What a great day !
LeeBob & I arrived at Justin Herman Plaza fairly early in the morning while many of the vendors were still setting up. The first order of business was to get a copy of the start order. None were to be found, anywhere. We then meandered over to the team area to check out the team set ups. I was hoping to get a glimpse of some faves so I hung out at the CSC area (you may now call me Jo Stalker). Alas, the best I could do was photos of my faves’ bikes. So it goes.
The Team CSC area
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A pile of Cervelos
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Whose bike is this?? Hint: check the chainrings.
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SadieKate and husband Bubba showed up soon after and we wandered back over to the vendors’ area. I was still on the lookout for a start order and I was hoping to score me some CSC schwag. I succeeded in the latter, and now I’m the proud owner of a very stylin’ black CSC baseball cap. Still no start order, though, argh! We did a little more stalking (er, sightseeing).
Here's one for you, AG!! :cool:
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Finally the race started and we wandered over to the Embarcadero to watch the mystery riders whizz by, since there was still no start order to be found. We had a copy of the start list so we could at least identify the racers from the numbers on their backs after they past. Ekimov started out fairly early but as far as we could tell he was one of the few notables early on.
We started walking towards the finish line up at Coit Tower but instead of following the entire course we cut up the Telegraph Hill stairs, which were featured in the documentary The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. The parrots serenaded us (well, screeched at us) on the way up the steps. Some cyclists were actually carrying their bikes up the steps (yow), and it was a pretty long climb up, but people were going at a decent clip so we made it to the top without missing many notable racers.
Up we go!
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As could be expected it was very crowded on Telegraph Hill but we found a good place to stake out. Lee, Bubba and I stood on a rock retaining wall a couple of feet above the road along a curve in the road, which ended up being quite the primo spot. It was about 150 meters from the finish and although the road curved so we couldn’t actually see the finish from our vantage point, we had a pretty good view of the road immediately below, so we could see the riders coming up. SadieKate chose to stand along the rail, chatting with the spectators around her. At some points I thought she was very wise, since I spent most of the time with one arm wrapped around a No Parking sign to keep me from tipping over, since one of the rocks I was standing on was not particularly stable - yikes.
The view down the hill from our vantage point, 150 m to the finish.
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The view behind us
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When I saw how the course was laid out I wondered how they were going to get the racers back down the hill once they finished. Well, come to find out the racers had to wend their way along a narrow and very crowded sidewalk with their bikes, and walk down a flight of stairs still wearing their cleats. Some racers had volunteers carrying their bikes and others carried their own, and it was quite the sight seeing these poor guys, some of them obviously dog-tired, gingerly negociating the stairs in their racing cleats ! As luck would have it, that stairway was right behind where we were standing so Jo Stalker had some good photo ops.
Dave Z and Floyd Landis, discussing where to go for lunch.
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One of the high points of the race for me was spying Jens Voigt carrying his bike down the steps behind me. I yelled out “Hey Jens, thanks for being here!” and the rest of the group on the wall let out a cheer and he smiled and waved at us. Needless to say I missed the best Kodak Moment of the day, but I did photograph him continuing down the steps.
Bye Jens!
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Taking photos of the racers was kind of tricky since I had a fairly narrow unobstructed view. Plus, even though it was uphill they were still going darn fast ! Naturally I’d be so jazzed when I saw my faves coming up that I would mess up the shot, plus as the day wore on the sun went behind the clouds a bit which slowed down the shutter speed so near the end even though I had the timing down most of my photos of the last dozen racers were fuzzy blobs. I still managed a few OK shots.
Stuart O'Grady
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Michael Barry, turning his pedals in anger, no doubt
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Christian Vandevelde
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Gilberto Simoni
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After the race was over we walked back down along the race route. Levi Leipheimer whizzed by accompanied by a bunch of “civillian” riders, that was fun to see. We stopped off at the Fog City Diner where an outdoor table miraculously appeared for us and we had a nice al fresco lunch.
We then made it back to the expo in time to check out the Cervelo booth where they had Dave Z.’s infamous time trial bike from the TdF on display, complete with the nasty gouges in the aerobars – ow.
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All in all, a really fun time.
LeeBob and I plan on seeing Stage 2 somewhere on Sierra Road.
- Jo.
