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Tour of California Stage 2: Awards Etc.

Here's the scene after the race.


A small part of the crowd watching the awards at the finish line. I managed to squeeze my way up pretty close on the right side of the stage.


Cycling TV personality Bob Roll looking perturbed about something.


Close to far, Francisco Mancebo (KOM leader, sprint leader), Robert Gesink (best young rider), Levi Leipheimer (overall tour leader), and Ben Jacques-Maynes (most courageous rider).


Jacques-Maynes giving an interview.


Levi wondering where his wallet has gotten to, or something.


Levi: "Do I really have to go up on stage again for the fourth time today? Well at least I get kissed by you for winning."


1st (Thomas Peterson), 2nd (Levi Leipheimer), and 3rd place (Michael Rogers) for the day's stage.


Stage winner/babyface Thomas Peterson.


Peterson getting interviewed on Versus.


Lance Armstrong's race bike surrounded by other Astana team bikes.


Peterson eating pasta after the press conference.

Tour of California Stage 2: The Finish

After hitting some slow-moving traffic on highway 17 into Santa Cruz for what looked to be a minor landslide (yeah, it had been raining that much), I made it to the finish with a bit of time to spare. Here's some pictures from the finish.


What's everybody looking at?


Oh, we're watching the race on the bigscreen.


I found a spot right on the railing about 250 meters from the finish line. Then we had an instantaneous downpour.


Perfect spot to watch the finishers come in.


Oh sweet, we instantly moved 50 meters closer to the finish! The signs were set up wrong.


They should be here any minute. I've got a lot of people's attention because I'm following Twitter updates and can announce Levi rode away and caught the break and should be coming in first.


And sure enough, Levi coming through first, with Thomas Peterson on his wheel.


Levi knew Peterson was going to take the win on this one by coming around at the last minute, but he wasn't concerned with the stage win - he just wanted to be in the overall leader's jersey at the end of the day.


Best shot of Levi (Leipheimer, that is) on the day.


Headed for the line.


Barely 20 seconds later, the first chase group comes in.


This group is led by David Zabrieski.


Lance Armstrong, another Astana rider, and Kim Kirchen a little further back.


Robert Gesink from Rabobank right in the middle of this one.


Frank Schleck, Grisha Niermann, Astana rider on what must be a backup bike (no race #), and Ivan Basso.


Second chase group comes in.


Floyd Landis (far) and Gustav Larsson.

The remaining riders came in scattered groups, with the remnants of the peleton 17 minuted behind the leaders. Definitely a brutal day on the bike.

Still to come, the awards ceremony and some other odds and ends:

Tour of California Stage 2: The Morning

Here's some shots from the morning on Tunitas Creek Road, the day's first big climb. The pictures are in chronological order, so if you're not particularly familiar with pro bike racing, this will give you an idea of just how much race support there is. It almost seems there is a car/truck/motorcycle for just about every rider in the race.


The KOM (King of the Mountains) point at the top of the climb - points are awarded to the first riders up the climb on each major climb, the overall points leader is the King of the Mountains. Where is everybody?


Did I mention it was raining rather hard?


A good hour before the race comes through, the support vehicles and team cars start going by. here's a Jelly Belly team car.


This is about as crowded as I thought the climb would be. You'll soon see how mistaken I was.


Motorcycles showing up... race must be close.


Hmmm... we've got a bit of a crowd.


Car with speakers blasting the race announcer... now the race has to be really close.


Police cars trying to keep everyone back to give riders some room. One of them came over his loudspeaker and said something to the effect of "Watch out, I don't drive very well!" to the amusment of all.


TV Motorcycle.. they've got to be coming around the bend!


Sure enough, there they are. This was a 10 man break several minutes ahead at this point.


An interesting flash hit off someone else's camera.


Stephen Cozza leading the break.


Grisha Niermann (right) and Thomas Peterson (the day's eventual stage winner) in the break.


Then come the break's support cars. Here's Garmin Slipstream.


Team OUCH (yeah, plenty of jokes to be made there) team car.


And of course, one of the famous Mavic neutral support cars.


Several minutes later, here comes the peleton.


The peleton led by Tyler Hamilton and other members of Rock Racing.


The majority of the 130 odd racers were in this group.


Including none other than Mellow Johnny on the wheel of one Levi Leipheimer.


The pictures almost make it seem like they just keep coming, but the entire large group passed in well under 30 seconds. Probably closer to 15.


Then began the groups chasing to get back with the group. Riders may have crashed, had flats, gone back to team cars, be lousy hill climbers, etc. so teams will drop back to help their riders get back in contact with the peleton. Here's crazy strong sprinter Mark Cavendish getting hauled up the hill by teammates.


