AMGEN® Tour of California 2009
Leg 1 of the AMGEN® Tour of California cycling race (the most significant cycling race outside of Europe, dare we say, Le Tour de France? 
is underway today, from Davis (home of the University of California, Davis) to Santa Rosa. The official site has a scrolling “Play by Play” with occasional codes that are good for discounts on tour merchandise, information on TV schedules, an Online Tour Tracker, the AMGEN® Tour of California Store, video of news conferences, and, for all of you fantasists out there (hey, I’ve worked for a few), fantasy cycling (and YOU thought “fantasy cycling” was cycling while texting or cell phoning)! You can even vote for your pick of likely winner for each leg (sorry, online betting is probably somewhere else ).
Since we have scattered rain in the area, you can look at Doppler radar here (it looks VERY NASTY, with heavy rain, as I write this), and at the National Weather Service radar here.
(Note added February 16, 2009: It WAS really nasty out there! Soggy riders dried out for the second leg TODAY. Not only that but Lance Armstrong’s one-of-a-kind bicycle was STOLEN from a team trailer (along with 3 bikes of his teammates) in Sacramento after Saturday’s trials and before Leg 1 began on Sunday. On Sunday, Armstrong improved from 10th to 5th place overall, after suffering a puncture. When it rains, it pours.)
The Tour will pass directly behind my home in Livermore during Leg 3, on Tuesday.
As long as the race is held during February in the future, it will be unlikely to have any legs through California’s Sierra Nevada (which is under a heavy and increasing layer of snow right now), but the varied topography of California will continue to make the race a challenging and exciting one for the world’s cyclists and spectators!
-Bill at Cheshire Cat Photo™
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