You’ll never catch me riding from Davis to Santa Rosa when it’s pissing down rain. Maybe in a car, if someone in Santa Rosa is buying at a brewpub, but not on a bicycle.
My boys Merrill and Chris got together to chase the AToC around for a few stages this year, but I’ll bet Merrill wishes he’d stayed in New York, where the rain from on high is warmer, mostly generated by supervisors at The New York Times, and doesn’t continue for hours at a stretch.
It was one of those stages you’d like to watch from a lead car, listening to race radio, taking notes and tossing ledes around in your head while you wait to see if the lone breakaway actually makes it all the way to the line. But there are moments on the sideline, too, watching the poor soggy sonofabitch churn past in a spray and counting the seconds until the chase arrives.
Meanwhile, there are some very nervous dope fiends in Sacramento today, wondering how the hell they can quietly and quickly dispose of a one-off, $10,000 time trial bike belonging to a certain Texan without going to the stripey hole for felony theft. That wasn’t some college kid’s single-speed you lifted there, meth-for-brains.
Mad Blog Media 
We are a cable-less household (and shop) so I was relying on the Adobe feed on the interwebs, which was lousy.
Who won?
Doper Fransesco Mancebo of Rock Racing. At least he was wearing a gray, generic (Nashbar?) rain jacket, so Michael’s Ball didn’t get too much pub. Livestrong and the Ruskies chased hard but couldn’t catch the break. Seems like a weather repeat of last year’s ToC.
Boz–good point about the generic rain jacket. Which leads to the question, why not cool custom rain jackets? I know I don’t have the money for custom rain gear, but I would expect more from the pros.
Pretty pathetic/funny that Lance’s TT bike was stolen last night. He seemed to take it well. He made a good point that it’s going to be hard to show up anywhere in public with the bike.
Them denim jackets get awful heavy when they’re wet, Jeff. Plus they’re tough to stuff in a jersey pocket if the sun ever comes out. A guy winds up looking like the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Considering that they finished out the backdoor of the state capitol yesterday, I’d say one of the mush for brains politicos took Lance’s bike. Face it, they would not know what it was worth, it’s a one-off, or how to shift it. Hell, they can’t even do their own j-o-b. Actually, I’d bet that it’s hanging in someone’s garage waiting for them to part it out. You’d be amazed at the whack jobs in this town….and I’m not talking about the meth-addict former bike pros (or politicos either for that matter).
Stage two run to Santa Cruz should be interesting tomorrow. Some nasty little bumps in the road before the run to Surf City USA. I’m sure the “trannies” will love the geeks on bikes, cause the locals won’t give a flying fig.
I figured out one potentially useful tid-bit from the whole stolen bikes thing: if you really want to score some nice bikes at a race, look for the unmarked van behind the team hotel. Don’t bother with any van, truck or bus with a fancy paint job. This might come in handy considering that I haven’t had a useful paycheck in awhile.
Seriously, I suspect the bad guys got the bikes home and then discovered what they had grabbed out of the darkened back of the unmarked van. By now, if they’re smart, they’ve given up on making any cash off the TT bike and have instead cut that bike into iddy-biddy carbon and SRAM pieces, stuffed all of the pieces in a cardboard box and tossed the box into a dumpster in Bakersfield. Pity, I could use a new set of wheels too.
The TT bike is on its way to a very private collection in (name of country with unethical wealthy people). It will never be seen again. The other bikes are just a cover and will show up shortly in the possession of some clueless types who will claim over and over that they just found them.
And I bet someone is already writing a work of fiction with just that story line. Patrick, isn’t time you wrote a real book?
I’m thinking some night security guy will find that bike chained to a post outside the Greyhound station.
Speaking of high value fuck-ups, check this out.
LONDON — A potentially catastrophic incident involving two nuclear submarines, one French and the other British, was narrowly averted earlier this month when the two boats collided in mid-Atlantic, reports in the British and French news media said on Monday, quoting sources in the two defense ministries…The two submarines are at the core of their countries’ nuclear forces, each carrying a battery of intercontinental ballistic missiles equipped with multiple warheads.
Big ocean, little boat, my ass.
Not sure if it’s true or not, but there’s a story that back in 1890, there were only two cars registered in the whole state of Ohio. And one day they ran into each other.
Maybe the British boat was driving on the wrong side of the reef?
You gotta wonder if this would have happened if the Brits drove on the “correct” side of the road, eh? Wonder what they do in the Chunnel? Change the rules half way across?
The chunnel’s a double-decker. The french drive on the top and the Brits take the bottom half.
Got a buddy in England who still freaks out whenever you mention the Chunnel. ‘e’s convinced rabies is going to go rampant in the UK now.
Anyone timing this? How long did it take to get to eBay?
http://cgi.ebay.com/TRAK-TREK-bicycle-used-1274-super-fast_W0QQitemZ190287574443QQcmdZViewItemQQptZRoad_Bikes?hash=item190287574443&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1205%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318%7C301%3A0%7C293%3A1%7C294%3A50
Ebay…I just about died laughing, SteveO’…
O-ho, O’Grady-o. Merrill and I got roped into a couple hours of wet wheelies today by four women from Chicago — Team BH — who came out for yesterday’s crit and have been staying with Theresa and me. They dragged our soggy asses through the Alexander and Dry Creek valleys until we looked like a couple of middle-aged prunes. We was rode hard and put away wet. Or at least put away wet. Sonoma County hasn’t yet impressed the midwesterners…
So how’s the basement doing, Patrick?
Today’s Velonews letters includes “Was this called for?
“The others, belonging to Janez Brajkovic, Steve Morabito and Yaroslav
Popovych, are indistinguishable from the jillions of other Madone 6.9 Pros
ridden to mid-pack finishes in industrial-park crits worldwide by
potbellied masters racers. ”
Sure, we may have never been god-like pros, but describing what is probably the MAJORITY OF YOUR RACING SUBSCRIBERS as “potbellied” was inaccurate, unnecessary and demeaning.
This subscriber would suggest that you choose your words a bit better.
John Strasser
Apparently, the writer doesn’t realize that you include yourself in that characterization – Old guys who…”
Demeaning? Oh, the pain, the devastating loss of face. Or gut, I suppose.
Fer chrissakes. Spare me the fragile ego crowd.
More $$$ than brains….or feelings is more like it.
Old(ish), Fat (that’s F-A-T, not P-H-A-T) and no longer racing!!
Except that I don’t look as old as I claim to a lot of people. Some of the same people claim that I’m “big boned.” And that I do race since I know something about Lance Armstrong.
More $$$ than brains….