Tour of Missouri - Stage 4

If it's Friday, it must be Columbia...Columbia, Missouri that is...Greetings from Columbia, home of Mizzou! Today's stage was absolutely routine for our group. I woke up around 7:15 this morning for our 9:30am departure. To my suprise, at 7:45, I got a text from Virginia asking me to be at their hotel across the street (remember, I transfered to the Drury to avoid near death due to the mold and chemicals apparently in the room at the Oasis reject shanty), the Oasis around 8:15 so we could go get breakfast. I quickly got out of bed, dressed, and packed and was at the Oasis by 8:10 to pick up the other two. I met up with Jenn in the parking lot and after loading the car, the four of us headed to Waffle House. We had intended to grab something small and hit the road for our three hour trek to Columbia. We decided against that and sat down to eat. Two of the boys from Road Magazine showed up. (So quick! Run to RoadMagazine.net and watch the Waffle House Cronicles!) After a Waffle and a quick laugh with the boys from Road, we hit the road (no pun intended). I plugged the finish line into the GPS and saw that our trip included mostly highways. Due to the fact that I was on my cell phone and missed an exit apparently, we took our next exit which was in fact Route 66! So we wound up on Route 66 for about six miles before it met with the course. Wow, the riders were taking a little stint on that historic highway and were in for a treat...not to mention the winds blowing and the considerably cooler day. The rest of our drive was really scenic. We drove through an awesome area called Osage Beach located near the Lake of the Ozarks. It's a really cool area and to my amazement, had a lot of really neat boats EVERYwhere! (I really like expensive boats.)When we finally got to Columbia, it was a typical morning of setting up the tent. We didn't have quite as much to do this morning since the clean up crew yesterday somehow got all of our banners with theirs which meant three less huge banners for me to put up. We also got to the tent only about forty-five minutes before we had to open for business. But the race today seemed a little more interesting and the racers actually seemed to be racing. The crowds even seemed to return! Of course, it's a college town that's preparing for it's first home football game of the season tomorrow, so plenty of folks were in town to catch the show. Today even proved interesting with yet more counterfeit VIP passes. One of the passes is actually printed out at home and in all common sense looks totally fake! Folks who use them say they get them from Felt Bicycles, who turns out to be a sponsor of the Tour. Well, Jim Felt, owner of Felt Bikes hangs around the tent everyday so the rule was today to go to Virginia or him when faced with one of these passes. He quickly got to the bottom of one of the culprits! But others came in from different vendors. Someone had even printed the normal VIP pass on cardstock on a home printer. HORRIBLE! It even had the pixels and printer lines in it! Another big joke is one of the daily faces we see at the Tour, Lt. Gov. Peter Kiddner. It's truly hard to think that this guy is actually up for re-election. We get comments daily about him mistreating our volunteers or hitting on the podium girls. Everyday, we notice him almost forcefully pushing his way through the crowd and into the Hospitality area. Our protocol is to check IDs, check credentials or tickets, and finally, after receiving a wrist band, you may enter. He refuses to accept the wristband and pushes past our volunteers, sometimes flashing his credential in someone's face, who try to do their jobs. Not to mention, yesterday we were told that he is yet to show up to the event sober! Two days already, I've noticed him approaching our caterer and saying only "Miller Light." No "Please", "thank you", but in a stern voice. He does this after we've already closed down. I guess he just doesn't realized that these are his voters he is mistreating and embarrasing himself in front of.Today really had a great finish. It was neat to watch Saunier Duval's Brazillian rider win with a bike throw across the line. He even took two laps of the finish line with a Brazil flag to massive cheers from the crowd.Tomorrow we get a step closer to St. Louis, and I'm kind of sad about that. I really don't want this Tour to end. I'm having a great time working with Hospitality and just as much fun meeting folks like Darach McQuaid (who wouldn't love hanging out with his squeeky, Irish accent?!) And of course, he and Sean Petty are shaddows of eachother, so if you hang out with one, you've got the other.So I'm going to check on my laundry in the dryer upstairs. Thank goodness we have considerably better housing tonight at the Drury in Columbia where we can have a good, free breakfast and nice, expensive laundry options. Till tomorrow...Getting her kicks on Route 66,JC