Tour of California

I am currently living it up out West with one of my biggest blog groupies, spur. He just happens to live about a mile away from the race course for the Tour of California's Prolouge, close enough that we woke up yesterday to the smell of fresh EPO. Since we were so close and I happened to be here we decided that we should go check out what was going on. It was a really good time. We got there and walked around the team areas for a little while checking out the bikes outside the team buses and getting a couple of glimpses of some riders. It was fun to see the set ups for these top level teams (Slipstream, Astana, High Road [formerly T-Mobile], ect) and get a glimpse of the flashiness that comes with the biggest joke in the sport (Rock Racing).

Steve's Next Bike.

Before the real race got started, there was a charity race where some local celebrities got to ride the race course. The most notable of these was Mike Sinyard, founder of Specialized, who rode the course on a hydraulically powered tricycle. His ride was far from fast, but it was definately interesting. Once the celebrities were out of the way the real race started up. We hung out around the team areas a little longer to watch some of the guys warm up and see some of the more notable riders.

Sinyard (in the red and white) with his water powered trike

George Hincappie Before the Race

The Slipstream Guys Warming Up
(from left to right: Tommy Danielson, podium finisher Tyler Farrar, and Steven Cozza)

After that we got a spot on the railing near the start line to catch some of the guys taking off. After seeing a few of those we decided to head towards the finish before the big name guys got there. We did a quick walk through of the area with all of the booths set up to get some swag and chat up a couple of world champs at the specialized booth. Spur's blog groupie partner, Ethan P., will be glad to know that we got him one of the autographed world champion posters featuring a couple of triathletes (Ironman champ Chris McCormack and Xterra champ Conrad Stoltz) as well as XC mountain biker Christoph Sauser and all around endurance athlete Rebecca Rusch. Once we got through hanging out with those guys we headed towards the oval to watch the big names coming through. We got there just in time to see Tom Boonen fly past followed shortly thereafter by big Jens Voight and brief leader Bradley Wiggens. We eventually made it to the inside of the oval to get away from some of the people and get a better view. We ended up getting a great view of the final riders so everybody got to see there favorites: Steve got to see his boy Levi, Melissa saw Paulo Bettini Tiny, and whoever my favorite was probably there as well. Overall, it was a ton of fun and hopefully I can make it to another race sometime in the future.

Levi Coming Through