Tour of CA #3 - Other Pictures and Pithy Captions

Bikes

In the... "Hey, I ain't riding that piece of shit!" category.

I had read where the Columbia guys were not starting out the season on Scott timetrail bikes. Here is proof..... This is Cav's Giant that he rode last year.... Just de-stickered and re-painted.

I am sure there is a reason behind this.... but Rock Racing is supposed to be on Kestrel Bikes, right? It would seem that Kestrel could make a pretty good TT bike. So .... what's the story behind Oscar Sevilla and a couple others riding a Fuji.

The Garmin boys were sure to never be lost......Running a high zoot GPS device on all their TT bikes

Riders

My wife took a whole bunch of pictures of Tom Boonen. It may be that her finger just go stuck on the button while the camera was in auto. Or, maybe not. I know that there are alot of girls out there who would give just about anything to be this close to him. My favorite Boonen story is the one I get to re-live when my brother tries to impress his wife by stating "That ain't nothing honey, I have seen Tom Boonen naked!" (it happened in the 07 Tour of Qatar when my bro timed his leave from his deployment in Iraq to go take in the race). But I digress. I chose this picture because.... well.... who knew that Tommeke had a butt like Beyonce's?

You may need to enlarge this pic up to full size to see why I asked the wife to take it. While you are doing that, I have a question for ya. Have you ever pulled up behind one of those pickup trucks that have the sir-name of the driver across the rear window? It usually says something like "Rodriguez" in very fancy letters in a nice arch. Well, imagine my amusement when I notice that Steve Cozza had this very thing in a sorta tramp-stamp tattoo on his lower back? I am guessing he did this so that if he is found passed out in the gutter naked, the cops know who he is?

Frank Schleck was all over the judges when they inspected his bike.

Maybe that had something to do with his number for this race.

Oscar Friere just oozed cool the whole time he was hanging out in the start house.

Svein Tuft was quite a bit bigger than I imagined. But then again, he had to be to do all of this before he took cycling seriously.

Jens.... there is no substitute

I believe that the UCI judge was saying something on the order of..."You call that a big crank? That's nothing! Look at the weapon that Jen Voigt packs!"

Channelling Chris Horner....."Look at your little bitch ass having to cover up your shoes. If you were rocking a pair of these new MAVIC kicks, you would never want to cover your shoes again! I wake up each morning and piss excellence. And my shoes show it!"

I just cracked up when I saw this picture an OUCH rider giving the 2008 Tour of France winner the "Who the F#$@ are you?" look.

Winning the award for the most complete transformation. I saw this guy covered in mud and loving life at the CX Nats just a short time ago. Now look at him!

Kits

I thought the Rock Racing kits could have used "Nevermind the Bullocks!" splashed somewhere... but they were still pretty cool if you took the time to study them.

What, no burrito this year?!?!? I live just down the street from Chipotle #1. This hurt me bad to see they burrito fired from the back pocket.

To care or not to care

You could tell by his attitude in the start house that Levi is very motivated to win the Tour of CA.

You could tell that DZ was pretty motivated to win the day.

You could tell that Ian McGregor was motivated to show someone he had a heart on.

And you could tell that the Liquigas team except for Ivan Basso didn't really care. They rode their road bikes (complete with SRMs and dual bottle cages) for the prologue.

Tour of CA #2 - There are Always Exceptions to the Rule

So about 1.5 hours into the race, I am fully engrossed in all the happenings in the start house. I get a tap on the shoulder. I turn to find one of the Tour of CA heavy's. He asks "Are you my security for this area?" I look around an see that the 10 cops that were standing around are gone. "It sure looks like it." I tell him.

