Today was a really short but sweet day. Today's stage 5 started in Dalton, hometown of Credit Agricole rider Saul Raisin. The town was really active for today's stage. All of the shops in downtown Dalton "adopted" a team and decorated their store windows for that team. Some of the stores' employees even wore team t-shirts. Everytime we roll through this town, you can really tell that they are excited about the race being in their town and are eager to support it.

So today's stage started at 11am on it's way to Brasstown Bald, the 5km monster of Georgia. It's really hard to tell how intense this mountain is until you go there and see it for yourself. I've never actually seen a stage from the Observation Deck of Brasstown Bald...until today. I was so amazed when my friend gave me a pass to drive up the mountain. The pass is a window decal labeled "BB". Two special decals are made for the time trial, labeled "TT" and Brasstown Bald, "BB". These decals are the only thing that allows a vehicle onto the course or up the mountain. The GSP can't even get on these roads without this decal. (Powerful stuff!) The mountain is really tough to get up, even when you have a decal. At a certain time of day, the local athorities close down the roads (Spur 180 leading up the mountain) to ALL traffic (minus the folks with the decal). Even with the roads closed, you have to contend with cyclist and spectators on foot just to get to the parking deck (located at 1km to go). So in order to get there on time, I left shortly before the start of today's stage. I sort of regret being able to see Saul lead the peloton on a parade lap of the town. I always brag about Saul and I'll keep saying that it is so great to see him anytime on a bike. But if the rest of the staff was already leaving, I figured that I shold leave as well. After writing down the directions for the Alternate Route (there's always an alternate route mapped out in our technical manual that allows us to proceed to the finish line [hopefully] ahead of the peloton) and putting the directions onto my atlas, I left town for a two hour drive to the Bald. When I got up there, parked my car, and caught a VIP van to the Observation Deck, I still had about two or three hours before the peloton arrived. The alternate route really works!!!

So when I got to the VIP area atop Brasstown, the news came in that there was a small break dangling around about 4 minutes. It seemed like forever before the two spectators, Dave and Jeff finally showed up on the top. I learned today that they start speakng 90 minutes before the first rider arrives. For the first time in my life, I was happy to hear the cheesy music and Dave told chime in. By the time the break reached the bottom of the climb, 5km to go, their lead was down to about 2 minutes. Just before the excitement was going on down the mountain, we got a few VIPs on top. The first minivan brought none other than Bob Roll and Phil Liggett. Folks were easily excited to see these two. The next minivan, just minutes later brought a suit-clad group of three, and out stepped Floyd Landis. Jeff and Dave had a wonderful time interviewing Floyd for about ten minutes before letting him walk the gauntlet of fans up to the Observation Tower. Dave and Jeff spent so much time talking about the breakaway, it seemed like they were totally shocked to see a group containing Levi, Tom, and Simoni coming up the mountain and Levi attacking hard with about 3 or 4 km to go. If you check out my pictures, you'll see one picture of a few guys standing on the edge overlooking the parking deck of Brasstown Bald. You'll see a road in the background with a few sets of car lights noticible. Those lights are the vehicles following Levi! So we could almost see him approaching the 1km to go. It didn't feel like too much longer before he was rounding the corner coming to the finish line, and one by one, sometimes two by two, more riders crested the Bald and crossed the finish line with the crowd screaming for every one of them.

One note about the crowd though...it doesn't take the folks who do the statistics to realize that the crowds that were here to cheer on Lance two years ago are no longer here. Rumor has it that there are 1/5 of the fans that were here last year. Where'd they all go?! It's a sad thing to see.

That's all I have to report today. I'm still working on getting my few decent pictures set up to post on my site. Otherwise, as usual, any questions, comments, jokes about the wicked fast start at the criterium last Monday, feel free to e-mail me.

Aloha!

