How to Follow Kent

In the late 1970s i followed the Tour de France -- and at that time following it meant getting a magazine in October with the results. I remember being excited in 1981 when we could get the results after only 7 weeks instead of 3 months. It's still amazing that i can now watch it live on my computer.

This is not 2005. When Kent rode the Divide in 2005 the only communications were pay phones. There aren't many payphones left but now there are all kinds of communication!

You can follow Kent's hourly progress, with the data sent back from his SPOT tracker plotted on a map at http://bit.ly/aCGzNO. Assuming the SPOT tracker works correctly (still an open question) we'll see him move down the route. It's turned off when he sleeps.

The official Tour Divide leader board is at http://tourdivide.org/leaderboard. It is powered primarily, but not exclusively, by the SPOT trackers.

The Tour officials also have a blog which will have updates on the race and all racers. http://tourdivide.org/blog2010

So far Kent has been Twittering quite frequently, and including photos. I suspect that will decrease to almost nothing during the actual race, but perhaps not. You can read his twitter updates at http://twitter.com/Kentsbike.

Kent is carrying a nifty little mobile email device called a Peek Pronto which works via cellular towers. The Peek website will report the last tower which saw Kent at http://my.peekmaps.com/kentspeek, although i've found that not to be working the last few days.

This blog, http://kentsbike.blogspot.com/ will of course have the most updated information, photos and location, including reporting any contact that Christine or i have with Kent from the road.

The race is run based on The Great Divide Mountain Bike Route maps published by the Adventure Cycling Association. If you have those maps or the GPS coordinates, you can follow along on the actual maps Kent is using.

I believe that the Tour Divide is going to have transcribed voice mail updates as in previous years as well, but i don't know yet. Stay tuned.

In short:

SPOT http://bit.ly/aCGzNO

or http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0E7YENXP93i38ggdEzWpdZaF3tStCe8MG which is the long version of the above address.

Twitter http://twitter.com/Kentsbike

leaderboard http://tourdivide.org/leaderboard

official blog http://tourdivide.org/blog2010

Kent's Bike Blog http://kentsbike.blogspot.com/

Peek location http://my.peekmaps.com/kentspeek

Keep riding!

Mark