Tour of California February 2009 - better late than never!

Back in February 2007, this race was the first bike race we'd ever been to, and it made us even more excited about our then-upcoming trip to the Tour de France in July 2007. This year, while we planned a vacation to the Bay Area during the week of the race, the race was not at all our main focus - I'm expecting a baby in May, so this was pretty much our last chance for a vacation before our lives change drastically, and being six months' pregnant doesn't really allow for a lot of race-chasing and autograph-seeking, etc. We had a few ideas about possible race-watching opportunities depending on how the rest of our schedule turned out, but it seemed as though the race start in San Jose for stage 3 would be our best bet (seeing as we already had tickets for the Edmonton Oilers versus San Jose Sharks hockey game that night in San Jose).

As it turned out, the weather over the first part of the week was not great, to say the least. The thought of standing around waiting for a stage start in cold rainy weather wasn't particularly appealing, particularly since we knew that the riders weren't exactly going to be waiting around outside mingling with fans prior to the race if the weather was awful. And we would have had to get up and leave rather early (for a vacation) for the 1-hour drive from my brother's place in the East Bay area to San Jose. But then, looking more closely at the race profile, we realized that one of the sprint points was outside of Livermore, a lot closer than San Jose so we'd have more time to get there. So, that became our goal.

The race log/schedule suggested the racers would get to the sprint point by about 1:30 pm or later. We got to Livermore and had a bit of difficulty trying to find where exactly the sprint point was - we did find the race route, but no indication where the sprint would be (or else we were already past it at that point). It was almost 12:30 pm, so we went for lunch first then came back towards the route - the roads had already been blocked off, so we ended up at a corner past the sprint point (with a convenient parking lot for a park and school nearby). There were some people starting to gather, and best yet, it had stopped raining! Before any of the race came through, it appeared as if many of the classes at the nearby school came out to watch as well.

Pretty soon, a Livestrong van pulled up and they started handing out yellow Livestrong chalk and Lance posters. Ed got busy writing on the road with the chalk, not an approved Livestrong message but appreciated by PdC'ers...

And underneath, one for the DPF'ers out there:

I was monitoring the race progress on my Blackberry via the CN ticker; overall race leader Levi Leipheimer had apparently crashed before the sprint and we weren't sure if he would have caught up by the time he got to us. There was a breakaway of 4 riders, and before they arrived there were several rounds of CHP and other police and official vehicles. It was useful that they had one race vehicle giving some updates over a loudspeaker to the crowd. And then the break was there: Bauke Mollema (Rabobank), Brad White (OUCH-Maxxis), Jeff Louder (BMC Racing) and Brian Vandborg (Liquigas).

A few minutes later, the peloton came through (Levi had apparently caught up by then but we couldn't really see him) - Ed put his camera on auto-repeat shooting, which means then later you get to try to figure out who exactly you have photos of. You can't really see any of the race numbers because of the angle and all the rain jackets, so resorting to face recognition (and other characteristics such as Lance rides a different coloured bike than the rest of his team):

Chris Horner 3rd from left at the front, in black, with Lance Armstrong (yellow and black helmet) just behind:

Lance Armstrong at the far left (and Mark Cavendish further back, 2nd from the right):

Mark Cavendish on the left not looking too happy(#22), and I think George Hincapie 3rd from the left:

Peloton rounding the corner:

And then it was all over. In case there was any doubt that the publicity for the race was entirely based on Lance Armstrong, here's a photo of one of the banners in downtown San Jose that we saw later that day, as well as one of the billboard on top of Niketown on Union Square in San Francisco.


(at some point, Ed will probably get around to posting all of our vacation pics at the usual smugmug location...)

Bike boxes did arrive

Yes, the bike cases did arrive on Monday, 2 days after we arrived back to Edmonton. So much for "they'll call you before they deliver them" though - Ed found out they'd been delivered via the tracking system on the FedEx website. So he went home at lunch to rescue the wine inside (can't take it as a carry-on anymore) as it was -20 C or so - that and to make sure no one could steal them, though in our sleepy neighbourhood on a weekday likely no one would notice 2 big boxes on our front verandah.

A little bit worse for wear (they didn't look that beaten-up when we saw the boxes in Calgary at customs)...

Home, almost in one piece...

We arrived home last night, too bad that the bike cases we bought didn't :-(. We were told that the Dash-8 we were on from Calgary was too full and they tend not to have enough space for oversized luggage when they're full (there seemed to be a number of others in the baggage office from the same flight looking for their luggage). The baggage agent told us that it would probably arrive on another flight from Calgary later that night and would be delivered to us this morning.