Tour de Georgia 2007 - Stages 1-3

Stage 1
Morning morning was calm, but exciting. By the time I got up, packed things up, and was hanging out in the lobby around 8am, folks including Gary, Chris, the Tour doctors, and a few others were just coming in from a morning run (Gary told me the night before that he refuses to go out and run anything less than five miles!) The Course Marshals were already huddling around the lobby getting ready for the day to start. I left the hotel a bit early heading to Waffle House (a great Tour sponsor!) for a big breakfast, then headed down to Macon for my first race of the season (and my first time on a bike in two and a half months!!! Ouch!) Before the Tour rolls into town, Macon hosts the Susan G Komen Crits. There’s a Cat 3/4 and a Pro 1/2 race, both lasting 45 minutes plus five laps. This is the first time in a long time that I’ve actually been nervous about a crit, not to mention my first race with my new team, Bookoo Cycling! All I could think about on the drive down was how I was going to start the race. I told my teammate that, of course I hadn’t been on a bike in two months, so no question that I was out of shape. So my plan was that I was going to go hard right from the gun. I’d probably only last for a few minutes at that pace, but at least I’d hopefully breakup the field and make the race interesting for others. So come start time, I did exactly that. I’d never had such a great feeling start in my career (so far). I was slightly off the front until turn to when…BANG! I seemed to hit a brick wall and the energy totally left. Just like I told my teammate, I’d be off the back soon, and that’s exactly what happened. The few girls that followed me were the ones who’d make the eventual break and podium of the day. I finished the race and was proud of myself for doing that. But by the time I got back to my car, I truly realized why my doctor told me to stay off a bike!!! (But a week full of a sore/stiff back is certainly worth the price of being on a bike again.)

The Tour rolled into town on schedule. I’ll honestly say that I didn’t see much of the circuits because I was talking to some of other staff members, but from a few rows back, I saw the final sprint which was very exciting. You could hear Contrini yell out over the crowd. After the podium presentations were done and the town cleared out, I joined the marshals for dinner at Luigis for some great Italian eatin’! Macon always treats the staff to dinner, giving them coupons at some of the local restaurants, and Luigis has always been the number 1 choice of the Traveling Course Marshals.

Stage 2
I got to Thomaston early to watch the start of Stage 2. I like to get there early because I like to see all of the preparation that goes into stage racing whether it’s the riders, the race staff, or the town. I hung around the stage area talking to a friend, the local Volunteer Coordinator. I eventually moved over to the Comm cars and tried to help Nelson Vails find a new “Comm 2” sticker for his car. His had flown off earlier in the week and if there’s any car in the caravan that needs to have ALL decals ON the car, it’s the Comm vehicles! After talking to Nelson, I went down the row of vehicles and spoke to another Comm driver that I know, John Kelly. Not too long after, riders started coming down to sign in, so I stood around to get a few pictures. Low and behold, someone walked up to me and said “War Eagle” (my third War Eagle so far in the Tour!) I turned around and saw Ginger and Nick, two of the current Flyers who’d come to see the start of the race. As the riders staged at the start line, it seemed like Nick was recognizing a lot of the riders and Ginger was more intrigued by the bikes they were on. After the start and parting ways with Nick and Ginger, I jumped in my car to go to my favorite place on the course, the Feed Zone! I hadn’t planned my route to well and I either got stuck on the wrong highway, caught behind the race, or stuck right when the very beginning of the race envelope came through. A little explination on the “Race Envelope”…The race envelope can be anywhere between a mile on a flat stage and 10+miles long on a mountain stage. It starts with what we call a “10 minute car”, a Georgia State Patrol (GSP) car that stays ten minutes ahead of the leader on the course. Following sometime after the 10 minute car is quite a few motorcycles including “moto” marshals. If there’s something on the course and there’s no course marshal near, a moto marshal can make a stop to take care of the problem. More GSP cars may be in this group as well. And there may be VIP cars carry those VIPs to the Finish Line after watching the race up close. Also, there’s a truck with speakers mounted to the top. These guys drive ahead to the group and let spectators know what’s going on in the race. Then comes the race itself! After the peloton comes through, a rainbow of team cars FLY (fly, speed, zoom, etc.!) by behind the race, sometimes with riders mixed among the cars who’ve either fallen off the pace or are coming back from a mechanical or other stop. Mixed among these cars are four Comm vehicles holding Commisaires that monitor different areas of the race. Immediately behind the caravan is Broom Wagon followed by emergency vehicles and an “End of Convoy” van driven by the GSP. This is the final vehicle in the “race envelope”. The Traveling Marshal’s vehicles may sometimes tag on behind the race, behind the End of Convoy van, but they aren’t considered in the “envelope”. There’s so much about the envelope that is a working machine, whether it’s the position of the motos, the position of the Comms, or even the vehicles that’ve stopped for any reason and have to rejoin the envelope. (Any questions about this “machine”? E-mail me and I’ll answer as well as I can and if I can’t answer it, I’ll go to someone who can.)

