Welcome to the new upperMidwestCycling©. We listened and the result is our new home page. We now have our new address. After getting over 1,000 hits during the summer each day and around 250-300 during the off season it was felt that this was the best direction to go. We are now in our third year and still have a lot of growing to do.
Speaking of new directions there are more things that are going to happen in the future as we grow to serve not just the racing community but the cycling community in general, including recreational. There is a new photo gallery with pictures you contribute. We have the latest Rider of the Year information for our Minnesota friends. The Duluth Classic has become a regular part of this site and is linked to the Duluth Visitor's and Convention Bureau carrying equal weight with the Grandma's Marathon. We're proud of that.
We are now more of a "gateway" to other sites from clubs and different organizations. Our calendar is as comprehensive as we can make it with races from Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota. The events include USCF, NORBA, ABR and any other event relevant to cycling. Rather than spending time going from one web site to another, UMC allows you to get there quickly from our many links. If you don't see a club or event that is linked to our site, please let us know and we will make it happen if we can.
UMC is not responsible for the quality of any of our links however we encourage you to let us know if you have a problem with a link either in getting to where you want to get or with the actual link itself. We will look into it. If a site is no longer with us in cyberworld and you get the "404 Error", please let us know. We try to keep up to date but there are times when it is difficult at best. As of now we are not in the business of buying or selling bike related parts or putting up any thing related to that. We will not endorse a specific shop as there are many in the Twin Cities area that are good and a few that are great. It's up to you to find the "great" ones.
Now that the new PC is here we hope to take advantage of what it has to offer in its power as well as far more sophisticated applications. The webmaster is now a level 2 (out of 3) with Microsoft's SBN as well as using the full Office2000 Premium package featuring FrontPage2000 as well as using Adobe Photoshop 5.5, ImageReady 2.0 and a few other goodies. Some of the artistic work of the webmaster can be seen on a page or so in the Gallerys(c) using Photoshop and other graphic devices. While not all of the pictures are bicycle related it is a demonstration of what can be done digitally that was all but unthinkable not so long ago.
We are committed to remain neutral in any issues on this website irregardless of the personal preferences of the webmaster and those who view this website. There are far better places for that. We will, however, do our best to inform and report cycling events.
We add to our pallet Michelle Smith whose excellent photography is going be more evident as time goes on. Our goal is to become more photojournalistic so pictures are welcomed. We will review, select, crop and use as we see fit. Pictures must be related to activities within the Upper Midwest territory and with the sport.
We have dropped coverage of the National Sports Center velodrome as there are other sources that we have linked to that are now dedicated to that effort. Likewise, we are dropping the Minnesota Cycling page as much of what is on it has been covered elsewhere and does not reflect the direction we wish to pursue.
Best regards and to those who have looked, we deeply thank you for your patronage.
Larry
Web master
upperMidwest Cycling
© 1999