I knew I was in for a good weekend when on my way home from work Thursday I noticed my route now has official bike lanes – Hooray!
The plan for Friday was simple – drive up to Steamboat, get in a ride up Rabbit Ears pass, back to town for the finish, then find a place to camp. The drive up – easy. The bike ride, quite lovely – Here’s a view overlooking Lake Catamount as you come down the pass into Steamboat
Jens! fans had set up camp. Had I had a marker, I would have fixed the sign.
Highest point I’ve ridden my bike
If I understand the pass correctly, there’s two Rabbit Ears summits – East & West. East (this pic) and the west summit is where the KOM was. The ride itself is a long slog at a steady gradient to the west summit, then the road undulates to the east summit, then downhill. Definitely slow going uphill on my part – I was excited when I was over 6 mph.
The Rabbit Ears themselves. (Is giving Rabbit/Bunny Ears a universal picture prank?) There aren’t many viewing spots from the road – but there are trails that one can hike on to get a better view.
Oh yeah, getting to the finish. I missed it, I was on the road into town and the riders were riding up to their lodging. Whoopsies – there was still plenty going on in town - I parked, walked around a bit, saw a camel, had dinner, etc
At this point I was planning on watching the start the next day then drive down to Breck for the finish. So I started driving around the start area to get familiar w/ it – cursed with directions that didn’t match street signs, I had to pull a few u-turns and other questionable driving techniques – harmless enough when there are no witnesses. However, when one turns left on the wrong side of the median and Dave Zabriskie & other Garmin dudes are watching, well that’s just unfortunate. Worse is that I did the exact thing last summer. Luckily cars were at a minimum and I corrected quickly w/ just a ‘what the hell are you doing’ look from DZ.
I ended up camping about a 1 km before the KOM line – one of guys camping there convinced me that I should do the ride again Sat. morning – so I decided to skip the start and watch the riders from the summit instead. It was a bit surreal to ride the hill w/ all the fans and other riders – such a great vibe and the encouragement was appreciated. Highly recommended!
After I was done riding, I had a little over an hour til the race was expected thru – cleaned up, had a beer, put on my swan costume (yes, I have a swan costume ready to go. Thanks Bjork!), and walked around a bit. Got lots of high fives from other fans and found this great sign.
Then the helicopter came into sight – it’s so funny how the crowd goes nuts when the heli is first audible then finally visible – the riders came flying thru, Laurens Ten Dam had ever so slight of a lead when they passed where I was at.
Then it was into the car and time to haul ass to Breckenridge. Route 131 is a lovely little road – but no time for dilly-dallying.
My improved driving skills coupled w/ a ‘slower’ day for the race, I was able to park about 4 miles from Breck – pulled out the bike and powered into town along the bike path and met up w/ some friends to watch the finish. 10 – 15 minutes later the break came thru (if you look close you can see them)
We had to have been about 1.5k from the finish – I’m still shocked that someone from the break didn’t win, I thought they had enough of a gap, and they weren’t cat/mousing where I was.
The road we were on happened to be the same one the riders had to come back down to get to the buses. A note on the ‘buses’ - This is not your TdF team area – these are mostly rental buses & campers & minivans – for most you had to look for a sheet of paper w/ the team name on it to know who you were stalking/waiting/cheering/peddling your children for an autograph for/etc. George Hincapie probably got the biggest cheer when he came out of BMC’s bus to wave to the crowd. Dave Z got a big cheer too, but I was hiding from him at that point. J
With that, I left for home, stopping to pick up my dog on the way – and lucky for me, the family watching her hadn’t eaten all of the cherry pie I baked for them – so I got to finish an awesome day w/ a piece of pie. Yeah me.
Full set of pics can be found here. All pics mine. Golden write-up to follow.