I finally got the blog about the Prologue of the 2008 Tour of California out a few entries ago, but now I want to dump some images from Stage 1.
We started out the day with a scone and a coffee and a view down Lombard Street, the "curviest" street in the world! Speed limit is 5mph on this section of Lombard.
Cezanne and I worked our way across the Golden Gate Bridge. I kept accidentally referring to it as the "Bay" Bridge and I'm not sure why.
After admiring the view of the Golden Gate and the city of San Francisco, we headed to the start of Stage 1 in Sausalito. We just drove around to get a feel for it, but we stuck with our original plan to go to the only climb of the day, the Category 3 Coleman Valley Road climb. We took 101 then some back roads to get there. The roads were very windy and narrow and full of cyclists biking up the back side of Coleman Valley Road to watch the stage. It was really cool.
We parked off in the grass on the side of the road and then walked to our spot. This is the view of the valley, with the Pacific ocean in the background.
We set up camp about 400 meters below the KOM climb. People had written a bunch of stuff with chalk, including "GEORGE" below.
We had gotten word from some of the race officials that a solo break-away had stuck with about a 10 minute lead on the peleton. Everybody was eager to see the lone figure come around the bend. I think the guy in the blue cape with the big hair in the pic below is "Big Hair Superfan."
And Jacskon Stewart from BMC was the solo break-away. Apparently he made a move partly because he is a Santa Rosa, CA resident and that was the finishing city. The peleton scooped him up before that though. He seemed to be struggling a little bit. Sweet ride and sweet team kit. The BMC team is lucky to be kitted out in Assos clothing since BMC bought Assos. I don't know if BMC is sponsored by Nike, but Jackson is wearing the shoes Lance used to wear. Because I'm such an expert on bicycle fit (read a lot of sarcasm in this one), one thing I would suggest to Mr. Stewart is to bring his saddle down about 2cm.
After Jackson passed we all wondered when the peleton would be swooping around the corner...
The peleton is an interesting phenomenon. It's nice to see on a hill so you get a little more viewing time. It reminds me of a swarm of bees. You can barely see them below, just rounding the corner.
Here is the peleton getting closer. Levi is one of the riders on the front.
A couple of guys jumped towards the top to get some of the rest of the KOM points. Jens Voigt, Mr. Breakaway, went chasing one of the guys who jumped.
I think that is Robert Gesink for Rabobank on the left below. He was the one guy who hung with Levi on Sierra Road. On the right is Chris Horner (with his usual smile) and George Hincapie on the other side of him.
Oscar Freire and Fabian Cancellara. I don't know about those sunglasses Fabian, but you can do whatever you want. He's wearing the yellow leader's jersey since he won the Prologue.
I think that is Karsten Kroon for Team CSC below. He is one of the very few CSC riders who use a Cervelo R3 for all of the races (not just the slightly off road and bumpy ones). To the right of the picture is Tom Boonen.
Despite being a little chilly while we waited to see the riders, we really enjoyed watching the stage. Cezanne was a total trooper. She said she had fun and I believe her! We decided to have dinner back down in Sausalito. We flew out that night from San Francisco. Seeing the prologue and Stage 1 were awesome. I encourage anyone with a slight interest to go take a look. These cyclists are amazing athletes.
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