Tour de Marianas

I’m sure the people of the CNMI are going to look back at history and realize that our leaders should have listened to Ambrose on many issues. Now I see MVA is talking about “building bicycle tourism,” which is something I’ve written about on several occasions dating back over a decade, but their present idea for bicycle tourism falls far short of the idea I promoted. I truly applaud the effort but it’s just another bike race with no international appeal and tourists are not coming just to ride a bike. I earlier wrote MVA about creating the “Tour de Marianas,” which would be a race starting in Guam to Rota, to Tinian and culminating on Saipan. The idea was for MVA to work with the Tour de France organization to promote the event and even make the race one of the “qualifying races to participate in the world-famous Tour de France, which would give the CNMI millions in free international advertisement and exposure all over the world. The CNMI can still promote bicycle tourism, especially along Beach Road once it’s fixed, and it would even be advantageous to have “bicycle-taxi rides on Beach Road,” as riding along the beach at sunset is a very marketable feature of our tourism industry that’s not being taken advantage of.

We just need to learn how to do the work and stop waiting and hoping on tourists and investors to just show up. Bicycle tourism is hoping they will come but the Tour de Marianas will grasp the interest of the cycling community and even make them come to the CNMI just to see the Marianas and/or cycle the course. We can only be as big and prosperous as we think.

Ambrose M. Bennett

Kagman III, Saipan

Letter