TOC Stage 3

Just in case anyone was wondering what happened to yesterdays update, there wasn't much to update, so I didn't post one.  Something about a 240km ride in steady rain (the pros were only riding 180km) put me off the idea of riding out to the stage finish, and for anybody who was trying to follow the race at home, the weather was bad enough that they couldn't fly choppers to provide the links back from the motorbikes, so for the most part, there was stuff all live coverage on the day.

Last night I shifted camps from downtown San Francisco to the East Bay city of Pleasanton, which is pretty much the end of the line as far as public transport goes in the Bay Area, which also meant I needed to be out of the hotel pretty early in order to get to the beginning of stage 3 of the Tour of California.  Pleasanton is nearly at the far east of the greater bay area, and today's stage started as far west as it possibly could have, at Ocean Beach, which as it's name suggests, is San Francisco's beach on Pacific Ocean.  The plan was to leave the hotel nice and early since I had a long walk to the BART station, followed by a long train ride, followed by a long Muni ride to the end of the line, with the idea being I'd arrive at the start early enough to see all the riders sign on for the day, and to try and get a photo with Jensy (since you never know when a rider his age may decide to throw it in).  Foolishly I didn't set an alarm, and still being mildly jetlagged, I overslept by more than an hour, so now rather than being early, I was in a race against time just to get to the start before the riders rolled off.  I was pretty lucky in that I didn't have to wait too long for the train once I hit the BART station, and I didn't have to wait at all for the connecting Muni tramcar, so I got to the kilometer zero about 15 minutes before the riders rolled away (it also didn't hurt that they were also 5 or so minutes late either).

Stage race starts are fairly uneventful affairs, and are really more of an opportunity for sponsors to mug it with the peleton's stars before the day's racing wears them ragged.  The real race starts after a few kilometers of neutral riding, just to make sure everyones up and rolling, and the sedate pace makes it a little easier to spot guys out in the peleton to take photos.

[caption id="attachment_34" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Swiss National Road Champion, World and Olympic Time Trial Champion, Fabian Cancellara"][/caption]

Having seen all that I needed to see of San Francisco the preceding few days, I headed back across the bay to try and catch the stage finale at the hotel.  I did manage to get back in time, but only to find that this hotel also doesn't get Vs. (the cable channel with the TV rights to the Tour of California over here), the wifi here is much faster though, so online updates had to do.  At the end of the day and as far as I'm concerned, today's result was win/win.  Dave "Deez Nuts" Zabriske won the stage, just holding off Michael Rogers, which means Garmis-Transitions won both todays stage at the Giro and the TOC, and Australian sit second on GC in both major stage races.  In case anybody missed yesterdays results, Aussie Brett Lancaster won yesterdays stage of the Tour of California, making it the 4th stage win by an Australian in a stage race in the past week!  Sure Mick Rogers was only centimeters from making it 5, but it's hard not to be happy for Dave Z and the Argyle Armada.

Finally, If you're ever in the East Bay and need to visit a bike store, be sure to check out Livermore Cyclery, in Dublin or Livermore. I had a great chat with the manager at Dublin, Chuck, it's just too bad they didn't have exactly what I was looking for. Still, it's a nice store with excellent service. While I was there I got the impression that everyone form A grade racers down to mothers getting their son's low end mountain bike serviced got treated the same, regardless of how much they had spent. All said, they're a pretty cool bunch of guys (and girl).