Then comes the race director. If you're behind the race director, you just might be in trouble.


Followed by more team cars - such as Team Columbia's.


Cervelo Test Team.


And Rock Racing.


Then come the stragglers.


Brett Lancaster has a bike I'm envious of, but I'm not envious of his position riding in cold, wet, windy conditions trying to catch the main field.


Then I headed back up the hill in a hurry to get back to the car, but not so much of a hurry that I couldn't stop to get a picture of just how many people lined the course.


Oh wait, more stragglers! The course and conditions resulted in a lot of riders slipping off the back of the race.


And the last rider up the hill, followed by probably another twenty vehicles, including a "sweeper" van that was denoted with handbrooms attached to the front.


Everyone waiting around wondering if anything else is coming up the hill. Didn't you see the sweeper van?


The footrace back through the mass of cars began my journey to Santa Cruz.

And in case you missed it, Mellow Johnny is Lance Armstrong's nickname. Better take another look, huh?

Race Report

When I planned out my day around the race today, I knew there were plenty of question marks and uncertainty as far as potential roadblocks to being where I wanted to be when I needed to be there. As far as the technical details went, today was perfect. I arrived on the climb at Tunitas Creek Rd. early enough to stake out a good spot. The climb was packed with hundreds if not thousands of people by the time the race came through - and it was probably one of the most remote sections of the course. It was pouring hard and I spent the morning soaked, but it was well worth the wait. It was extremely exhilerating to be on a packed climb with people going crazy cheering on these racers with everyone involved soaking wet. Definitely the atmosphere I was hoping for.

After the race came through I immediately headed south and got to Santa Cruz about an hour ahead of the racers. I was lucky enough to get a spot right on the railing at the 200 meter mark before the finish line, right when the sprint wind-up generally happens. Even more random was running into Karl (from the UO team) who ended up only feet away from me before we noticed each other.



The racers came flying through - Levi Leipheimer did his superman thing and broke away from the pack, caught the disintegrating breakaway, and then dropped them too. Except for Thomas Peterson, the stage winner, that is. So now Levi is the overall tour leader.



I took 550ish photos today, so that's just a little teaser of what's to come. I'll probably have one or more posts in the near future of nothing but pictures, but no time to sort and adjust tonight.

The photo report is mixed. Of those 550 photos, probably about 100 are of the actual racers racing, as was to be expected with the short amount of time I had to see them go by. The beer cup lens hood/plastic bag cover surpassed all expectations and drew a ton of attention and compliments, including a lot of really impressed photographers who had real hoods on their cameras. The lighting on the climb was much too dark for my liking, but I mostly made it work. In the finish area, I had a nasty shadow/sunlight combo, but I got decent shots there as well.

The one problem was that I was almost too close - with racers coming less than 10 feet away at high speed, even with my best efforts panning at 1/200th of a second on the climb and 1/400th of a second at the finish, my camera's autofocus became its weakness. I doubt I could have done better manually, but often it just couldn't quite keep up with how fast I was taking pictures. That said, I did get a number of really nice, clear shots and a number more where the speed of the racers makes for a good photo, in spite of the fact that they're not quite crisply focused.

I'm going to have to do some race number lookups to determine which soggy racers I got pictures of (they all kind of look the same with rain gear on) but yes, I did get pictures of Lance. I won't spoil everything, but if you're a cycling fan I've got a couple more goodies coming too. Stay tuned!

Overall, the day was extremely exciting and everything I was hoping it would be.

Improvising

With this horrendous weather we're having in California, I realized that my simple "stick the camera in a plastic bag" solution wasn't going to address the problem of rain getting on the lens and mucking up the photos of the race tomorrow. I figured a hood might be my best bet, but after checking out the only camera shop I could find that was open on a Sunday, I was out of luck. They had a hood for my lens, but it was $40 and was an off-brand accessory. I set about trying to think up what sort of improvised hood I could come up with, when Joey's friend Andrew stumbled upon the answer: red drinking cups usually synonymous with alcohol consumption!





Rather than using a bag for the camera, I rigged up the hoods for both lenses and decided to attach and tape a bag to each lens to make sure there will be no leakage between the hood and the bag. Now I just need to run to the store and get another bag for the second lens. That way I'll have both lenses as options tomorrow.

The last few days in pictures

Friday night: Cooking dinner


Saturday afternoon: The new camper has arrived.


Sunday morning: flew on the Oregon themed plane.


Sunday mid-day: Arrival in San Francisco


Sunday afternoon: Mac party


Sunday afternoon: raining cats and dogs


Sunday afternoon: still raining