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Did you know you use your brain to ride a bike?

We drove all the way down to San Jose on Saturday to get a hit of big-screen cycling crack. And I mean big. We saw Wired to Win, a film about pro cycling, on the IMAX dome at The Tech Museum of Innovation.

Holy cannoli. What stunning photography. The film is projected 180 degrees onto the inside of the dome so it's like you're in the movie. I felt like I was riding shotgun in the camera helicopter as it swooped through the Pyrenees, following the Tour de France peloton as it wound through craggy mountain passes and those sunflower fields made famous by Graham Watson cycling calendars. I even felt a little seasick at times.

Cycling fanatics may recall that this film was originally supposed to be about Tyler Hamilton. But then Tyler had to go and test positive for blood doping. The filmmakers were stuck with all this very expensively procured footage of the 2004 Tour and a protagonist with a sullied reputation. So they turned lemons into lemonade and focused instead on Baden Cooke and Jimmy Caspar. (There was actually one shot of Tyler riding with a bandage over his collarbone, but they didn't identify him in the film.)

The film had a whole educational aspect about how the brain learns new things and deals with pain, synapses firing, amazing animation, yeah yeah yeah. But really it's about the mind-blowing scenery. And awesome footage of bike racing.

Dave uses his brain to admire a big light-up Earth at The Tech. I can hear the synapses firing! Oh wait, that's just my new cell phone vibrating.

May 10, 2006 7:10 PM