(click on these, some images may not load)

sep 1999	jun 2000	sep 2000	jan 2001
the beginning...	more than a calendar?	nicole's tragedy.	blogging begins!

The site was launched on October 9, 1999 as a replacement to the very popular "Mid-Atlantic Cycling Pages" that George Theall had managed for a few years.  The initial site wasn't much to look at but it had been thrown together in two days so expectations were not high.  The site offered a race calendar, results, pictures, news and gossip.

Over the next two years, the site evolved from the local race calendar into a popular source of regional cycling information and race pictures.  Up-to-the-minute coverage and pictures from Philadelphia's US Pro Championships made velospeed.com an international web destination.  After the 2000 race, cycling fans from all over the world were suddenly hitting the site on a regular basis to find out about the racing scene in this part of the USA.

As popular as the site may have been in the cycling world, even more people (most of whom probably knew nothing about cycling) checked out velospeed.com for the "stupid page."  The stupid page started off with some goofy pictures and then became wildly popular when I posted a pic of my buddy in his "Free Mammogram" Halloween costume.  That single picture was emailed all over the country and drew thousands of visitors to the site.  Hopefully it introduced some to the east-coast cycling scene as well.

Unfortunately, all came to a grinding halt in July of 2001 when a cooling fan died on the velospeed.com server.  The hard drive overheated and melted into nothing more than a hunk of plastic.  Well, that's sorta' how the story goes... but how it died didn't really matter because we were screwed anyway.  There was no back-up copy of the site so everything was lost... until discovering the Internet Archive!

Anyway, it's back.  It's not the same 'ole site but it's better than nothing.  No more calendar or anything else unless it can be done with a WYSIWYG editor.  There will still be plenty of color commentary from the local racing scene, as many pics as the new host allows and maybe some real news every now and then too.

This new velospeed.com will evolve for sure but for now it remains both a frustrating HTML learning experience as well as an entertaining blend of local racing news and rumors.  If you don't like what you see, well, (hmm?)  sorry.  Remember, I don't make any money from the site and couldn't care less whether one person visits or a whole country stops in during lunch. 

Of course, if you do like what you see, let me know... it's always nice to get fan mail.