Watching the 2013 Tour of California: Stage 8, Santa Rosa

For the final stage of this year's Tour of California Cara had scored VIP passes for the finish in Santa Rosa. This was very exciting, and I must say this VIP thing could get addictive. After a leasurely tour of the expo, we headed to the tents for some appetizers, coffee (decaf), and alcoholic drinks for those who prefer them.

Sagan head
Peter Sagan heads were a notable trend at this year's ATOC

Members of the Champion Systems amateur team were there, since they were sponsored by the law firm which had rented the space. I talked with them about upcoming races and about the developments in the Tour of California, visible on a television in the tent. Participating in that race was the Champion Systems pro team, not sponsored by the law firm, but obviously affiliated. I also asked them about their bikes, which were anonymous Taiwanese frames painted with "Champion Systems".

When I needed to use the porta-potty, I didn't need to use the porta-potty. Instead they had luxury toilet trailers, roomier than the one at home.

finish line

Finally the pro race arrived and announcer Dave Towles worked the crowd into a frenzie. We were treated to three passings by the field. We were around 100 meters from the finish line, near an oblique row of Bott's Dots. In a cat 3 race, these might have caused a problem, but the pro riders glided over them as if they weren't there.

After the first two pass-throughs it was the last lap, and the frenzie grew to an amazing threshold of chaos. The noise was impressive: fans pounded on the barriers, rang cowbells, and screamed at full-lung. It was increadible. First the lead motorcycles came, and then the swarm, moving incredibly fast. On the right, along the barrier at which I was standing, was the green rider, Sagan, clearly ahead of the others. I turned my head as he passed and saw him raise his arm to mark the win. Incredible.

I'd been filming the sprint with my digital camera and posted the result to YouTube. Note to self: film in landscape mode next time. My video is sideways. Maybe that adds something to the effect.

Afterwards, Cara and I were both tired, but we drove out to where the now-returned-to-traffic race course had departed Occidental Road and rode a loop, starting west on Occidental. We were both a bit disappointed that while Santa Rosa is considered a recreational cyclists's paradise, these rural roads carried heavy car traffic on the Sunday afternoon. Cara turned back a bit before Harrison Grade, feeling short on calories, but I finished my little loop down Harrison Grade and east on Guernville and met her back at the car, from where we returned home.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Marin Avenue (Berkeley)

Image
On Saturday, I got an email from Tim telling letting me know that Murphy's Spring Classics was going to start up Marin Ave. I'd missed that. Murphy announces his courses the day before, and indeed it was already well into the night before when the course announcement went out. I'd skipped over the details, jumping straight to middle and end games. Marin? I laughed at the irony, because not long before when he'd told me he was choosing to repeat the Nifty Twn Fifty which we'd done together last year versus selecting Murphy Mack's Stage Mullett two-day, I responded I didn't think I had it in me to ride Marin Ave two years in succession. Well, so much for that. I was committed, so I went downstairs to swap my 11-26 cassette for my Recon 12-27. The name is easily overlooked: "Marin Ave" fails to strike the same impression as, for example, "Redwood Gulch" or "China Grade". But among those in the know, Marin Ave is infamous i...
Read more

hummingbird feeder physics

Image
I couldn't figure out how the hummingbird feeder worked. Why didn't it overflow? Forces need to balance, of course. Neglecting surface tension, there liquid level is higher in the inner reservoir than in the feeding chamber, so there must be a corresponding pressure difference. Suppose the pressure in the inner chamber were zero. Then the column height difference would need to be atmospheric pressure / (density of liquid × gravity). But this is over 9 meters! Obviously the height difference is only approximately 1% of this. So the pressure difference inside versus outside is only approximately 1%. The inside is only slightly below atmosphere. So air is getting in. How? Does it diffuse through the liquid? If this were the dominant mechanism, it wouldn't take long for the pressure inside to go from 99% to 99.3%, for example, which should be plenty to push the column of liquid down in the inside chamber and thus push liquid out through the holes. It would over...
Read more

Gallium Pro geometry

Image
On Caltrain yesterday, I was surprised to see among the usual set of commuting bikes a SRAM Red-equipped Argon Gallium Pro. The bike immediately stole your attention. The design was one which has been trending: clear-coated carbon with plenty of text detail so the viewer is sure to realize he's gazing upon the result of advanced, proprietary engineering and not at yet another paint job on the same old OEM frames being pumped out of the same old Taiwanese factories. But it worked: the bottom bracket area was huge, the downtube a large-diameter "inverted Kamm tail" design seemingly designed to maximize wind resistance, the top tube a broad, eccentric shape which screamed "vertically compliant yet torsionally stiff". All it lacked were the pencil-think seat stays Cervelo popularized, but this was a machine designed for stiffness over anything else. It seemed dramatic overkill, since the bike was small (the Argon "XS" I suspect). There wasn't muc...
Read more