So, morning came and went, nothing. And we were a bit concerned that their "baggage tracker" feature had no information (as if they didn't know where the cases were - *we* knew they were in Calgary, why didn't Air Canada know that?). So Ed called their toll-free number this afternoon - again, they had no information (though they were likely in Toronto, we couldn't find a local number to call). But I felt much better later just now when according to the baggage tracker, the cases have been received at the airport and have been turned over to FedEx for delivery.

(though, considering they'll probably try to deliver tomorrow when we're at work and then we'll have to pick it up somewhere else anyway, it might have been easier to just pick the cases up at the airport - but that didn't seem to be an available option).

I'm just glad that we'll be on a direct flight, big plane, from Edmonton to London in July, so less opportunity for something like this to happen to our bikes then. If on the way home (Paris to Toronto to Edmonton) the bikes get delayed in Toronto a few days, oh well...

And just for good measure, here's a photo of Mario Aerts in the prologue as he was trying to fix his chain (he didn't get a team car following him to help), as mentioned here:

Nick Gates Fan Club

The Gates fan club is an ongoing thread on the Daily Peloton forums, we posted some more of our photos there.

Stage 4 – Seaside to San Luis Obispo (Feb 22)

Our original plan was that we’d go to the start of the stage in Seaside, so we had figured that to see the finish also would mean that we’d have to take the un-scenic freeway inland to SLO - since it would be already dark so we wouldn’t be able to take the scenic coastal highway 1 back afterwards, so it didn’t seem very practical. Then, we realized that as we’d *already* seen a start (in Sausalito), we could just skip this start entirely, and take the scenic highway to SLO - but we’d have to leave early and make sure we stayed well ahead of the race. That turned out to be one of the best decisions of our trip.

We heard afterwards, in SLO from a volunteer who’d been at Seaside and decided to drive down for the finish, that really nothing much happened in Seaside because of the rain – all the riders stayed inside the team vehicles until absolutely necessary, so there was none of the access to riders we had seen in Sausalito or San Francisco. And it was raining pretty hard then, so it wouldn’t have been pleasant to stand outside for any length of time.

Instead, we left Monterey at about 9 am (an hour ahead of the race). I was thinking that we might not actually see any of the scenic coastal views because of the rain and fog/mist, but it actually cleared up for the most part relatively quickly.

At the first few scenic viewpoints towards Big Sur and some of the bridges, we realized one of the benefits of our plan – we’d get to see some of what happens ahead of the race. All part of the overall experience, adding to the “atmosphere” of what was going on, and stuff we would have missed simply driving the express route to SLO. What we first noticed was all the photographers already staking out the prime spots for their “peloton along the coast” or “peloton going across the bridge” shots. There was even a local TV reporter interviewing one of them.

Then we started seeing some of the road signs, “25 km” or “5 km to 1st KOM”, “1 km to KOM”, “200 m to Sprint”, so that was interesting too – gave me a better appreciation of the overall race course for this stage. We also saw quite a number of cyclists, some in groups, riding the course ahead of the race as well (didn’t see Saul Raisin though I was watching out to see if he was there). As some went by at one point while we were stopped for a break, I overheard one calling to another “remember how last year this section was like doing cyclocross?” – when we started driving again, I realized what they meant as there was major construction going on, the road was really rough and down to one lane. There were also a lot of wet leaves on the road so I figured the descents could be quite treacherous.

And the scenery was spectacular. We stopped a few times to take pictures, including one stop for a rock formation just past a lighthouse – then realized that we had stopped where all the elephant seals were. So we spent some time there looking around and taking photos, ate our picnic lunch there as well.

We arrived in SLO at about 1:30 pm, almost 2 hours before the earliest predicted arrival time – enough time to check out the “Lifestyle Festival” again (and say hi to Dave Shields again) before staking out a vantage point at the 50 m to go banner. We thought about watching from the corner further back because of the crash possibility there if it was wet – in the end it had dried out and our chosen spot was great.

The riders certainly do come by quite fast in a sprint finish – all I could tell was that Ciolek (T-Mobile) seemed to be ahead and that Bettini was in there as well (Bettini won at the line). Looking back, my photo also had Brown, Hushovd, and a bit of Haedo in there as well. And then we cheered for all the other riders coming in later … too bad the guy beside me threw his hands in the air to cheer as Cancellara came by (and ruined my photo), by the time my camera could get another shot all that was left was his back half again (just like in the prologue).

We thought we were in a good spot to be able to get over to see the podium presentation, but couldn’t really move from where we were easily and then they opened up the course so all these people initially further away than we were could get right up to the presentation area – oh well. Ed’s camera has a good zoom so he got some good photos – mine had too many other cameras and hands and heads in the way.