He points out the issue...... with the upcoming arrival of Lance Armstrong to this area, the crowd is growing rapidly. There is a spot where the barrier is not pulled all the way up against a tent and lower forms of life (those w/o the proper credentials to be in this area) were trying to sneak in. The barrier section is about 10 feet long and several guys are leaning on it. Task one, get the gap closed. I ask everyone to stand up, and then pull the barrier to where it sits snugly against the tent. Problem solve, right? Wrong. 10 seconds later, a guy with the proper media credentals walks up and wants to be let in. But to move the barrier, I would have to yell over the announcer to get everyone's attention so that I could get them to stop leaning on the barrier and move it. Instead, I tell him that everyone needs to go through the entrance by the start house. It is only 20 feet away so he heads off. For the next half hour, I stand by this spot telling all the media filing in so that they can get a picture of Lance that they need to go through the correct entrance over by the start house. No exceptions! Again, since it is only 20 feet away, no issues. Then the 10 cops show back up and want back in. I try my "you gotta go around" gambit and they are having none of it. Basically, no nit-wit in an orange T-shirt and a green vest is going to tell Sacramento's finest what they will be doing. So I shout out to the guys leaning on the barrier that it needs to be moved. I give it a yank so that it only moves about 6 inches and invite the boys in figuring that if anyone has been hitting the dounuts too hard as of late, they are going to have problems. A few were challenged, but they all made it. Then, the two guys leaning on the barrier right next to me ask out loud the very same question I was thinking....."Dude, did I just smell alcohol on their breath?"

With the cops back in, I figure that I am free to continue my front row geek-out of the start house. Just as I am about to head out, a lady walks up a demands that she must get in immediately. I am about to politely explain that there are no exceptions and they must go through the normal enterance. I look over her shoulder and see that she is being followed by to 5'2" piles of big hair and makeup. Yup, you guessed it, podium girls. Exception #2, coming up! I am about to ask the guys to stand up again so that I can move the barrier. However, everyone of them have turned around and are staring at the girls. I single handedly move the barrier and give them my best "Right this way ladies" and allow them in.

By know, I figure I am missing too much of the race. I learned a long time ago that an action delegated is and action complete so I slide the barrier up tight against the tent and tell all the guys standing there not to let anyone in unless they a cop or a podium girl. It is time to get back to the race!

More Behind the Scenes at the Tour of CA #1

The Versus crew left the stage about 1/2 hour before the start of the race and headed over to the finish line to announce the race frome there. So about the time that fun died down, some more started in the form of action at the start house. MAVIC set up a neutral support tent next to the start house. Petr Tomich and Mark Neimeic were staffing it. I had not seen Mark since CO CX States and Petr and I hand only traded email since we worked Ride the Rockies together last summer. Those two have forgotten more about working on race bikes than I will probably ever learn. We spent a while catching up on things.

MAVIC Pete and Mark......at your service.

Then the UCI judges showed up and set up camp.

Here Come Da Judge! UCI Judges setting up the jig to bike set-up

Each bike was compared against the jig to make sure the set-up was within the every changing UCI rules. It was pretty straight forward. Line the tip of the saddle up with the rear post and then everything else on the bike needs to line up. If, for instance, anything but shifters levers are in front of the front post, you got problems. The bike was then weighed ( for all you weight weenies out there, most all the bikes seemed to come in between 18 and 19lbs). New to me was that fact that whever they could, the judges had each rider sit on the bike so that they could observe his position while out on the aero-bars and that they took pictures of each aero-bar setup.

How different riders treated this process was pretty interesting. Some bikes were brought in by mechanics, approved by the judges, then taken back. Most riders showed up about 10 minutes before their start time so that they could get their bike approved and then waited till they started. Then there are always the exceptions.

Exception #1 is this guy.

Floyd bought his bike in himself several hours before his start time and examined the judges as closely as they were examining his bike. I would venture to guess that after the last two years, Floyd now has a healthy dose of sceptisim for the system.

I took this pic of Floyd's aero-bar setup thinking that it sure looks like he dropped it down from what he used to run in the past.



But then when I was going through the pictures to pick the ones for this blog, I had this picture of him racing later in the day. Is it just me, or did those bars move up? To be honest, I can't really be positive. I know they are not near as high as he used to race them.

Exception 2, This guy.....




Who rode this bike. Too bad he only got to ride it once before someone decided they needed it more than he did. I have to admit..... it was a pretty sweet bike.







LA came in about 15 min before his start time, got his bike approved, then had a trainer set up inside the barriers to the start house so that he could keep warm right up until he had less than a minute to go.




