Last week, I mentioned that I was embarking on quite a bit of travel. In fact, when it’s all said and done, I will have spent the majority of May in places other than home. What a whirlwind!
While most of the travel is work-related, over the weekend I headed down to the Bay Area to meet 2Chili to spectate the first stage of the Amgen Tour of California pro bike race. We’re big cycling fans, and this race is the closest to European stage racing that we have Stateside.
Stage 1 of the week-long affair started and finished in Santa Rosa, about 45 minutes north of San Francisco. 2Chili grew up in the Bay Area (mostly) and we have spent a lot of time together in SF and surrounding areas, so it is almost like a third home to us (Seattle and Bend coming in at 1 & 2). I flew in early Saturday morning (he had driven ahead with Pipa) and we hit all our regular haunts before heading out of the city and into the suburbs.
We were treated to both the “fogged in” and “fog free” views of the City by the Bay.
Santa Rosa is in the heart of Sonoma County Wine Country, and made a great setting for bike racing.
We saw the race at a few different spots, but for our final viewing spot of the day, we went deep into the mountains in search of a good photo opportunity, and perhaps some discarded water bottles. When we saw the team van for the RadioShack Nissan team around the 70 mile point in the race, we decided that would be a good place to hang out, because riders discard their bottles just prior to picking up new ones from team support workers. As it turned out, this spot was the beginning of the TV coverage and landed us on TV during the NBC race coverage a few times!
Here we are in the middle of absolute nowhere (but in reality only about 10 minutes from Hwy 1) cheering the boys as they go by. Well, I was cheering and ringing my cowbell (what is a race without cowbell?) and 2Chili is taking photos. You may wonder why we were wearing long pants and coats in California – let me tell you, Northern California can be quite cold, especially when it is foggy. At about 52 degrees, it was pretty chilly out!
This week I’m back in Bend for a few days, but am heading back up to Seattle again over the weekend for a while. June is promising to be much more mellow!
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ooh how fun. I’ve never been to that part of CA, and it just seems like another world, it’s so gorgeous.