Then, as everyone pretty much left, we looked around some more to see where the team vehicles would have been … ran into Bob Roll (TV commentator for Versus/OLN and former pro cyclist), then realized who the last few team cars were waiting for when we saw the Credit Agricole KOM jersey leader make a quick getaway – the Discovery car (driven by Ekimov) was likely waiting for Leipheimer as overall race leader and the Quick-Step car was likely waiting for Bettini as the stage winner (as they’d have to go to doping control plus do a press conference before leaving). And we were right – more photos and autographs.

We had a tasty dinner in SLO before driving back to Monterey (the inland route – would *not* want to drive the coastal route in the dark) – overall a really fun day. We’re thinking that next time we’ll have to plan to see more stages …

Response to "patrickbpenguin fan" part 2

Bobke, then stage winner Bettini ...

Stage 4 finish - San Luis Obispo

Drove along the scenic highway 1 through Big Sur, ahead of the race (by about 1-2 hours), to catch the finish in SLO today. Interesting to see the markers for distance (eg. 25 km to go), plus the sprint and KOM markers ... plus all the photographers staking out vantage points at all the most scenic areas (pics will follow later, takes too long to upload everything via wireless).

Exciting sprint finish, all I could tell as they went by was that Ciolek was in the lead and Bettini was close. And afterwards, we were looking around to see where the team cars were and figuring everyone had left - then noted a Discovery car and a Quick Step car so we hung around and managed to catch Leipheimer (race leader) and Bettini (stage winner) after doping control and press conferences...

Response to "patrickbpenguin fan"

Where's Ed, you ask? He said initially he didn't want his picture public - but then due to fan adulation such as yours, he changed his mind. So here he is, with Gasparotto (we think, or at least Chris thinks) and the great Gatesie:

Random thoughts from Stage 1

I never really posted much yet about our Stage 1 experience in Sausalito, other than photos, as there's really been no time ... a few thoughts for the time being:
- amazing the amount of access the fans have to the pro riders, not like any other sport I can think of (though I'm sure it won't be like that at the Tour de France in July).
- amazing bike-handling skills the pros have, weaving through the crowds of fans in the teams area to get to the start and avoiding hitting each other or any fans.
- interesting the contrast between the teams, Discovery was nowhere to be found that we saw (we actually saw their team bus heading off in a different direction, maybe there was no room left in the main area or maybe they wanted more privacy), big crowds for certain teams (CSC) or riders (Bettini), not so big crowds for some (Predictor-Lotto riders were hanging out between 2-3 cars), and no crowds for others (Jelly Belly and several other Continental teams were all sitting in chairs lounging around in front of their team vehicles with no interruptions - got a good pic but haven't had a chance to upload yet). Oh, and we saw a few of the Priority-Health riders going for coffee across the street around 9:45 am - I imagine that the ProTour riders have someone to go for them or a coffee maker on their team bus...
- the Predictor-Lotto guys were going through their food bags, paper bags labeled "Davitamon-Lotto" so it would appear the team is thrifty enough to go through old supplies first ;-) .
- we saw Bettini being interviewed by a Velonews reporter, haven't checked their website yet to see if the interview is posted.

Not being at the finish in Santa Rosa, we missed the big crash - I was quite concerned that we'd jinxed Nick Gates as apparently he was the most seriously injured, initially a suspected broken hip but apparently only bruised in the end and he's still in the race. But he made the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle sports page.


Now to bed early, going to try to drive the scenic highway through Big Sur to San Luis Obispo to see the finish of Stage 4 tomorrow - have to get on the highway before all the riders come through, or else take the less-exciting freeway inland, so we'll miss the start in Seaside (we figure we've already seen a start now).

Free stuff ...

(other than the wine tastings thanks to my brother working for the company that owns the vineyard we visited today) ...

standing on the main street in Sausalito after the peloton had just left, a guy comes up to me and asks "so, you must be a big Lotto team fan I suppose?" (I was wearing a Davitamon-Lotto jersey). After I replied yes, he said that they were sponsors of the Lotto team and he was looking for someone to give one of their hats to - so I got a Pedro's 2007 Tour of California hat (had to look them up online, they're the official "bicycle care products" sponsor for the team).

Today's pics

...watched the start, then went for wine tasting in Napa Valley with Dan and Megan.

Time for pics

Levi yesterday (50-60 m from the finish line)

The Winner Yesterday

Levi Leipheimer, when interviewed at the end of the race, said that he was going so hard he thought he'd throw up - but also that he wished it was longer because the crowds were great and then he could put even more time into the others (IIRC).

(was going to put up a pic of Levi here, but the connection keeps stalling when trying to upload so it will have to wait until later).

