That was the first crash I've ever seen in person, and it was quite shocking.  Luckily, both riders were able to continue, although the second guy looked pretty shaken up as he got back on the bike.

to go back and watch much of the Versus coverage.  I'd like to watch all the stages from when I was in Italy, since there were a lot of days when I saw only a bit of the race.  

It would be interesting to see that crash footage.  It happened so fast, and just as the riders were coming into our sight, that even though several of us from my group were standing together, I was the only one who got any shots of it.

Of course, it's hard to take bad pictures at the Giro, with all that lovely Italian scenery around ;-)

The Dave Z pictures are probably my favorites.  He certainly looked as if he'd left everything on the battlefield.

It's live on tv for at least a couple of hours every afternoon, and a lot of Italian bars have tvs, especially in the small towns.  There were just a few days, like on the Zoncolan, when I watched the race from a place where there was no access to a tv.  Luckily, on that day, I was far enough (7k) from the finish that after the last rider went by, I was able to hop on my bike and make it down to the town at the base of the climb just in time to see Gibo cross the finish line on the tv in an outdoor bar.  

The daily sports paper, La Gazzetta, also has fantastic coverage of the Giro: pages and pages of stories, interviews, pictures, expert analysis (Cipollini's daily column, for example), and layouts of the stages.  I can read enough Italian to get the gist of the stories, and it really makes you realize you're in a place where people are passionate about cycling when you see ten pages a day of Giro coverage.

Thanks for the compliment about my pictures.  I don't really know anything about photography, but I've been kind of getting into the whole composition thing lately.  It's fun to think about what should be in the shot, where the focus will be, etc.

It's been very hard to get back to the workaday world after such a great trip.  Of course, the best cure for the post-trip letdown is to start planning your next trip.

It's been great to have such an appreciative audience for my stories and pictures.  You know how it is, you get home from vacation all excited, and its like pulling teeth to get anyone to look at your pictures.  Combine that with the fact that most of my friends and family don't follow cycling and can't fathom why I thought I needed 50 pictures of Gilberto Simoni, and its hopeless!

I wouldn't have wanted to be outside during the thunderstorm that hit while I was having lunch in there.  It was on the climb to Tre Cime.  There were a couple of other tent/bars on the way up, but that one was the best.  On the Zoncolan, I saw one or two bars under awnings, but nothing in an enclosed tent.  Luckily, the weather wasn't bad that day, so I wasn't looking for shelter.