Amgen Time Trial Pre Ride

Hello,

This morning a few of us went with Dave to the "Ride the Route" ceremony in Solvang. It was basically a little presentation where they announced the route for the Time Trial Stage of the Tour of California, and you got to ride the course...... with a police escort.

We got to Solvang at 8:00 and then rode around for a couple hours until the festivities started at 10:00am. The weather was clear and cool and the roads are awesome. Everytime I ride back there I realize why so many pro teams go there for training camps. We definitely have to organize a team ride over there one of these days. We could invite Mark Fennel and his Platinum crew as well, it'd be fun to get a big group from SB to all meet up for a valley ride.

Dave got word from some people at the Santa Maria Times that they wanted to put a camera on somebodys bike and get video of the TT course, so of course he volunteered......me for the job. I was expecting some high-tech miniature camera that would be mounted on my helmet, or on my stem or something stealthy and cool like that. Instead I got a hand-held cam-corder duct taped to my bars! Check out the pictures...too funny! As if anyone was surprised, it fell off about halfway through the ride. Luckily I was trying to reposition it right at that moment and it basically fell right into my hand. So, I stuck it in my jersey pocket and kept riding. The look on the newspaper guys face when I rolled back into town without the camera on my bars was classic. Oh well. No harm....no foul.

We did get to ride with Pro rider Tony Cruz (formerly with Discovery, next year with BMC) which was fun. He was super cool, and by the end of the ride it was down to all the Chicken Ranchers... me, Dave, Brett, Rick, Dan, Barney, some Bike-Barn guy, and Tony Cruz. Not that we were going fast, a lot of the people who showed up were on commuter bikes and stuff like that. But, we had a great time and I look forward to doing more rides in the valley.....and watching the Tour of California! See you all on Saturday!

Matt