Prologue: I am just going to get right to the point here. If you are addicted to cycling and a healthy lifestyle, move to the San Francisco Bay Area! We have been blessed by God to have access to amazingly delicious and fresh foods grown locally at sustainable, and often organic, farms right here in Northern California. Not only that, but the area also offers incredibly beautiful landscapes to ride with a nine-to-ten month season that simply cannot be fully described by words or pictures.

In fact, I would like to think that if God were a cyclist and He needed to send Jesus down to earth again…He would send him to Marin County on a Cervelo that has “Live Velocurean” written on the down-tube. On that note, if cycling is your religion then the Bay Area is your Heaven on earth.

Not only in Marin are we blessed with spectacular rides such as “Point Reyes Station” but the East Bay also has loops like “Grizzly Peak and the Three Bears” and the Peninsula is home to ferocious challenges such as “Old la Honda to Tunitas Creek” (The Tunitas Creek 9-mile climb was featured in the 2009 Tour of California). These are just three of the hundreds of supreme rides that we can take for granted, but many will never experience and can only dream of. We also have massive 20-mile climbs such as Mt. Diablo and Mt. Hamilton, which was featured in the 2008 Tour of California. With rides like these, coupled with perfect weather and deliciously diverse fresh foods, it is no surprise or coincidence that so many professional cyclists and enthusiasts alike call the San Francisco Bay Area home. We were fortunate enough to run into one such professional last week at Point Reyes Station while we were on a photo shoot for our ride maps.

Like an angel on two wheels, signature long blond ponytail flapping in the jet stream, hands grasping the hoods of her team-issue Look bicycle, dressed in the baby blue kit of the women’s pro cycling Team TIBCO, was Alison Starnes blazing down the road toward Pt. Reyes. Featured in the photo above along with Paul Stephens (middle) and Steve Richardson (left) of the Evergreen Racing Group, Alison, who is just in her second year of professional bicycle racing, found herself finishing among the top ten in more than half of the races she competed in this year. Her passion, vision and commitment to the sport have obviously paid off and will certainly ensure her imminent rise to the top of the Women’s Pro ranks. My dream is to see Women’s Professional Cycling thrive at a level never seen to date and with so many like-minded individuals and top level teams (such as TIBCO, Vanderkitten, Team V.A.C., Dolce Vita and Velo Girls) headquartered right here in the Bay Area, I strongly believe that the dream will come true. I have been blessed to be living in what I consider “The Cycling Capital of The United States,” along with so many gifted and ambitious riders and racers who breathe life into my passion for the sport. But unlike any other sport, we often get to ride along side so many of our heroes and idols.

So at the end of the day, after putting in some hours in the saddle on majestic roads through some the worlds finest landscape and perfect weather, and after seeing countless amounts of others out there with you, when it is time to refuel and rebuild the machine that is your body. Knowing that you live in an area of abundant fresh, local, and organic produce growers and farmers, you can rest assured that your body will be rewarded appropriately for grinding through the suffering. When you sit back and reflect on the day’s adventure out on the open road and find yourself dabbing the corner of your mouth after a scrumptiously fresh meal, or the best cup of coffee you have ever had, or maybe the first sip of wine from one of the hundreds of Napa or Sonoma wineries… I guarantee you will smile, lean back, and have the realization time and time again of “this is why I live here.” Welcome to San Francisco! Welcome to the “Velocurean Lifestyle.” You are now living the dream; you are living Velocurean.

-Joshua Seaman