So I finally made it ahead of the peloton! I arrived in Rome with about 45 minutes to spare!!! (I don’t know how I did it!) Again, I found myself behind a row of spectators talking to members of the staff. (That doesn’t work well for taking pictures…) The only bit of the finish that I saw was Stevic coming down the hill to the finish line ahead of the pack. I left early, not seeing too much of the podium. My task was to get a hotel room ASAP, before they were all gone. Even then was too late. I wound up in Dalton for the night, half an hour away. The Tour itself was taking up three hotels, then I guess fans and spectators took the other few decent hotels. I’m sure there were a few choice hotels in Rome, but from experience, I’ll gladly drive half an hour for a decent nights sleep.

Stage 3
Wednesday was a pretty interesting day for me. I learned from my mistakes and bought a Georgia Road Atlas and planned out my day by the atlas and race log. I decided not to see the start that day, but instead I planned on getting on the course an hour ahead of the peloton. I drove the entire course until I got to…FINALLY…the Feed Zone. I got there around half an hour before the day’s breakaway was schedule to be there and parked on a hill slightly past the Feed Zone. I walked back to the feed zone to talk with some friends that I don’t get to see often, soigners from the European teams like Richard from Discovery. One thing he and I talked about was the size and quality of some of the roads. The roads before the sprint line were tiny! Barely large enough for two cars to pass each other. One of those roads was incredibally rough. Richard told me that a lot of the roads they pass over in Europe are actually a bit larger than that. They’re often on major highways! Nothing quite as small as the feed zone (a four lane road).

So the 13-man breakaway came flying through the feedzone with Jani Brajkovic of Discovery leading. Only a few people had slowed down to get food. When they passed me, Brajkovic pulled off, pulling all the way across the four lane road and seemed like he was heading straight for me. He then straightened up and continued with the group. The peloton followed about ten minutes later. When they passed, I was outside of my car taking pictures. When they passed, I heard two or three guys call out my name and two water bottles and a mussette bag came flying my way. Over the last year, I’ve found out that these folks really do recognize the staff. Some of them we talk to often so they know us fairly well. The fact that they were taking time to call my name and toss “goodies” my way (I got a full lunch out of one of those bags!) shows that the peloton may have decided by then to shut down and let the break go. After the envelope followed, I jumped back in my car and followed the race for about six or seven miles before jumping on another highway and heading north to catch up with the race again before heading back to the Finish line. While following the race, I recognized the roads as the roads that my team, Bookoo Cycling uses for our winter training camps leaving out of Mentone, AL. I was so surprised that I was so familiar with those roads that it made me laugh. When I caught up with the course again at the third KOM, the breakaway had extended it’s gap to twenty minutes. I watched the break go through and decided not to wait for the peloton to go through, and headed to the finish line. I caught up with the race course (ahead of the breakaway) on top of Lookout Mountain. Coming down it, I was so eager to stay ahead of the race vehicles that I burned the breaks on my car coming down the mountain. That was the first time I’d ever done that! (It was kind of scary too!) I followed the course until 3km to go then I turned off to park my car and get to the finish line. The finish in downtown Chattanooga is neat. There is a very large open grassy field. On one side of the field is the expo and on the other is the expo parking (and beside that is the team parking). The giant video screen (that shows the race throughout the day) was set up between the grassy field and the finish line. I hung out in that area with my friend Sid, and we realized…watching the screen really was the best view…so much easier than fighting for a place against the railing. So the breakaway came to the finish line and the crowd was going crazy! The announcers had been screaming about the time gap for a while, so the crowd knew that one of these thirteen guys would be the race winner by Sunday. Again, as loud as the crowd was, I was close enough to the road to hear Meersman scream as he crossed the line. He’s done so well in Europe this year, it’s really cool to see his first pro win. After the break crossed the line, Jeff Roark, one of the announcers said “Hang tight folks. I’m going to arrange my sock drawer. When I return, we’ll still be waiting for the peloton.” Ok, I admit, I laughed! The crowds left the finish line while a few stayed behind to watch the peloton on the screen. They returned almost half an hour later to see the field come cruising in. For the entire thirty minutes, Meersman sat on the top step leading to the stage with a huge grin on his face. He even stayed there while other riders took the podium before he actually climbed up there.

One funny note: In the feed zone, the Jittery Joes car was speeding to catch up with the breakaway. The car flew by me and I remember wondering how fast he was really going…but of course he wouldn’t get a speeding ticket. When I was reading the penalties for the day (this part of the results always makes you laugh), I read that Johan Bruyneel of Discovery was actually penalized 200 Swiss Francs (the official currency of the UCI) for driving in excess of 90mph (rumor is he was driving 92mph) and will not be able to drive the vehicle during Stage 5. (One rumor has it that he’s actually banned from the car entirely on Stage 5.) GSP- 1, Discovery-0.

