By Robert Moskowitz
For an athlete who relies on the latest bicycle, training, and nutrition technology to post amazing feats like winning the Tour de France a record seven times in a row, Lance Armstrong is perhaps beginning to show his age — at least a little bit — by failing to make use of today’s modern technology to keep track of where his $10,000 bicycle has gone.
On Sunday morning, February 15, 2009, Lance confessed to his fans that his state-of-the-art, one-of-a-kind bicycle, optimized for his use in man-against-the-clock “time trials,” had been stolen (along with three other bicycles belonging to his Astana teammatates in this year’s 750-mile Amgen Tour of California) from an unmarked truck parked behind the team’s hotel in Sacramento, CA. If Lance and his teammates had fitted the bikes with real time GPS tracking technology from Rocky Mountain Tracking, he’d almost certainly have the bike safely recovered by now.
Rocky Mountain Tracking provides high quality GPS tracking systems for individuals and organizations from coast to coast and border to border. A variety of systems allow for accurate and real-time tracking of vehicles, equipment, and even people, either full-time or on-demand. Satisfied customers are using a real time GPS tracker to identify and log the whereabouts of family members, children on school or camp field trips, fleets of vehicles, and high-investment mobile equipment. State-of-the art NavIQ software allows items to be tracked on any Internet-capable computer device anywhere in the United States. And compared with the time and trouble involved in replacing a $10,000 custom-made bicycle, tracking devices are downright inexpensive, starting at just $199 with no monthly subscription or service fees, ever! So it would be a piece of cake for Lance and the entire Astana team to fit their expensive, irreplaceable racing bikes with devices that would thwart any attempt to make off with them.
In this particular case, Lance may get his bike back anyway, because the stealthy thieves were secretly recorded on several different security cameras focused on the back alley where the truck was parked. Police are said to have gleaned some viable clues from the tapes, and hopes are high that Lance will be back in the saddle of his special two-wheeled racer in time for his next Time Trial. But people who are unwilling to rely on luck to retrieve what’s been lost or stolen are increasingly turning to Rocky Mountain Tracking to shift the odds of a successful return much more heavily in their favor.
