://www.cyclingnews.com/road/2008/tour08/?id=/features/2008/tour08_lexicon

For those of you who don't keep up on what happenens offroad, what occurred this week in the world of XC MTB has been an amazing display of consistency.

For all three mens races (JR, U23, & Elite), the Swiss team always had one spot on the podium and at least three riders in the top 10!

In the Elite men's race, they swept the podium entirely.

Below are the results pulled from CN -

1 Peter Sagan (Slovakia)                     1.35.21 (18.48km/h)
2 Arnaud Jouffroy (France)                      1.34
3 Matthias Rupp (Switzerland)                  2.51
4 Fabian Strecker (Germany)                    5.34
5 Mirco Widmer (Switzerland)                    5.42
6 Luca Braidot (Italy)                               5.43
7 Henk Jaap Moorlag (Netherlands)           6.07
8 Marcus Schulte-Luenzum (Germany)       6.15
9 Mattthias Stirnemann (Switzerland)         6.33
10 Marek Konwa (Poland)                         7.01

1 Nino Schurter (Switzerland)               1.44.34 (20.03 km/h)
2 Burry Stander (South Africa)                 0.41
3 Matthias Flückiger (Switzerland)           3.46
4 Fabian Giger (Switzerland)                   4.54
5 Stéphane Tempier (France)                  5.55
6 Dario Alejandro Gasco (Argentina)         8.26
7 Raphael Gagne (Canada)                     8.46
8 Frank Beemer (Netherlands)                 9.00
9 Pascal Meyer (Switzerland)                  9.22
10 Robert Gehbauer (Austria)                  9.50

1 Christoph Sauser (Switzerland)                1.58.26
2 Florian Vogel (Switzerland)                      2.55
3 Ralph Naef (Switzerland)                         4.20
4 Liam Killeen (Great Britain)                       4.43
5 Fredrik Kessiakoff (Sweden)                      4.48
6 Christoph Soukup (Austria)                       5.08
7 Roel Paulissen (Belgium)                          5.40
8 Inaki Lejarreta Errasti (Spain)                    6.04
9 Moritz Milatz (Germany)                            6.52
10 Oliver Beckingsale (Great Britain)             6.58