Stage 4
The Time Trial. The Race of Truth. The Race Against the Clock. The course started again in Chickamauga and finished atop Lookout Mountain. Again, I got to the finish line to watch the teams roll in and set up camp. It’s funny how at 10:15 things will look so disorganized and at 10:30am, everything runs like clockwork. The first riders to head out to take a look at the course were a few of the Discovery riders. They seemed to be the most serious about today’s race. So when the first riders went off, I was standing at the same spot as last year, the very first turn on the course. After about twenty minutes and realizing that I’d parked my car in a place that I couldn’t get it out of (while the race was going on) I decided to walk down to the next turn and chat with a friend of mine who was positioned on that corner. When I got there, I got a laugh at Ekimov, the legend, loading the team’s luggage into their team minivan. Is this what really happens when you retire? You become the bag boy? (Nope, not for Ekimov. He saw me laughing, made a joke about it, and got a kick out of it himself. At least I found out he remembers my name! Friends tease friends, right?) At one point in the race, Andy and I saw George Hincapie come screaming down the road and through the corner. But he had no follow car nor was he schedule to roll yet. He was serious about his preparation for this race. Andy said “You see that?! He *wants* to win today!” A while later, George comes back, riding in opposite race direction. You’d think he’d know better. He almost collided with a racer on the course coming around the corner. A little while later, George took the start. A minute later he was followed by Dave Zabriskie. I got a laugh out of a few marshals when I said “What is George Hincapie thinking right now knowing that Dave Zabriskie is one minute behind him?” And another laugh when I said “What is Dave Zabriskie thinking going up Lookout Mountain knowing that Tommy D is one minute behind him?!”

One of the best things that I saw today was my buddy Saul Raisin come riding upto the course. And like George, he continued riding the course backward to the starting area. If you don’t keep up with Saul Raisin, he’s the Credit Agricole rider who crashed in the Circuit de la Sarthe last year and was in a coma for six days. If you have to ask how he’s doing today, your answer is seeing him ride up to the course today after riding over from Dalton. He’s doing great and he’s back into his training regimine. His plan is to come back to racing at the US Pro Championships in September. He said “I don’t just want to come back at the US Pros. I want to WIN US Pro!!!” If you just sit down with Saul and have a ten minute conversation about cycling, you’ll know that he means what he said. Check out SaulRaisin.com for updates, etc.

Well, that’s it for now. Hopefully more to come tomorrow after the leg breaking stage from Dalton to Brasstown Bald. As always, I welcome questions. Anything you want to know. If I can’t answer it, I’ll do my best to find someone who can answer it. And soon I’ll have my pictures posted up at gillejc.smugmug.com.

Aloha!

Day 1 - Tour de Georgia 2007

…No, not Stage 1, Day 1 for me. I got to Atlanta on Thursday night and after a six hour drive from Southern Mississippi (six hours) and having a guy from North Mississippi rear end my car near the Atlanta Airport (again, two bikes on the back of the car; my luck!!! [ed. The bikes are ok, minor derailer malfunctions.]), I got to my hotel and prepared for a long week. I got to the Atlanta Airport Marriott (right next door to my own hotel) at about 9am Friday to start my day in the transportation office of the Tour de Georgia. From experience, I knew not to go to the office, but directly to a large parking lot set aside for the Tour where some folks were already decaling cars. I joined in on the fun with a few other volunteers. Decaling cars involves putting the Tour de Georgia decals along with sponsor decals on certain parts of the car. After that, we put the stickers on the windshields that identify the cars or the people inside them. These stickers include Comms 1-3 (Commissaires), VIPs, Tech Director, Venue Director, Race Director, (all different kinds of directors!), Staff, Marshals, etc. We start off with nearly 150+ cars, although we don’t always keep all of them. Some may be considered “extras” and are sent back to the rental company, in this year’s case it’s Enterprise. So with about eight or nine volunteers, we got the most part of the decaling done in about two and a half hours. That’s record time for me, since I’ve been involved!!! Friday wasn’t too busy with people arriving and picking up their vehicles. Mostly we’d pick up the few folks flying into Atlanta and take them directly to the Wyndham Hotel in Peachtree City, Race HQ for Stage One. I only had to make a handful of runs to Peachtree City that day. We were also supposed to have four Pro Tour teams flying in from Belgium around mid-day Friday. We found out early Friday morning that the Firemen’s Union at the Brussells airport had gone on strike, canceling the flights of Discovery, Prodir, Predictor, and Quick-Step. So, with no teams to pick up, I sat in the Transportation office with Transportation Director, Gary Metcalf, Chris Reed, and the folks from Enterprise all evening until nearly midnight waiting on a few more arrivals.

