Big Sur Racing & Camping Blowout

Stage 4 of the Amgen Tour of California, bitches. J__ came down from Santa Cruz to join me and the kids. We scrambled to swap cars and get food/ice/beer/gas/water out the door by 9:30am. Last year we watched the start in Seaside (in the pouring rain), and the year before that, watched along the Big Sur coastline. Lesson learned, and this year we headed down the coast again. Here's us prepared...



Click that and see what N wrote for Homeboy Taylor Tolleson. Partially unreadable: "GO Taylor YOU ROCK Beat them senseless with your awesome power! YAAA!!!" She's insane.

J and J__ waiting for the peloton...(notice J's raincoat hood paperclipped to his down jacket hood, and recognize)


Lead group. Maybe 18 second gap...
and there they go.

Main body...Astana controlling the front
Closer...I tried to hand up a beer. No takers. A CSC rider (is Jens Voigt riding for them now?) looked at me like I had 3 heads. Satisfaction. [later...yes, he is, and that was him. Even sweeter.]

And there they go.






Somebody with a mechanical.
Wheel swap?



So that was quick. We hung out there roadside for a while. Long enough to actually have a taker on the beer handup- some tourer (fully loaded) was stoked to hit the feed zone. Which reminds me, on the way down there was a group of maybe 7 guys in full Rock&Republic kits sandwiched between 2 team Escalades (yes, blocking front and rear) followed by a blacked out Bentley holding up traffic down HWY 1 at 25 miles an hour max. SO LAME. All the regular motorists were clearly confused as to whether these guys were in the race, and wouldn't pass. Neither would these (I can only assume:) rich _uckheads using the opportunity to play pro at everyone else's expense pull over. I began a campaign of extended honking, and finally the 2 cars between these jackasses and myself wised up and passed. Just another blackmark for that team in my book.


We'd planned on camping, so we parted ways from J__, and drove further South. Roughly 3,000 feet above the coastline, we pulled up to the spot, and set up the tent. As you've seen, it was drizzling on and off (mostly on) throughout the day, but there was blue sky to be seen, so we hoped for the best. Nothing ventured and all that. N found a salamander right away. I've been up there many times, and never seen one, so that was neat...


The weather worsens...
It kept getting wetter and windier, until the kids were soured completely. When I wrecked my hand trying to launch D's kite (the wind whipped the kite up and the spinning reel hurt when I stupidly tried to grab it and stop the runaway kite with my cold hand), I was soured completely as well. D and N both slipped in the mud on the way back downhill to the campsite and were covered from the waist down with tan clay. We broke the tent down in the cold rain amidst lots of lame yelling (me), and pouty exaggerated helplessness (them). Then N and D stood on their coats and stripped out of their wet and muddy clothes for the ride back. It was for the best that we left. On the way down ( low 4wd) we exited the cloud. This is looking up and East where we'd camped, and you can see the cloud...(that's my collar blown up/into the picture)


This is lower down the road looking North along the coastline...

And then we limped home with me rolling down my window every few minutes to get cold enough to stay awake...

Success?

[later...happy to see some of the riders thought it was the worst day on a bike ever]