This past Saturday I made the Stage 6 finish of the Tour of California a stop on a training ride with fellow ABD’er Brandon “stitches” Skweres, who came out to CA for a little training. Santa Clarita is at most a 2 hour ride from Rosa and my apartment, and was a new venue for the ToC in ‘07.
We arrived a little early and stopped at a coffee shop 1/4 mile away from the circuit in a high-end strip mall (like Danada Town Square). I’d been to the mall before and it was typically packed — however, since the roads were closed on Saturday it was completely dead. While we sat sipping java I even overheard a store employee on her cell phone complaining that the manager was going to stay open until 7, which was way too late in her opinion. So I drank my coffee, ate a baked good, followed cyclingnews.com’s live coverage on my phone, pondered the state of cycling and wondered if the stores and restaurants had enough influence to keep the Tour of California from coming back. Then we rode out of the parking lot....
Holy premature bemoanment of cycling!!! A swanky restaurant in the corner of the strip mall had obscured the biggest cycling crowd and broo-ha-ha I’d ever seen. I can’t believe we hadn’t heard the loudspeakers or 100,000+ people. Think of the Downer’s Grove criterium... then multiply it by 8. The finishing stretch and adjoining expo areas were completely packed. It was very impressive, and of course made a million times better by the drama that unfolded in the race as the field closed in a 1 minute gap on the closing circuits. My heart went out to Tim Johnson, as we were only a few feet away from him when he was making this look. It was also great to see Danny Pate getting a lot of exposure for his efforts at the ToC too. Danny is one of the truly good guys in this sport.
I tried to stick around to say hi to Big Bird, who ended up being time-cut on that day, but with darkness to worry about we had to head home before he came in. All in all, I was thrilled to witness such tremendous support for cycling, and Michael Barry summed it up pretty well: “many people in the cycling world feared national interest in the sport would ebb after Lance's retirement but the enthusiasm for racing seems to be as good as ever”. Amen.