Amgen, who's going and where?

[BikeMomma]

For Stage 4, since as part of the organizing committee for the Merced City I had the lowdown on where Team Astana would be coming in, we had prime viewing of Lance's first appearance. He got out of his s.u.v., signed a few autographs, then hopped into the bus to meet with the rest of the team. We milled around for a while, saw Bob Roll and got a pic with Johan Bruyneel (AND the podium girls ), then left town before the start in order to find a good spot on Guadalupe Grade, the site of KOM #1. From there, we broke alot of speed limits along the way (6 cars of us worth -- the CHP would have run out of ink....) to come out on Hwy 140 at Derra Rd. to see them again (forgot to grab my camera for that stop -- whoopsie! -- and no time to run back to the car). We tried to beat the breakaway to Clovis, but deja vu from Stage 3, we ran out of time and saw them at yet one more spot (not sure of the location).

Here are the pics that turned out -- my camera chose NOT to cooperate as well as the day before:

Lance signing autographs:


A blurry half-Levi , with George Hincapie three wheels behind:


I believe I heard Phil Liggett on Versus' coverage mention that there were citations issued to several riders during the day -- I think these were two of them -- somewhat illegal . They should have been - drafting a team car on a climb??? Things must have been bad early for these two, as this was only KOM #1 and they still had a whole rollercoaster of KOM's to go:


This was the only semi-good one from our stop outside Clovis. By then, the full chase was on by all the sprinters' teams and the break split time was coming down very rapidly. It was coming down so fast that CHP's estimated split time of around two minutes was probably more like just over one -- by the time the latest split times got to the CHP, they were no longer accurate. Tyler's face looked weary when the break passed by, and I knew they were doomed to be caught. Pretty exciting racing, at this point -- they were hauling arse when they passed by, I can attest to that!:


Fun times -- looking forward to next year already. Word is, it may happen later in the year, but that's nowhere near confirmed.

Hope you like the pics! (maybe next year I'll have a better camera...)
~BikeMomma