Everybody else is doing it, so I might as well also. I’m strictly a numbers guy, so by the numbers…

2008 Top Content

These pages had the most visitors in 2008.

5. Bicycles for heavy people.
4. Bicyclist taxonomy.
3. Bike commuter tax benefits.
2. I can ride my bike with no handlebars.
1. Kirsten Gum Not Nude.

Top search keywords.

Most visitors to Cyclelicious arrive via search engines. Here are the top search words they use.

5. kirsten gum pics
4. bicycle blog
3. bicycle sidecar
2. Chanel bicycle
1. Kirsten Gum

Top referrers

Besides search engines, I get most of my traffic from (in no particular order) Stumbleupon, Bicycle Design, Flickr, Reddit, Mahalo, RocBike and Ecovelo. Thanks for the link love, all!

Weird and wonderful

Interesting search keywords include “gansaari”, “hairy men”, “bicycle chocolate milk”, “big thighs”, “wind blowing skirts up”, “chupacabra”, “bicycles are of the devil”, “did jesus go to china”, “hair miniskirt”, “are womens bike skirts dorky”, “shimmery tights”.

While most Cyclelicious visitors surf the web from within the United States, my logs show visitors from 184 nations and territories including Antarctica(!), Iraq, Iran, Israel, Libya, China (PRC and ROC), Vietnam. The top cities were New York City, San Francisco, London, Seattle and Chicago. I registered zero visitors in 2008 from Cuba, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Somalia, North Korea, Greenland, a whole swath of central Africa, and Madagascar.

44% of you use Internet Explorer, 41% use Firefox, 11% use Safari, and the rest of you use Opera, Chrome, game systems and mobile devices. 77% browse from a Windows PC, 19% of you us a Mac, 3% browse the web from with Linux, and, in declining proportions, the rest use an iPhone or iPod, SunOS, a Wii, PSP, Palm, Symbian, FreeBSD, Android, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, HPUX, IRIX, and just plain ol’ UNIX. There’s also something I hadn’t heard of before called “Danger Hiptop,” which is apparently what Ahp00k works on.

Thanks so much for your continued support and promotion of Cyclelicious. 2009 marks the the fifth year of this cycling blog and I hope I don’t get too stale with age. I hope you also like the new writers I’ve added this year. I hope the rest of your weekend goes great!

Anybody who cycles (or drives) down Highway 1 in Monterey County, California has seen the California Giant Berry Farms billboards that prominently feature a cyclist from their California Giant amateur cycling team.

California Giant has sponsored a cycling team in Santa Cruz County for eight years now, and local cyclists appreciate the support of this corporate sponsor in many local cycling events.

The 2008 cycling season proved to be very successful for the California Giant Cycling Team with two national champions and over 70 podium appearances, and ultimately named by Velo News as the top amateur team in the U.S. The success resulted in three key team members moving up to professional teams in 2009. Andy Jacques-Maynes to Bissell Pro Cycling, Ken Hanson to Team Type 1, and Max Jenkins moved to the Danish team Glud & Marstrand Horsens.

For the 2009 season, Jared Barrilleaux from Jittery Joes, Justin England from Toyota-United joined the team, with Adam Switters from Rock Racing joining California Giant’s new Under-23 development squad.

California Giant Cycling Team 2009 roster

Jared Barrilleaux- Santa Rosa, CA
Patrick Briggs- Oakland, CA
Dirk Copeland- Oakland, CA
Tyler Dibble- Oakland, CA
Justin England- Boulder, CO
John Hunt- Fairfax, CA
Chris Lieto- Danville, CA
James Mattis- Mountain View, CA
Keith Miller- Los Gatos, CA
Jesse Moore- Sacramento, CA
Ozzie Olmos- San Luis Obispo, CA
Steve Reaney- San Jose, CA
Mark Santurbane- San Luis Obispo, CA
Adam Switters*- Davis, CA
Mike Telega- Dana Point, CA

U-23 Development Squad

Nick Agate* -Berkeley, CA
Julian Martinez*- Santa Cruz, CA
Chance Noble*- Camarillo, CA
Reid Pletcher*- Sun Valley, ID

Read the California Giant Cycling blog for news on the team.

Update: @jdoggny in New York gets this tire.

I own one Nashbar 26″ studded tire. As you can see in the photo, the tire is well used and missing a handful of studs, but it still does a fine job gripping the ice and keeping you upright on your bicycle. There’s not much of a market in Santa Cruz for studded tires, so this bicycle tire is my giveaway for the day.

To win: Be the first person to click this link with the text “Bike Tire Contest http://www.cyclelicio.us/ #studdedbiketire” to Twitter. For fairness, please only enter if you actually have a need for this tire (i.e. you live in an area that gets icy).

Good luck! This entry is posted Friday morning at 9 AM U.S. Pacific Time. See contest rules for limitations.

Cycling fans commonly wonder how much pro cyclists make. Men can make enough to live on and almost support a family, especially if they rise above the Continental ranks, but women make beans or less and must somehow fit full time jobs in their training and competing schedule. I have known women and men at the lower ranks who sign on to a team just for the bike and team kit. I know of a cyclist for the Jelly Belly team who’s bumming free rooms for the Tour of California.

Velonews’ “Explainer” looks at the legality of paying somebody basically less than minimum wage.

I have a box of bike stuff to clear out that I want to give away beginning tomorrow. Look for a Nasbhar 26″ studded bike tire (well used but still very functional); a SafeTurn wrist turn signal; some cycling books; and a handful of other handy gadgets and things.

How to win.

1. You have to live in the USA or Canada. Sorry to those elsewhere.

2. You must have an account on Twitter.com.

3. Watch for the giveaway posts over this next week. The first to post a link to Twitter.com with the correct “hashtag” wins the prize. If you don’t have an account on Twitter, you’ll want to set one up now and, optionally, follow me. To make things easy for everybody, each giveaway post will include a link with the correct text to post to Twitter. The link will look something like this.

4. Once I select you as the winner, I need to be able to contact you and you need to respond to me with your shipping information. I will not sell or give your personal information away, and you won’t be added to any mailing lists.

5. If there are technical problems prohibiting you from posting to Twitter, or keeping me from correctly finding your Tweets, I may or may not invalidate the giveaway and start over, depending on how bad the technical problems are (and Twitter sometimes fails pretty spectacularly).