Saturday night we had some great Sushi and really good wine for Valentine's Day. Sunday was very rainy and cold so we headed up to Davis, CA to watch the start of the first stage of the race.
It was very cold and rainy and I was not envious of these guys at all! It poured on them all day as they rode from Davis, across the Napa Valley and into the Sonoma Valley to Santa Rosa.
As we were walking around the team buses we got a small glimpse of Bob Roll interviewing Floyd Landis who is making his return to racing after being stripped of his yellow TDF jersey. There was a huge crowd and I found it surprising how many folks supported Floyd. (I remain neutral in my opinion - cheating in cycling is still not as bad as in baseball - Go A-Rod - loser!)
It was really cool to be there for the biggest race on US soil and see the circus that is a professional bike race. All the team buses, cars with $1000's of bikes on their roofs, and media everywhere!!
After watching the start of Stage 1 we headed back to Napa for some wine tastings since we missed out the day before due to the late start and good riding weather. We did a couple good tastings and spent way too much money on wine to bring home. It was a lot of fun with incredible scenery and impressive wineries. Here is a shot of some of the wine at one of the places we stopped. It smelled so good when you walked into this room.
Sunday evening we left Napa for San Francisco where we had tickets to "Burn the Floor" which was a dance group that was amazing. (Lance Armstrong and the Livestrong Foundation were everywhere!! - cool) I was worried whether or not I would enjoy the show but that subsided early into it. It started off fast and never slowed down. The dancers were amazing and the show was very entertaining. Amy said I only liked it because the women were barely dressed with rock-hard bodies (I'm not going to lie - that helped) but it really was an amazing show.The next morning we got up and drove to Santa Cruz on the coast to watch the end of stage 2. It poured rain the whole way there but once on the coast the sun came out and gave the riders a small break from the rain for the finish.
It was comical to watch the media attention for this race - partly charged because of Lance's comeback but also because this is the strongest international field to race on US soil. These guys were right across from us at the finish line and were fighting over spots to shoot from for an hour!
Here is a shot of Peterson with Team Slipstream as he came across winning the stage but the real winner of the day was Levi with Team Astana who had an amazing stage showing he is definitely the strongest this early in the season. He chased down the lead group solo on the last climb and took second on the day only because Peterson hung on his wheel the last 10 miles to the finish, Peterson is way behind Levi in the overall so Levi took the yellow jersey today!
This is a shot of the main group coming in after the two leaders that includes Lance who was 13th on the day and now 4th overall. You can barely see him in the back and far right of this picture - sorry for the quality of these photos - they are from my phone.
Right after the finish we had to run to the car and head to the airport to get home. After 3 days we both start to really miss Camden and can't wait to get home. He stayed with Grandma and had a great weekend of being spoiled. When we are away from him we find that he consumes 90% of our conversation and every little kid we see reminds us of him.We had a great weekend and now it's back to work.
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