ATOC - Day 1

I have been fortunate enough to land a pretty sweet gig helping out with the routing and signs crew at the Amgen Tour of California.

I had absolutely no idea what I was going to be in for - all I knew was that I'd likely be in one of the follow cars and the crew essentially set up and tore down courses. I figured - why not? I've never been to CA and being behind the scenes of a pro-race could be really cool. So, here I am, typing this right now on my phone from a quaint little lodge in South Tahoe on the eve of the first stage.

The trip out went as expected. Spending 8hrs - a full workday- playing planes, trains and automobiles is enough to make anyone lose some personality. I did have a partner in crime to travel with, but he spent most of the plane ride(s) trying to sleep. The one moment of panic came after we were already in the air on the first flight. I knew our connection was in Denver but the pilot welcomed us to 'a non-stop to St. Louis'.  At that point there was nothing to be done but I wondered how the super-duper security at BWI could possibly let us get on the wrong flight. Eventually we asked the stewardess (that had as much personality as those bland, processed cookies she was handing out) who looked at us like we were crazy but assured us we were on the right flight.

As an aside, when did airlines start hawking Monster energy drinks?

An hour layover in Denver gave us enough time to grab lunch and off we went to Reno.  I walked out of the walkway into the airport and didn't go 10 ft before seeing the first set of slot machines.  Welcome to Nevada! We both had a couple of quarters and figured we'd drop one in. Hey, when in Rome, right? Then we realized these slot machines don't take coins - what is this world coming to!?!?

Fast forward to meeting up with the rest of our 8-man crew ... great bunch of people with a collective wicked sense of humor. This is going to be fun!

Pick up official clothing. Pick up credentials. Sign forms for driving rental vehicles (in our case, brand new F150s). Start loading the gazillion signs and posts etc we'd need.  Finally food was in order so we went to the hotel casino/restaurant ... I forget how lucky we are in our area that you can't smoke indoors ... by the time we were finished, it was 1230am local time - 330 my time and I was fading fast.

I can't figure out how to post pics via phone yet ... day 2 update tomorrow.