You know that if a professional cycling stage race is coming to Missouri I’d have to go. I was able to see three of the six stages. I almost made it to four, but Gert got sick so we had to skip the circuit race in downtown St. Louis. I’m tired, so I’m okay with it. Gert, however, is PISSED. The girl loves her bike race and, though six, is obsessed with Lance Armstrong. I tell her he’s retired, not racing, probably not even paying attention, but she doesn’t care. He was winning the Tour de France for the last time while she was learning to ride a bike. Somehow he and her bike are intertwined like Luke Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi.
Poor girl is still sick. She’s limp and radiating heat.
My brother in law Darby and I left Wednesday after work, roughly 4 p.m.; appropriately we took the back roads to avoid gridlocked highways and started rolling at a good clip toward Branson, MO the home of wood carved crafts and the old ladies who collect them. Despite the fact that Branson has become the Nashville of Missouri, only without the alcohol, it lays in the middle of a beautiful area of Missouri. Rolling hills, beautiful lakes and enormous spiders.
I had rented an RV in a campground and we rolled in about an hour after the office shut down. We picked up or info and headed to the RV. It was . . . an RV. Strange, yet inviting. The bathroom was tiny. We unloaded the Jeep, unpacked the beer and stole three bundles of firewood from the closed store (which was common and we did pay for it the next morning).
We sat around the fire, sipping beer and talked until well past midnight as the coals were dying down. Darby and I both share the gift of gab and enjoy telling stories, or bullshitting, whatever the moment calls for. I also learned a lot about Gary Busey. Oh yes, Darby, it's on DVD.
The next morning, after being woken by every contractor with loose pipes in his pickup bed who had come careening down the rural road at 6 a.m., Darby decided to use the campground comfort stations to clean up while I opted to try to shower in an RV bathroom because, well, I never had done that before. Let’s just say I now know what it’s like to shower in a submarine. Damn thing was tiny. I plugged up the drain with the shower on and started yelling, "You can't take her below crush depth! We'll all be killed!" If only I had a red light. Subs always have red lights.
We were tired, didn’t sleep well and had stayed up too late after driving. Asses were dragging.
We came up with a plan for the day will eating yogurt and granola. Somehow we had both brought the same breakfast. Go figure. After paying our tab for the campsite (and the ill-gotten firewood) we set off on our tailgating adventure.
Branson’s stage was an individual time trial, which meant we could stake out a spot and sit there for a few hours and just make it an extended tailgate. So, we drove the course and looked for the best spot. We had targeted the King of the Mountains (KOM) section as the best spot and as we were driving through Darby spotted it. The road ends and is closed off. There was a port-a-potty and a perfect vista of the race course. We could go in any direction and see them climbing the steepest part of the course or trying their best to accelerate up toward the finish. Ultimately we were 2 KM from the end.
We unpacked our rolling party, flipped down my tailgate speaker and started listening to some music. We sat, read some magazines, tried to make coffee (freaking 900 watts) and more.
As the race caravan came through to sweep the course, teams came through on recon/warm-up. First was Kodak (who has a really long name and I won’t keep typing it) and Navigators, who were just driving the course. All through the morning cyclotourists came up the KOM climb, riding the course before the pros hit it. As the last one crested the top of the KOM climb, two riders in black and blue came up behind him, overtook him and passed him. Those two riders were race leader George Hincapie and current USPRO national champion, and Tour de France podium finisher, Levi Leipheimer.
As the cyclotourist rode past he looked over to us and said, “That will never happen again in my lifetime!” He has a good story to tell, that’s for sure.
Shortly before the first rider hit the course, a Mavic neutral service vehicle came in to our coned off area and started setting up a pit area, in case riders needed service to finish the race. Turned out they didn’t, but we made a good friend with our Mavic mechanic. He kindly set up the race radio so we could hear the time splits on the course and the results at the line about a mile away.
The first rider hit the course and we had to wait roughly 40 minutes for him to arrive at our spot. After that riders would stream by at regular intervals. I have to say I was impressed by the DFL/Cyclingnews team. They clocked some excellent times early on. That is, until Danny Pate of Team Slipstream hit the course. Pate was blazing, as was his teammate Timmy Duggan. Then came Nathan O’Neill, an Australian with HealthNet who set a blistering pace. He was the first to ride the course in under 40 minutes.
Race radio crackled that Levi Leipheimer was on the KOM so I ran across the road to get a good shot, head on. He came flying past, setting the top speed of the day which would not be topped. Seeing these guys up close, guys I’ve watched on TV was cool. But seeing their faces as they were burying themselves for a time trial was amazing.
As Levi came tearing past, I yelled something stupid and took a picture. He minute man (the rider behind him in general classification) came moving passed us shortly thereafter. A course marshal shouted out, “There’s a fast rider on the course! Dig deep, you can catch Levi!” The rider shot a look of death at the course marshal. Turned out, beyond our vantage point, Levi had passed this rider who was struggling up the KOM climb. According to the race video I saw, he didn’t just pass the poor kid on the US Development team, he rocketed past him like a bat out of hell.
Darren Lill, of Navigators, also cam flying past me. Got a really good picture there.
Ivan Dominguez came shooting past us later. Sean Weide, PR rep for the Toyota/United team told me he had hit a whopping 57 mph on one of the downhill sections. That’s amazing on a time trial bike with a slight crosswind. The man has nerves of steel.
A highlight of the morning was watching Andrew Guptill of Colavita/Sutter Home passing his two-minute man Stefan Parinussa of Sparkasse. Watching that moment is always exciting and sad because Guptill’s face betrayed no emotion, only the focus while Parinussa looked like he was ready to swallow a cat. Considering how much a casual rider hates being passed on a ride, I can only imagine the ire fueled inside a professional in a time trial.
Race radio told us that Frank Pipp was motoring up the KOM, which meant that race leader George Hincapie was not far behind. I ran across the road again and set myself up for the best photo I could get. In jockeying into position I nearly sat on a spider that was roughly the size of my head.
When the helicopter showed up, I knew we were waiting for the race leader and that television cameras would be involved. George came powering past me in yellow at a pretty good clip. Though, it was obvious he wasn’t moving at nearly the speed of Leiphiemer or O’Neill. Shortly after George came the man he passed on the hill, Dominique Rollin, looking unhappy. Watch Versus on Saturday because depending on the shots they choose, Darby and I may end up on TV. We did show up in the video feed from the Internet which is from the same video pool. Hopefully a DVD will be released.
And it was over. We decided to try to get to the podiums but were shut out due to closed roads. Turned out, even if we had gone to where we though the podiums were (Finish line) they were actually at the start. Silly us. So we headed off to the winery to taste some wine. Darby bought the same wine glass my wife always buys when we’re there. I warned him that I’ve managed to break every one I’ve ever come into contact with. He was not worried. We found where we were going to dinner and went back to the campground to collapse. I went to the general store and picked up three boxes of snap and pops. Two for the kids, one for me. I played with mine immediately.
Dinner was at Odee’s for some pretty good smoked pig and beer. Mmmm. Smoky pig. Then, back to the campground to bathe in DEET because the mosquitoes were the size of pterodactyls. Cracked open some beer, lit a fire and talked for a few more hours. If I tried to cover the range of topics discussed, from Civil War battle grounds to which states have the prettiest scenery to whether or not Dickie Betts is still alive (he is, just no longer playing with the Allman Brothers Band), I’d need another website).
Full photos here. More of the story later today.
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