I'm in love...

...with George Hincapie! Alright, alright. Don't get any ideas but the man is quite handsome!

After saying our goodbyes to Hans & Tessel at 8AM this morning, we hit the road, the Matrix packed with our Race Fan gear - chairs, snacks, and cameras. We hit what we thought was the morning commute traffic in San Diego but as it turned out, the traffic was due to a pretty bad fender-bender . The weird part was that upon a closer look, Christie recognized one of the folks involved as the Executive Administrative Assistant to PETCO's EVP. Really, how weird is that. Despite the traffic woes following us into LA, we were treated to the amazing white capped San Bernardino mountains along the route. It was simply beautiful.

We stopped in Downey for gas, prostitutes, and (free) hub caps on the side of road. We're kidding about the prostitutes. And, the free hub caps. But we saw it all. Claustrophobia took the best of us while driving on the 101 as trucks and loosey goosey steering wheels closed in on us. All the while, Anna took "what to blog" notes on a magazine subscription form not prepared for how much Christie was going to dictate to her.

12:40PM, Santa Barbara, CA. We were stressed. The race was set to be over at 3:30. Sigh. San Luis Opisbo, Astascadero, and finally Paso Robles. We arrived at 2:30PM and were already looking for Lance Armstrong (Live Strong!). It was immediate that we caught race fever, especially Christie who began inspecting the festival booths for cool (and free!) goods and peering into the crowds to find Lance, Levi, George, Ivan...anyone. We huddled and strategized to decide that Anna should position herself along the sidelines and Christie at the end of the race route (for photo ops of course). Anna saw most of the action - she watched Lance Armstrong cross the finish line, was within two feet of George Hincapie (say cheese!), and other riders. Christie didn't see much but told the crowd the racers had no brakes. Confused, naturally, with the indoor track circuit.

Once the race was over, our enthusiasm continued. We watched the awards ceremonies, saw Levi ride through crowds, and watched Mark Cavendish leave the doping tent. He's clean (we hope) and really great with his fans signing a bunch of hats and posters. As the crowd and racers dispersed, we headed to the hotel and discovered that we were sharing the Holiday Inn Express with the entire fleet of moto photo journalists riders (including the marshall!) and CHP for the Tour. They took up half the parking lot. Seriously.

We don't want to miss any of the action tomorrow and continue to strategize the hows and wheres we should sit tomorrow to get the best view possible.

Thanks for listening....CIAO for now!