We left with plenty of time to walk to the race start and the "Lifestyle Festival" (aka booths of sponsors and anyone else who wanted to talk to people and/or sell stuff). Seeing as we won't get any riding in this week, we thought we'd walk up and down the hill to get there rather than taking the flat route ... so we ended up near Chinatown and decided to walk through. I was so excited about the upcoming race that I'd totally forgotten today is Chinese New Year (Gung Hei Fat Choy to anyone reading, btw, that's Happy New Year). So now we can say we've walked through SF Chinatown on Chinese New Year's - neat to see all the kids dressed up. It's actually Ed's "year", "Year of the Pig".
The first excitement on arriving at the start area was seeing an announcer tent - Ed said "well, they wouldn't have Phil and Paul here", but when I pointed out that it *was* actually them (plus Bob Roll) we joined the small crowd trying to take photos...
Then we saw the actual start area, a few people were already waiting in place to get a good spot even though there were 2 hours to go until the race. Various riders went by to warm up (Hincapie, Dave Z, multiple unidentified others). Then we saw Fast Freddie (Fred Rodriguez) getting his stuff out of a car - got an autograph and a photo with him. (it seemed most of the European teams had generic rental vehicles - vans, cars, RV's/buses - rather than their usual easily-recognizable-by-team -colours-and-logo vehicles, obviously cheaper than transporting them overseas). We walked further along the line of team vehicles, big crowd outside the Quick-Step RV waiting for world champ Bettini to make an appearance (we could see him just inside the door, when someone chanted "Paolo Paolo" he turned and waved, then sunk back further into his chair so we couldn't see him - but then he came out!) More good photo ops, Ed says that his new digital camera with a good zoom was worth it just at that point.
After reaching the end of the team vehicle area, while walking back to the "Festival" area again we saw some Predictor-Lotto riders amongst some generic vehicles. Then I saw Nick Gates (which I confirmed by the green/yellow stripes on his sleeves, former Aussie national champ) - Ed called "Gatesie", and Gates turned (almost in surprise, I'd say) but waved - another photo op (and Ed said that the camera definitely was worth it at that point).
Checked out the festival area, drank some free Herbalife energy drink to get one of their bags for the stuff we were already accumulating (Ed bought an official race cowbell, free newsprint program, official program, Health Net foam green finger), no Floyd at the Smith and Nephew booth, met Dave Shields at a bike shop's booth and bought his books plus some "Raisin Hell" bracelets (both of which I've been meaning to do, but the shipping cost to Canada was always a drawback, especially for a $3 bracelet).
Then we thought we'd better stake out a spot to watch the start of the race - the start times weren't online by the time we left, and they didn't have them officially posted anywhere (grrr!), so I had copied a few key times down from where the Rabobank team had posted their list (but couldn't stay long to get all the ones I wanted because I was kind of in the way). We had noted that some riders we wanted to see were starting towards the end of the first half hour, so thought we'd stay at the start at least that long.
Tried calling some DP Forums members to see if they were around to meet up - no answer or already on their way up to Coit Tower.
...to be continued...
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