What a Great Day in Colorado Springs.
As the day began the Blackberry started buzzing, text messages and phone calls from friends. All asking where will you be, are you ready, are you riding to the race? Coffee and breakfast down and bikes, cameras and cow bells ready and we hit the road.
Leaving the house we can easily hit the trail and head west to Old Colorado City for our first stop. On the way we see lots of cyclist packed and heading to their favorite viewing spot.
For us we have a plan to hit several different spots. Our first stop is on the westside at 21st st. and Colorado ave. with some friends that have a premium location. We settle in and I help get the technical side of things setup. Laptop with live feed and connected to a sound system. Ride start list so we can cheer by name for each rider as the fly by.
Cold drinks in the cooler, cow bells ringing and girls yelling, I think we have it all ready to go.
The day is a typical Colorado summer day, light breeze out of the North East, barley a cloud in the sky and warming up fast. Good thing for the canopy and sunscreen, and a cool beverage.
Lots of buzz as the teams are out for warm-up runs up and down Colorado Blvd in front of us. Every time some one goes by they get the yelling and cow bell treatment. Smiles and waves are returned and it seems to be a very festive day.
As the time gets close to the start things really get active and you can feel the excitement in the air all around. Police motorcycles, team cars and helicopters in the air. I think the race is ready to start, yep here comes the first rider, we check the start list and sure enough we have a race.
Watching the broadcast footage online we awe at the coverage. We have transformed our hometown into a world class bike race. We look at each other and big smiles follow, then back to the next rider on the course cowbells ring and girls scream.
As the race goes on we decide to head down to the finish line to get some photo ops and see how things are going there.
We are joined by some friends and head off to downtown. Wow we are very suprised at the turn out downtown. It's Monday after all and suprising that this many people are off work and downtown for the race. The excitment level is a couple of notches higher here as we stop for a few minutes to take it all in.
Billboards and big screens, the streets are barracked and the finish line looks amasing. Off to the beer tent to get a cold one as we wait for the favorites to come in. The temps are high and that means we will get our afternoon showers as the cloud beginn to gather. uckily the riders finish just in time and miss the rain.
What a grand day in downtown Colorado Springs it was and all you coud see all day was smiles from everyone there.
On to Salida tomorrow for Stage 1 and some climbing a head.
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