Tour of CAtastrophe

Been busy lately, getting miles in pretty well, and I've done some new modest routes. Big ones yet to come.

The Tour has come through, ToC of course, I had planned to ride up to the small climb about 10K out with food, and beverage to watch the leaders (maybe a break!) grind over slow enough to see their faces. Then ride downtown to partake in the festivities, complete w/free valet bike parking. Funny how cold rain changed all that. We drove down with a friend, strolled through the festival, watched the Big Screen show the last 300 meters. You saw nothing less than I did, plus you were dry. Oh, I did see Coop.

We then walked down the course to the team bus area. the corner, a block out had several soigners trying to tend to riders. We stood and watched a grim looking bunch come in. The most famous was Mark Cavendish (dang, I didn't have the camera ready) also Popovich.

grim guy from Team Spidertech

team Bissell Pinarellos

second guy is Mike Friedman

one of the Jaques-Maynes bros

cool Mavic Carbone Ultimate wheel

The week before we saw BMC guys training numerous times and one Liquigas guy as well. For all the build up it was disappointing that TV coverage was non existent. I watched the days live coverage from the Giro broadcast in similar conditions, what gives with hi-tech USA? Don't let them fool you, its about egos and poor planning, not weather. It seems as long as advertisers are ponying up bucks the management doesn't care what goes on TV. They only hired ASO for prestige, plenty of US talent could get the job done. One moto camera guy was only to be there for the first hour, but when rain came the ASO guys weren't prepared for rain, so they the local guy had to stay out (with the wrong clothes) he got plenty of video tape. But production had no back up plan to get it from the field to production. I have a friend in cycle video production, who went through this with me. You can tell I'm rather let down after all the build up to the event. Now my rant continues to Versus.... I watched Tuesdays coverage rebroadcast, the schedule showed 9:30 PM. Well hockey was on, then the post game show dawdled on, I know its the playoffs and all, but they don't hesitate to cut cycling short. I just read the live broadcast earlier cut the last exciting mile for the damn PRE game show of "mullets on ice". Even Lance was pissed. I guess he'll have to be in all the sprints to guarantee final coverage. Cycling gets no respect

Oh well, lets go ride.