During the Prologue

Estimated that we walked at least 10 km today overall, as not only did we walk 2 km or so from our hotel to the race start and back again, but we walked from the start to the end of the prologue course (3 km) in time to see the last few riders finish, then back to the start again. Interestingly enough, both times I've been to Coit Tower I've walked there and up Telegraph Hill ... but it seemed a lot easier today than it did 10 years ago, I guess I wasn't in great shape during my medical residency then (no time to exercise then).

As mentioned in "Before the Prologue", we noticed that some riders we were interested in were starting in the first half-hour, so figured we'd stay at the start for at least that long to watch. These included Ivan Basso at 13:26, Jens Voigt at 13:28, Henk Vogels at 13:29, and Nick Gates at 13:30.

I was thinking that it must be quite stressful to be the first rider up, as he had to stand there for a lot of talk plus a ribbon-cutting ... but I suppose they get used to it. The 2nd rider was Ben Jacques-Maynes, who ended up 3rd for the day; and the 7th rider up was Jason Donald, who ended up 2nd for the day - led the race right until the very end. Interesting that the commentators (not Phil, Paul and Bob for the public announcements) pointed out that a year ago Donald was driving a garbage truck for a living.

Surprised to see Allan Davis riding for Discovery (he wasn't on the start list of a few days ago, and I didn't know that he'd been "officially" signed by Discovery - must have finally sorted out the whole Astana/Saiz contract mess I suppose). The 2nd Discovery rider was Ivan Basso, winner of the Giro d'Italia last year but first race back after missing the Tour de France due to the Operation Puerto doping scandal (nothing yet has been proved against Basso so he's cleared to ride for the time being). Once Basso reached the end the announcer pointed out that Jason Donald must be excited to be ahead of Basso at such a race - little did the announcer realize then that Donald would be ahead of almost everyone! (and we didn't realize either until we got back to our hotel how anyone was doing overall).

The announcer made a big deal about Jens Voigt being "well-liked" and "the most aggressive rider I've ever seen" and "riding for the team". Then came Henk Vogels (last year on "my team", Davitamon-Lotto now Predictor-Lotto) and next his former team-mate Nick Gates.

After that, we started walking along the course, and the crowds thinned out considerably. Along the Embarcadero we got a much better sense of the speed at which the riders could achieve than we did right at the start, obviously. We saw Stuart O'Grady, Dave Zabriskie (wasn't really expecting him so soon, actually he went past and I had to think "who would be in a CSC jersey that looks like it has Stars and Stripes on it?" before I realized it was Dave Z, American time-trial national champion), and Michael Rasmussen along this straight flat stretch before the climb.

Some helpful course marshals with lists of the start times would call out who was coming next (or else you could sidle up beside them and look over their shoulder at the list... I'm still a bit peeved that the organizers couldn't be bothered to put up a list of start times anywhere that I could see - it did go up online, but *after* we left this morning so too late for us).

At the first corner we were trying (with others) to hang over the edge (inside corner) but were pushed back by the marshals - then when a rider came around and we realized how close they were taking the corner, we were quite thankful for their action.

More free stuff - Toyota had a lot of people giving things away, free cowbell and thundersticks (the inflatable things you can bang together, really annoying in a closed space like a hockey arena).

Then starting up the climb. Poor Mario Aerts - lost his chain just after the start of the climb, and no team car behind him to help so he had to get it back on himself. At least I know now that I'm not the only one who that happens to (happened to me last July and I sprained my wrist as I wasn't quick enough to recognize what happened and couldn't unclick from my pedals in time so I went down).

A bit further up the climb, we saw riders such as Hincapie, Dionne, Cancellara and Horner - seemed to me like Cancellara was flying compared to others (and afterwards I realized that he probably was, as those who came ahead of him except the winner hadn't reached their full speed when we saw them near the start). I overheard a course marshal telling someone nearby that Chris Horner is the "coolest" and that you'll always see him smile even up the climb.

Further still, crowds were getting deeper again - Vande Velde, Barry, Hushovd (seemed pretty fast), Bettini, Hesjedal. Amusing that someone tried to start a chant "Paolo Paolo" before Bettini rode by, someone yelled out "I'd join in if I knew what you were saying" (presumably some observers weren't exactly super-knowledgeable cycling fans).

Then from 50 m to go for the last few riders - including Fast Freddie, Bobby Julich, Gesink from Rabobank, Mick Rogers, and Levi Leipheimer - huge cheers when Levi crossed the line 1 second ahead to win the day. (in less than 5 minutes, I might add ... we were impressed at how fast they can ride up the steep climb!)

pics to follow when we get time ...

A long day but lots of fun - before the Prologue

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...