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| From ATOC |
We made our game plan over a good breakfast and quickly went down to this "beach" area to sort signs and start loading trucks for distribution on the course. The views were awesome but we didn't really take into account the wind - so we quickly relocated to a much less scenic but more efficient parking lot. Oh, the glamour of bike racing.
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| From ATOC |
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| From ATOC |
Finally, we drove the entire course, setting out course arrows, marking sprint and KOM lines and generally exploring the course. The view from Tahoe City:
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| From ATOC |
There's a phenomenal coffee shop very near the sprint line so we all know I was a happy kid!
After an "all hands" meeting at 9pm (? that late the day before the first stage?) we made it a pretty early night with the start team's impending 5am wakeup call. Then came Stage 1.
Holy cluster. Thats the only way to put it. Here's the nutshell version: we woke up to this outside our hotel balcony:
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| From ATOC |
The call was supposed to be made by 9am whether we'd go off as planned. We knew by 730 am that the start would be postponed until 1:15pm. The weather was a complete mess at the start so we were sure the mountain and descent would be treacherous. We start pulling course signs to adjust for the shortened course. Then we hear they're eliminating the neutral laps so we have to adjust signs again. With nothing else to do, we sit in the hotel lobby (with everyone else) and ... wait.
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Finally we're in the caravan just waiting for the start. There's the National Anthem and the call ups. The snow and sun have been alternating for the past several hours and at this point the snow was winning. We see the moto's start to roll out, then I see some riders. Ok! Ready - we're gonna finally get this party started!
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| From ATOC |
But the caravan didn't move. We start seeing riders pop out of the parking lot of the hotel and I briefly wondered who screwed up and missed the start of the race. Then the call came over race radio about how we were going to disperse the caravan, where the motos should meet, which roads would remain closed until things got back under control. The race was off.
Now we have to go retrieve all the signs that we put out (for reuse in the next stage). We're going up toward the KOM and the weather is deteriorating FAST. I had heard that the riders protested the start and if they did, I totally support the call. We were following a big group of moto-marshalls when about 12 of them wiped out on a snowy, icy part of the descent. It was lucky we were going to slow and could stop before running them over. Luckily no one was hurt but can you imagine how the cyclists would have fared up there.
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| From ATOC |
We stopped and directed traffic around the mess while they picked up bikes, assessed bike and bodily damage and determined how they would make it down to the fire station to regroup and get rides to their respective hotels.
Several plows and an hour later the moto's actually got back on all of the operating bikes (there were a few broken rides) and more or less coasted down the hill to the fire station. That could have been a lot worse.
We made sure everyone was square and headed on our way. Just getting up to speed, we saw two cyclists on the side of the road that resembled popsicles. I had seen them pass during the moto debacle at least a half hour earlier so they must've been standing there freezing for what seemed like hours. We stopped to pick them up and I'm not sure I've ever seen such grateful cyclists. The ice and snow had frozen on their wheels, brakes etc ... they couldn't even spin the wheels. We gave them lunch and dropped them in Tahoe City, finally heading on our way to reunite with our crew.
What a show.
1 comment:
Horrific weather ....great report.
-Trevor
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