Saturday morning started somewhat the same, 9am in the office. More folks were filtering in from the airport to pick up their cars and the transportation folks prepared plans to pick up the teams coming in starting at noon. We have a pretty neat arrangement to pick up the athletes from the airport. Here’s what happens…so of course, Atlanta hosted the Olympics in 96. The people at the airport developed a place called “Olympic Circle” for the athletes arriving. It’s sort of a bypass from the terminals so they aren’t bombarded by fans after a long flight and creating a scene with folks wanting to see them, get autographs, etc. So we were given security passes to go through Security checks and go directly to Olympic Circle. For the European teams flying in with lots of cargo, our vans and trucks met them directly on the tarmac. This is where another arrangement, this time with Delta comes in. Delta would take the team’s cargo and place it all into one specific container and put the container into a specific area of the plane. Once the flight lands, the container is taken off of the plane and a member of Customs will come out, inspect everything as it comes out of the container and goes directly into a box truck. This is a pretty neat accommodation to have, especially in the World’s busiest airport.

So just after lunch Saturday, I ran down to Peachtree City to help someone deliver a car down there as well as decal some more cars that left the Marriott before they had a chance to be decaled. We went down there expecting to put a handful of decals on, but wound up finding nearly twenty team minivans as well as the Race Directors cars and a few other trucks needing to be almost completely decaled. Once I was finished, I went back to ATL to pick up Jonathan McCartney of Discovery and take him down to Peachtree City. I got back to ATL around 3:30 to find out there was a 15 passanger van needing to be delivered to Peachtree City. So I took the van back down to Peachtree City to Virginia who needed it to shuttle the Medalist folks to and from the rider presentation, which I volunteered to drive. The skies were already turning grey and a few raindrops were falling so Virginia told me we’d know at 5:15 if the presentation would be called off due to weather. Sure enough, at about 5:10, the bottom fell out!!! So instead of heading to the presentation, groups formed in the lobby and folks started heading out to dinner, riders were seen walking to dinner, stopping to talk to familiar faces, and when Gary got down to Peachtree City, he gave me a ride back to ATL where my car and hotel were.

On Day 3, I woke up a bit earlier to a cold light rain while I packed my car around 8:45am. I was in the office at 9am with Gary and the Enterprise guy, ready for a full day. Most of the cars had actually left Saturday, so there wasn’t much left to do but wait for folks to come pick up the few remaining. Around mid-afternoon, I headed to the airport to pick up a late rider flying in from Milan, Remmert Wielinga of Prodir- Saunier Duval. We talked a lot on the ride down to Peachtree City. He’s a Dutch rider on Prodir living in Monnaco. We talked about racing, fast cars (I was driving a Pontiac G6 that day and he had just bought a BMW M5!!!), cold weather, etc. This really shows that most of the riders are really laid back and cool to talk to before the racing starts, and even during the week. I dropped him off at the Wyndham and immediately got a call from Chris that the Director of the Tour of Missouri (September! Mark your calanders!) was flying in and needed to be picked up. So off I go again to the airport! While I was in the airport waiting for his flight to arrive at the gate, I got another call from Chris saying that a Tinkof doctor had just landed (and was not on the arrival sheet to be picked up). Chris asked what I was wearing so the doctor would know what to look for. I told him I was in an Auburn Flyers sweatshirt holding a Tour de Georgia sign. As soon as I got off the phone with Chris, none other than the Auburn Track and Field team walked out of the gate and up to the baggage claim I was next to!!! About thirty folks wearing Auburn sweatshirts, t-shirts, jackets…Needless to say the doctor found me easily, thank goodness for the Tour de Georgia sign I was holding. Once Mike (from Missouri) arrived, we waited for about twenty minutes for his luggage then loaded up the car to head back down to Peachtree City. Once the car was in motion, the Tinkof doctor was immediately asleep and snoring by the time we got to the interstate. Mike, on the other hand, was very eager to talk about the Tour de Georgia. He was eager to find out my experiences with the staff and organization, the riders, the cities we go through, etc. By the time we got to Peachtree, we were still deep in talking about the Tour, bike racing, etc. But of course he had people to see, things to do…well, you know the deal. So once again, I got back in the car and followed Gary back to Peachtree City to shut down the transportation office at the Marriott until next weekend when we return to Atlanta. After that, I picked up my car and made my final trip down to Peachtree City.