And then there was Fast Freddy Rodriguez pulling the "Don't you know who I am?" maneuver. FF shows up about 10 min before his start time. No issues, right? Wrong. Freddy has his aero-bars extended about and inch longer than they are allowed. The judge tells him that he will not be allowed to ride it like that. So, Freddy rolls over to MAVIC and asks Mark to move them back a smidge. Mark goes to work. He asks out to anyone how much time he has. I look at the clock and then look up Freddy's start time. "7 minutes" I tell him. But, that is when Freddy needs to be leaving, not when Mark needs to get the bike done. "MAVIC, you got 5 minutes" comes the correct call from one of the judges.




Mark finishes the job in less than 3 minutes. He hands the bike back to Freddy who rolls the bike back over to the judge. Now, you will notice above, Freddy never told MAVIC how much to move the bars. The next time through, it is still no-go. So Freddy goes back over to MAVIC for another small adjustment. This time, it is all hands on deck because the start time is a little over 2 minutes away.





They get the job done in record time and Freddy heads back a 3rd time. This time with MAVIC in tow....



Still too long on the aero-bar set-up. But.... they are out of time and Freddy is unwilling to move them anymore. He picks up his bike and heads to the start house. Freddy is shaking his head in non-belief that the judge did not know who he was and the judge shaking his head about how hard it is for some people to follow simple rules. In the end, Freddy rode it shorter than he wanted to, but longer than what was legal.

I think the real reason the judge let it go was that Freddy sucks at time trialing and it did not matter if he rode a position exactly like Graeme Obree, he was not going to win.

Back Stage at the Tour of California

So..... a couple of months ago, I am talking with one of my college room-mates and he tells me that a buddy of his could use some help out at the Tour of CA. I saw no real reason to deprive the race of my greatness, so I immediately starting groveling for an invite. I figured if we got lucky, we could get the opportunity to be a course marshal. The downside of being one would be spending most of the time reminding parents that it is not a good idea to let the 3 year old wander out on the course. The upside would be that we would have a front row view of the big boys going by at top speed. If we got unlucky, we would have to go work some festival tent and hand out flyers about how Lance Armstrong practices bike safety and so should you. But, we would at least be there!

Mrs. Grovel and I flew out on Friday for a one day shot at a viewing of the big show. On Saturday morning, we (along with my college room-mate that got us this gig) show up to meet our connection, John as directed. He hands us the keys to his car and tells us that our volunteer shirts and other official markings were in the trunk. We are to go kit up and get our asses back to go to work. Since the start of the Prologue is several hours away and the course is still open to civilians, I am thinking to myself...”Clown tent, here we come.”

We don ToCA Volunteer T-shirts that are a lovely shade of orange with blue lettering. Over the top goes a near florescent green vest. I am thinking...”Pretty bright gear for being in the mootard tent, but...well..... whatever it takes.” We find our way back to John and he walks us over to the area fenced off beside the start house. He then precedes move a barrier, allow us in, and closes the barrier. John turns to us and announces “This is the media area at the start line. Nobody except you guys are allowed back here without media credentials. Your job is to make sure that nobody but authorized people are in here."

Instilled with the same sense of power that a local weekend cop gets, I look around to survey the hallowed grounds I am to protect against any lower form of life that does not have the secret pass. The fenced area starts immediately next to the start house and continues across a small park. The fencing ends on the other side of the park just past a large stage. The park is between two streets that make up two sections of the course so that the media can shoot the riders in the start house and then walk 50 meters across the park to catch them heading up the course a bit later.

The best part is that there are already a bunch of real cops working the area so we really don’t have to do anything. It then dawns on me..... Holy crap, I just got hooked up with back stage passes to the best show in town!


So, with that intro, it is onto the pictures and the stories behind them...

Greg, my college room-mate and I gearing up. I am practing my tough-guy snear. Little did I know that in a few minutes, I would tasked with some faux enforcement.

So.... how good was this gig? We had the best seats in the house for this view of the action on the big stage.....

Here was the front view

OK.... For my mom who reads this blog and does not know who these three are... mom, left to right, this is Craig Hummer, Phil Liggett, and Paul Sherwen.

There was nothing much to do for the first hour, so I spent the time shuttling crap from fans up to these wise men of cyling to be signed and giving Craig Hummer crap because everyone was asking where Bobke was.

We took nearly 600 pics during the day. Over the next few days, I will post some of the best ones and write more. Check back soon to see.