16 May 2011

Chasing the Tour of California

When someone finds the Tour - let me know!

Where is it? Not in Tahoe. Today Stage 2 has been relocated and will begin in Nevada City at 12:15pm. It must be something for a city to find out 1 day ahead of time that the entire start village area is moving into their town, rather than the race simply passing through the town in route to Sacramento. 
Seeing footage of Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen standing in the snow announcing the cancellation of yesterday's stage was quite odd, but not surprising. As I drove to California from Colorado over the Rocky Mountains and through Utah, the mountain ranges were full of fresh white snow. The Tour of California might run into more rain as it moves west from the state capital of Sacramento to the south San Francisco Bay area.
I had prepared a "Who will be at Amgen Tour of Colorado" post, but the post was wiped out when google went down a few days ago. Then after the snow of yesterday,  I thought it might be more fun to reorganize the teams into bobsled, downhill, snowboarding, nordic, and apres ski teams (Jens Voigt would have definitely been on the luge team). I will recreate the rosters in pictures soon. Meanwhile, it has been fun reading the Twitter posts by the riders hanging out in Tahoe through the snow and canceled Stage 1. I'll be at the Finish in Modesto, CA, tomorrow (in the expected rain).

Weather forces Tour of California to move start of stage 2