And So it Begins…

Two states down and one race viewed.  This last week marked my third year of viewing the Amgen Tour of California and while stage 1 turned out to be a complete bust, I had a great time making the glacially paced trek up to South Lake Tahoe from my parents’ house outside of Sacramento by way of Donner Summit.

Because the stage was originally postponed, I had plenty of time to relax once I finally arrived at MontBleu around 9:30 AM (I left at 4:30 AM).  The lobby was abuzz with riders and staff taking advantage of the extra time they’d been gifted by the snowstorm dumping inches upon inches of the white stuff on the race route.  I’d just traveled along said route and it was obvious during my drive that if the race were to continue under those conditions, then they were all nuts.

At around noon, I was given word that unofficially the race would begin at 1:15 PM and rider sign in would begin shortly.  I headed out to the start, bundled up in many layers of warm winter clothing that have never seen the month of May, and waited in the storm for the excitement to begin.

Jonathan Vaughters of Garmin-Cervélo with rider Linus Gerdemann of Leopard Trek and Brian Nygaard making a case for rider safety to Andrew Messick.

Of course, we all know how that worked out.  After all of the riders were signed in and a local high school choir sang the national anthem, the race was officially cancelled at 1:15 PM.  At least that gave me a good hour of photographing the guys!

Will Dugan of Team Type 1 was muy frio at the starting line.

Turns out that cancelling was a brilliant idea, as this is what highway 89 looked like when I made my way home.

Hwy 89 when I stopped to put the cables on my tires.

Tuesday was another run of the mill day here in town for when there is a major international bike race hitting the local avenues.  As history would lead us to believe, we were in for another rainy day.  Modesto has hosted the Tour of California four times now and each day was a rainy one.  While the roads were dry for the circuit finish, the storm slowed the arrival and made for my wait downtown a long one. 

Eventually the guys arrived, whizzed by at a high speed, and the stage ended.  I immediately headed over to the team bus parking to track down Burke Swindlehurst so I could finally say “Hi” after missing Merco this year.  It was nice actually tracking him down this time around.

I also ran into this guy... some dude named Thor Hushovd who measures his own saddle position.

When the day was done, I headed home to my dry apartment in the ghetto.

Next weekend I’ll be hitting Greenville for USPros and hope to get many great shots of the race, but it’ll be a while before I get a chance to share them.  I’m very much looking forward to my first real vacation since 2000 and meeting up with some new friends.

The rest of my photos can be seen here:  Stage 1 - Lake Tahoe; Stage 3 - Modesto