Chasing the Tour of California

I don't know where to start with writing some sort of recap of my weekend. I chased the Tour of California through the last three stages to the finish.

The time trial in Solvang was pretty cool as during TTs you get a chance to see every rider. Seeing Levi flash a 3 as a crossed the line made me think that maybe he as a personality after all and I decided I liked him a little bit. But, still not a fan. I was really hoping Tom Zirbels time would stand. What an awesome ride he threw down! And, the Captain America skin suit that DZ has is pretty rad! To top it off, but nothing but sheer lucky timing I was walking by the Columbia bus as George Hincapie and Mark Cavendish were coming back from the awards tent. I got both of their signatures on my cowbell and froze up like a little girl. I couldn't think of anything to say except, "Good luck in the classics." This would have been fine had Cavendish not been the one signing the cowbell. Luckily he just looked at my funny and gave me the bell back.

The following day I rode about 2.5 hours out on the course. Waited for the group at the first little bump in the road and then booked it back to my car to drive to Pasadena for the circuits. The timing worked out great and I got to see the lead break with Frank Schleck, George Hincapie, Christian Van de Velde and a bunch of others flying around the circuits. If you look at my pictures I don’t know if you can tell how steep the section of the circuit I was on, but it’s steep, and they were not soft pedaling! Best part, I got Steve Cozza, Rahsaan Bahati and Floyd Landis to sign the cowbell. Rahsaan wasn’t in the race, I just recognized him and he seemed pretty shocked that someone wanted his autograph at this race. But, he won the first pro race I ever watched so he’s always been one of my favorite sprinters after that!

The next day the race was going over Palomar Mtn which is an HC (HC = above category = hard) climb. I wanted to climb it so the plan was to park about 10 miles from the summit and ride up and wait. I realized as I was driving that I was going to get there way too early and end up on top of this 5,000 ft mountain waiting on the race for about an hour. This did not seem appealing because there is snow up there, which means it’s cold. I altered my plans a little bit and drove to the finish instead and started riding from there and it also meant I went over a cat 3 mountain on the way to Palomar, which was sort of cool too.

If you’ve ever seen a mountain stage of a big race on Television then you’ve seen how insanely close all the fans get to the riders as they come through. Totally by accident I got to experience this first hand. About 5k from the top of Palomar I blew and was left to do nothing but slog my way up the rest of it. As I was about 1k out the first set of police motorcycles passed me indicating the riders were on their way. As the motorcycles went through a big group one guy looked back, spotted me and screams, “FIRST GUY” as loudly as he could. Everybody on both sides of the road immediately collapsed into the road, screaming, shouting, ringing cow bells as if I was really the first guy. One kid even ran the rest of the way beside me screaming so loudly in my ear that it actually made me forget that my legs had exploded about 4k down the mountain. It was insane and an experience that I’m not likely to ever get again. I wish there had been some way to get it on video or have someone take a picture of me going through this crowd. I don’t know how fast I rode that last 500m or so but it had to have been about 3xs faster than I was going heading into the group. I can’t imagine what it must be like for the riders to have that kind of energy around them for the last 5 or 10k of a big climb. By the time the race came by and I was able to descend down the mountain I was able to make it back to the finish in time to see Frank Shleck win a 1 up sprint. But, I got an awesome 4 hours of riding in with an HC climb in the middle for good measure with my own personal crazed cheering section for the last bit of the climb.

After I got back to my car I changed on the street while people were staring at me like I was a crazy person. I guess the other people who come to the races aren’t used to changing in parking lots after races themselves. I headed down to the expo to see if I could find a Tour of California t-shirt on sale but they were all boring. Instead I talked the guy at the Rock Racing booth to sell me one of their trucker hats for $10. Then, I drove back to Oakland.

If you look at the numbers it is probably the most insane thing that anyone can ever do. I drove over 1,100 miles to go watch guys race bikes. And, it’s not like they were on a track in front of me where I got to see them multiple times. I’d drive for an hour to watch them go by in less than 10 seconds. On the finishing circuit in Pasadena I got to see them 4 times before I went down the finish line and watched it on a Jumbo-Tron because I couldn’t get close enough to the finish line. All in all this was probably one of the best weekends I’ve ever had.

For pictures go here: http://community.webshots.com/user/Ridearoundamerica
Although, I’m adding captions. That seems like too much work. I might do that to the albums I put on facebook.